PLAY YOURSELF: A One-Night-Only Benefit Reading

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A one-night-only reading of

PLAY YOURSELF
By Harry Kondoleon
Directed by Lee Sunday Evans
Featuring Leslie Ayvazian, Rachel Brosnahan, Annie Golden, and Arian Moayed

Monday, October 7 at 7:30pm

New York Theatre Workshop
79 East 4th Street
New York, NY 10003

Read Synopsis

We are pleased to announce a special one-night-only reading of PLAY YOURSELF by two-time Obie Award winner Harry Kondoleon (Anteroom; The Houseguest) directed by Obie Award winner Lee Sunday Evans (Dance Nation, [Porto]) and featuring Leslie Ayvazian, two-time Golden Globe Award and Emmy Award winner Rachel Brosnahan (Othello, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “House of Cards”), Screen Actors Guild Award winner Annie Golden (Broadway Bounty Hunter, “Orange is the New Black”), and Tony Award nominee Arian Moayed (“Succession,” The Humans). The reading will benefit NYTW’s Artist Workshop and Education programming and will take place at New York Theatre Workshop (79 East 4th Street) on Monday, October 7, 2019 at 7:30pm.

Play Yourself is part of a year-long celebration of New York Theatre Workshop’s 40th Anniversary, featuring a variety of events honoring the past and celebrating the future of a community dedicated to helping us all better understand our world through theatre. This one-night-only reading is the latest in a slate of events including a RENT Live watch-party; NYTW’s 40th Anniversary Gala honoring NYTW Founding Trustee Stephen Graham; On This Block, a celebration of the East 4th Street community in partnership with FAB; a #WorkshopNight celebration to welcome Hadestown to Broadway; and the upcoming December 9, 2019 celebration of the 10th Anniversary of Mind the Gap, an intergenerational theatre program that brings together teens and elders to write plays inspired by each other’s lives.

Tickets for the reading begin at $75 and VIP tickets at the $1,000 level include a post-show reception with Rachel Brosnahan, the creative team, and NYTW leadership. All tickets $250 and up include a tax-deductible donation.

$25 CheapTix: We are committed to making tickets available to every production via our CheapTix initiative. For this reading, we will offer a block of $25 tickets via a digital Lottery in partnership with TodayTixTodayTix allows you to enter the digital Lottery via the app, available in the App Store or Google Play Store. The entry period will continue through Friday, October 4th at 12pm EST, when winners will be notified. Entrants may request 1 or 2 tickets, and entry in the lottery is free and open to all. All entry rules apply. Enter the lottery now!

No in-person sales will be available at the box office. Standard ticketing fees apply to all orders. There will be a limit of 4 tickets per person for this event. All sales are final, no exchanges or refunds. Tickets are non-transferable and will only be released to the purchaser. A valid photo ID will be required to pick up your tickets.

  • Jean

    Leslie Ayvazian is the author of eight full-length plays and seven one-act plays, published variously by Samuel French and Dramatists Play Service. Several have been included in annual anthologies of best plays. Nine Armenians won the John Gassner/Outer Critics Circle Award for best new American play, the Roger L. Stevens Award, and second place for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Rosemary and I received an honorable mention from the Susan Smith Blackburn jury. Leslie has received commissions from the Manhattan Theatre Club, Windancer Productions and South Coast Repertory Theatre. Make Me, directed by Christian Parker, was produced in New York by the Atlantic Theatre Company. High Dive was produced at the Long Wharf Theatre and the Manhattan Class Company, directed by David Warren, and went on to be produced in Poland and Slovakia. Her short film Every Three Minutes, starring Olympia Dukakis, was produced by Showtime and won a Telly Award. Her play Deaf Day was produced as a film in Syria by Rana Kaz Kaz; it has been presented at several international film festivals and won the prize for Best Short Film at the Bahrain Film Festival. Her latest short film, The Favor, stars Olympia Dukakis, Margaret Colin, and John Pankow. A theatrical version of The Favor ran at City Theatre in 2013 and also had a production in The Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Spring festival of one-act plays. A recent drama, 15/15, had a workshop at the Atlantic Theatre in NYC and the Mark Taper Forum in LA. Her comedy Out of the City has been produced in Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Florida. Her one-act play Above it All recently toured the Miami FL school system. Leslie is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Dramaturgy at the Columbia University Graduate School of the Arts. Her credits as an actress include roles on Broadway in Lost in Yonkers and A Naked Girl on the Appian Way and a recurring role on “Law & Order SVU”. She appeared last year in All the Days at the McCarter Theatre directed by Emily Mann. Her new full length play, 100 APRILS, will have its premiere production at the Rogue Machine Theatre in Los Angeles the Spring of 2018.

