An HB Ensemble Production
Playwright: David Rimmer 
Director: Laura Esterman
Cast: Stephanie Braxton*, Elizabeth Grey*, Michael Epp, Rachel Benbow Murdy*, David B. Sochet*, Georgina Bates, Kathleen Pierce, Judy Rosenblatt*, Tadhg O’Mordha, Daniela Dakie, Nick DeSimone, Catherine Siracusa, Tom Tinelli, AC Davison.
Production Manager: Shiraz Biggie Assistant Director: Adrian Wattenmaker Stage Manager: Sarah Oswald
*Appearing Courtesy of Actor’s Equity Association
New York was performed November 16th – 21st, 2006
Synopsis: Depicting the reactions of 15 individuals to the events of that day, the characters all speak to a central psychiatrist.
An HB Ensemble Production
Playwright: David Hare
Director: Amy Wright
Cast: Stephanie Braxton, Michael Epp, Elizabeth Grey, Austin Pendleton
Bay at Nice was performed April 14th – 23rd
Synopsis: This play is set in a room in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad in 1956. An ageing Valentina, once a young student (and possibly lover) of Henri Matisse is accompanied by her daughter Sophia, a teacher but also an artist, desperate to be free of her marriage and to start a new life, for which she needs her mother’s approval and financial assistance. The result is a battle of wills between the two women, one an ex-bohemian, who left the freedom of Paris to raise her fatherless child in a repressive Russia, and the daughter, now a stifled woman in her thirties eager to taste the freedom her mother once enjoyed. ‘The Bay of Nice’ was first performed at the National Theatre, London, in September 1986.
An HB Studio Production
Playwright: Marcia Jean Kurtz 
Director: Marcia Jean Kurtz
Cast: Anushka Paris Carter, Georgia Kate Cohen, Nick DeSimone, George Guidall, Alexander Napier, Ean Sheehy, Franny Silverman, Jacob Gartt White
Set Design: Ray Recht Costume Design: Christine Field Lighting Design: Matthew McCarthy Sound Design: Aural Fixation Stage Manager: Carol A. Sullivan Assistant Director: Bill Oliver Managing Director: Marlene Mancini Production Manager: Shiraz Biggie
Between Two Worlds was performed March 15th – 29th
An HB Ensemble Production
Playwright: Rasa Allan Kazlas 
Director: Rasa Allan Kazlas
Cast: Darien (Michael) Blake*, Carlton Byrd, A.C. Davison, Nick DeSimone, Christian Hogarth, Genc Jakupi, Paul Pryce, David Shih*, David B. Sochet
*Appearing Courtesy of Actor’s Equity Association
Lighting Designer: Diana Kesselschmidt Managing Director: Marlene Mancini Production Manager: Shiraz Biggie Stage Manager: Faith Uyetake Music and Percussion: Nick DeSimone
Caged Visions was performed January 18th – February 5th, 2007
Synopsis: Caged Visions is an evening of dramatized poetry using material written by inmates in the NYC prisons as its text. Some of the poets are serving life sentences upstate, others have been released, still others have died in prison of AIDS.
An HB Ensemble Production
Playwright: Arthur Miller
Director: Austin Pendleton
Lightning: Chris Dallos Stage Manager: Shiraz Biggie Musical Director: Anne Phillips Managing Director: Marlene Mancini Costume Design: Patricia Adshead, Catherine Siracusa
The American Clock was performed September 27th – October 15th, 2007
Synopsis: The play employs a series of vignettes and short scenes, with the actors portraying some fifty-two characters, to capture the sense and substance of America in the throes of the Great Depression. The central figures are the Baums, a wealthy family whose fortune has vanished in the stock market crash, but their story is amplified and illuminated by brief glimpses of other lives; a farmer who has lost all in the dust bowl; a prostitute who exchanges her favors for dental work; a white Southern sheriff in thrall to a black short-order cook; a young man who dreams of success on Tin Pan Alley, etc. Moving deftly from scene to scene, some funny, some movingly poignant, the play becomes a deeply affecting evocation both of a tortured time in American history and of the indomitable spirit of the people who survived and prevailed in the face of unaccustomed adversity.
Part of the 6 Playwrights in Search of a Production…
Playwright: Alex Ladd
Director: Alex Ladd
Cast: Austin Pendleton*, Andy McCutcheon*, Tarynn Wiehahn, Jen Danby, Victor Arnold*, Jess Osuna*, Lauren Munger.
