CityShow Announces “The Love, Sex & Art Festival”
June 27th – July 8th, 2012
CityShow, a Lexington Ensemble Company, is pleased to announce that it will be mounting two new productions as part of their Love, Sex & Art summer theatre festival; Blood Red Roses and Sphinx, both by award winning playwright Don Nigro.
Blood Red Roses: The story of the Pre-Raphaelite painters and writers is told in this dark, funny and moving tale. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s love for his beautiful model Lizzy Siddal, the tragic love triangle of John Ruskin, Ruskin’s wife Effie and the great painter John Everett Millais, Ruskin’s later doomed love for the young Rose LaTouche and his subsequent madness, the lives of William Morris and his enigmatic wife Jane, and the poets Swinburne and Christina Rossetti all intertwine in this exploration of how love and sex influence art and life!
Blood Red Roseswill be directed by CityShow creative director, Schnele Wilson, who helmed CityShow’s 2012 production of Anatol, by Arthur Schnitzler, as well as CityShow’s 2011 production of Baal by Bertolt Brecht. Other recent directing credits include Dear Brutus by J.M. Barrie, Visiting Hours by Jeanne Chennault Porter, and a staged reading of Adan y Julio by David Omar Davila.
Sphinx: In this surreal play about the German painter Franz von Stuck, the Sphinx, a powerfully erotic figure from one of his most famous paintings, confronts the Artist late at night to present him with a riddle which is actually the riddle of his life. His Daughter, his Step-Daughter, his Wife and his Mistress eventually appear, as he attempts to understand what his life has signified. The relationship between love, sex, art and betrayal and the elusive nature of reality are all part of the Artist’s attempt to answer the riddle. Mysterious, erotic, dark and funny.
Sphinx will be directed by CityShow Artistic Director, Christopher Romero Wilson. Christopher directed CityShow’s 2011 production of Shirley Lauro’s award winning Nazi Drama All Through the Night, as well as CityShow’s 2012 production of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple. Other recent directing credits include, The Revenger’s Tragedy by Thomas Middleton, and Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure 4 Measure.
Casting for both shows will begin immediately.
Both Blood Red Roses and Sphinx will be preformed in rep at Shetler Studios’ Theater 54 in New York City. Performances will run from June 27th – July 8th, 2012.
About the author:
Among the most frequently published and widely produced playwrights in the world, Don Nigro has continued to build a deeply inter-related but diverse body of dramatic literature over the years, work that is often mysterious and unclassifiable, employing a wide variety of dramatic conventions and styles of presentation. Nigro has twice been a finalist for the National Repertory Theatre Foundation’s National Play Award, and has won a Playwriting Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation. He has twice been James Thurber Writer in Residence at the Thurber House in Columbus. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, German, Polish, Greek, Russian and Chinese.
John Clancy’s production of Nigro’s Cincinnati, featuring Nancy Walsh, won Fringe First and Spirit of the Fringe awards at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Best of Fringe at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, and has toured Britain. Grotesque Lovesongs was translated and produced on Polish television, and the film The Manor, with Peter O’Toole, is based on his play Ravenscroft. One hundred thirty-five of his plays in forty-eight volumes have been published by Samuel French.
About CityShow
Established by Executive Director Brian Reilly, CityShow is a New York City-based entertainment production company whose mission it is to bring first-rate quality live entertainment to the multitude of intimate performance venues of the metropolitan area. CityShow has mounted three other successful theater festivals. 2010′s Wilde October which featured three of Oscar Wilde’s most celebrated plays, The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband, andSalome. 2011′s Rogues Amidst the Fatherland which included Shirley Lauro’s All Through the Night, and BAAL by Bertolt Brecht. And 2012′s Fool’s and Philanderers Festival with Neil Simon’s Odd Couple and Anatol by Arthur Schnitzler.
For more information, visit the CityShow website!
Enjoy viewing PAST CityShow production info!
Fools and Philanderers Festival featuring:
The Odd Couple by Neil Simon
Anatol by Arthur Schnitzler
Rogues Amidst the Fatherland featuring:
All Through the Night by Shirley Lauro
Baal by Bertolt Brecht
A Wilde October featuring:
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
Salomé by Oscar Wilde