  • Yvonne

    RACHEL BROSNAHAN has won an Emmy, 2 Golden Globes, 2 Critics’ Choice Awards, 1 TCA Award and 2 Screen Actors Guild Awards and has been nominated this year for an Emmy award in the category of “Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series” for her performance as “Miriam ‘Midge’ Maisel” in the critically acclaimed series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Just four years prior, she earned an Emmy nomination for her performance as “Rachel Posner” in Netflix’s groundbreaking series House of Cards.

    Since The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel premiered on Amazon’s streaming service in November 2017, the show has earned an Emmy, a Golden Globe and 2 Critics’ Choice Awards for ‘Best Comedy.’ Set in the 1950’s, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel centers on “Miriam ‘Midge’ Maisel,” a 25-year-old sharp, sunny, energetic woman married and living with her husband and two children in New York. When Midge’s husband leaves her for another woman, her life is turned upside down, and she makes the decision to enter the workforce as well as start building a life as a standup comic with the help of her manager, played by Alex Borstein. The show returned for its second season last December and its third season will be released on December 6th on Prime Video.

    On the big screen, it was recently announced that Brosnahan will produce and star in I’m Your Woman, an Amazon Studio movie directed by Julia Hart and co-written with Jordan Harowitz. Brosnahan recently concluded production on Ironbark alongside Benedict Cumberbatch. Additional film credits include Patriots’ Day, Burn Country, BoomtownThe Finest Hours, Louder Than Bombs and Beautiful Creatures.

    On Stage, Brosnahan starred as “Desdemona” in Sam Gold’s off-Broadway production of Othello opposite Daniel Craig and David Oyelowo. She made her Broadway debut in 2013 in The Big Knife opposite Bobby Cannavale.

    On Series Television, in addition to her breakout role in House of Cards, which earned her Emmy and Online Film and Television Award nominations as well as SAG nomination for Best Ensemble, she also starred in two seasons of the critically-acclaimed WGN series Manhattan. Brosnahan is also signed on as Executive Producer of a series adaptation of Corey Camperchioli’s short Femme. She is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where she studied at The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute.

    Brosnahan recently narrated the Bloomberg/National Geographic’s climate change documentary, Paris to Pittsburgh, which premiered on National Geographic in December. She is also the voice of the recurring role of Princess Chloe in season 3 of Disney’s Elena of Avalor and the voice of a character in Spies In Disguise alongside Tom Holland and Will Smith. Spies in Disguise will be released on December 25th.

    She serves on the Board of Covenant House, which oversees programs for homeless youth and has been an Ambassador for Global Citizen for the past six years.

    Brosnahan has recently signed a first-look deal with Amazon Studios. With her Scrap Paper Pictures, she will work with Amazon to develop TV series exclusive to Amazon Prime Video.

  • Selma

    ANNIE GOLDEN considers herself the illegitimate child of the legitimate theatre having been discovered on the Bowery fronting a rock band and cast by Milos Forman as Jeannie in Hair, the 1978 film. Annie was recently seen on the final season of “Orange is the New Black” on Netflix. Silence is golden, and so is Annie’s character, Norma Romano! On Broadway and off, she was last seen in Broadway Bounty Hunter by Tony Award-nominee Joe Iconis; the Tony Award nominated revival of Violet; and created the role of Georgie Bukatinsky in The Full Monty; Sondheim’s original Squeaky Fromme in Assassins, the Off-Broadway production at Playwrights Horizons, directed by Jerry Zaks; Ah! Wilderness with Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards; On the Town; and Little Shop of Horrors as Audrey. Her numerous film credits include Bite Me; Touched by Fire opposite Katie Holmes; Twelve Monkeys; Baby Boom; Brooklyn Rules; Suddenly Seeking Susan; I Love You, Phillip Morris; and Miles. Her television credits include “High Maintainence,” “Difficult People,” “The 2-2,” “Law & Order,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Cheers,” “Miami Vice,” “Third Watch,” and, most notably, as Norma Romano for six seasons in the award-winning Netflix series “Orange is the New Black.”