Managing Director: Marlene Mancini, Technical Director: Corrie Beth Shotwell, Office Manager: Tara Webb, Stage Directions: Catherine Siracusa
*Appearing courtesy of Actor’s Equity Association
Chekhov’s Rifle was performed on April 6th & 7th, 2008
Synopsis: This play is about Harry, a misanthropic playwright, and his dim but charismatic actor roommate Tim. When Harry rails against what is wrong with contemporary theatre, he uses his own script as an example. Ironically, it’s the best thing he has ever written! When Tim steals the script and pawns it off as his own the story begins to unravel the same way as the maligned script. Rifle is humorously self-aware of its own device, down to the maxim that Chekhov himself first coined: “If a gun hangs from the wall in the first act of a play, it must fire in the last.” As a commentary on pop culture, this murder mystery is as much about the lives of the characters in the play as it is about the writer who has written it, the artists who are acting in it, and the audience watching it.
Part of the 6 Playwrights in Search of a Production…
Playwright: Peter Conston
Director: Edith Meeks
Cast: Peter Alexandrou, John Golaszewski, Heather Kenzie*, Catherine Kjome*, Andy McCutcheon*, Joseph Foley.
Managing Director: Marlene Mancini, Technical Director: Corrie Beth Shotwell, Office Manager: Tara Webb, Stage Directions: Joseph Foley
*Appearing courtesy of Actor’s Equity Association
Wiring was performed on April 25th & 26th, 2008
Synopsis: Darcy hides her infidelity from her two year-old relationship with Michael, who is absolutely clueless about her secret affair with Andy. Roommates, Jonathan and Andy both share an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan where they sometimes meet-up with Michael and pose as a gay couple in order to act as a cover for Darcy. A play wrapped in lies, secrets, uncontrollable feelings, and regret were these characters can’t attempt to escape from.
Part of the 6 Six Playwrights in Search of a Production…
Playwright: Bernard Kops
Director: Kelly Morgan
Cast: Thom Christopher*, Katharine Cullison*, Austin Pendleton*.
Managing Director: Marlene Mancini, Technical Director: Corrie Beth Shotwell, Office Manager: Tara Webb, Stage Directions: Giovanni Villari, Sound: Mike Skinner
*Appearing courtesy of Actor’s Equity Association
Playing Sinatra was performed on April 13th & 14th, 2008
Synopsis: A powerful psychological drama set in an oppressive old house in London, where grown-up siblings Norman and Sandra resist their lonely future by living out their fantasies in the music of their idol, Frank Sinatra. Norman, an agoraphobic bookbinder, works at home and heats microwave meals to perfection; Sandra, with outside job and interests, longs to break free of her existence. But the option of leaving her mentally-disturbed brother and running off with the “mystic” Phillip proves less than straightforward … This tense play’s clammy grip never slackens.
An HB Staged Reading
Part of the 6 Playwrights in Search of a Production…
Playwright: Frank Canino
Director: Frank Canino
Cast: Reed Birney*, Jim Boerlin*, Matthew Conlon*, Liam Mitchell*, Anslem Richardson, Louis Zorich*.
Managing Director: Marlene Mancini Technical Director: Corrie Beth Shotwell Office Manager: Tara Webb Stage Directions: Tom Tinelli
*Appearing courtesy of Actor’s Equity Association
The Altar Boys’ Picnic was performed on April 11th & 12th, 2008
Synopsis: One summer afternoon four priests in their mid-fifties meet for a reunion — possibly their last — at the bishop’s summer residence where they used to come for their annual altar boys’ picnic. They have known each other since their childhood when they fell under the influence of the charismatic Father Edward Calkins, who first guided them into the seminary. Later he became the bishop who ordained them and then dominated their lives. But Bishop Calkins is dead, and the four men are at a critical moment in their lives. One of them is on the verge of leaving the priesthood, another is involved in a love affair, and still another is facing a life threatening illness. They spend the day with the bishop’s older brother, Father Michael Calkins, whose career never matched that of his brilliant brother’s. Also with them is a young seminarian from Rwanda who has been temporarily assigned to help Father Michael prepare to go to a retirement home. Through the day, these three generations of men, who have made the uncommon decision to give their life to God, reunite to eat, play basketball, reminisce and deal with mementoes of the past. But as the day wears on they also reveal – sometimes against their will – how problematic their lives have become, and how they have become estranged from the Church which should have nurtured them. Whatever happens to each of them, no one will be the same after this picnic, where decisions must be made and unpleasant news dealt with. In what may be their last meeting, truths withheld are finally spoken, and delayed confrontations erupt.