  • Harmon

    ARIAN MOAYED is the co-Founder of Waterwell, a civic-minded and socially conscious theater and education company, as well as a Partner at the for-profit Waterwell Films. Recent Waterwell productions include The Courtroom, a reenactment of deportation proceedings in active legal spaces; The Flores Exhibits, a series of videos in which artists, lawyers, advocates, and immigrants read the sworn testimonies of children held in detention facilities at the U.S./Mexico border (flores-exhibits.org); Fleet Week Follies, an annual festival of music, food, and kid-friendly activities, free to military members and their families; and a dual-language Hamlet (Arian played the title role). At the Waterwell Drama Program, over 250 students per year receive world-class arts training and education in advocacy at the Professional Performing Arts School, all free of charge. With Waterwell Films, Arian has written/directed the Emmy-nominated, short-form thriller, “The Accidental Wolf,” which stars Kelli O’Hara (theaccidentalwolf.com). Notable acting credits: The Humans (Drama Desk Award), Guards at the Taj (Obie Award), Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (Tony nomination),Succession” (HBO).

HARRY KONDOLEON / PLAYWRIGHT

HARRY KONDOLEON is the author of the novels Diary of a Lost Boy and The Whore of Tiampuan, and a collection of poems, The Death of Understanding. His plays include Zero Positive (NY premiere at The Public Theater), Anteroom (New York Drama Critics’ Circle nomination), Christmas on Mars (Playwrights Horizons), Linda Her and The Fairy Garden (Second Stage), The Vampires (Empty Space in Seattle, Astor Place Theatre), Slacks and Tops (MTC), The Cote D’Azure Triangle (Ensemble Studio Theatre), The Brides (Lenox Art Centre/Music Theatre Group), Rococo (Yale Repertory Theatre), Play Yourself (Virginia Stage Company), The Poets’ Corner (Theatre for a New City), Love Diatribe (premiered at Circle Rep). His numerous honors and awards include: Fulbrights, Rockefeller, Drama-Logue, Oppenheimer and Obie Awards. Mr. Kondoleon graduated from Hamilton College and the Yale School of Drama. Mr. Kondoleon died in 1994 at the age of 39 of complications from AIDS.

LEE SUNDAY EVANS / Director

LEE SUNDAY EVANS is a two-time Obie Award winning Director + Choreographer, and was recently appointed Artistic Director of Waterwell. Her production of Sunday by Jack Thorne is now running at the Atlantic. Recent credits include: In the Green by Grace McLean (LCT3), The Courtroom (Waterwell), Dance Nation by Clare Barron (Playwrights Horizons, Obie, Lortel Award), Intractable Woman by Stefano Massini and Caught by Christopher Chen (The Play Company), The Things That Were There by David Greenspan (The Bushwick Starr), [Porto] by Kate Benson (WP Theater/Bushwick Starr), HOME by Geoff Sobelle and Farmhouse/Whorehouse by Suzanne Bocanegra (BAM Next Wave Festival), Miller, Mississippi by Boo Killebrew (Long Wharf, Dallas Theater Center), The Winter’s Tale (The Public Theater’s Mobile Unit), Bull in a China Shop by Bryna Turner (LCT3), Macbeth (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival), Wellesley Girl by Brendan Pelsue (Humana Festival), D Deb Debbie Deborah by Jerry Lieblich (Clubbed Thumb), A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes by Kate Benson (Obie Award – New Georges/WP Theater). Her work has been presented/developed at Baryshnikov Arts Center, Sundance Theater Lab, BAX, CATCH, LMCC, Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, Juilliard among others.

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