Rising Phoenix Rep Presents THE STRAY DOG As 5th Show In Cino Nights 1/23

Rising Phoenix Repertory announces the FIFTH PLAY IN THE CINO NIGHTS SERIES- THE STRAY DOG, a new play by Kristen Palmer / directed by Julie Kline featuring Stephen Brown, Brian Miskell, Laura Ramadei, Jelena Stupljanin, Haynes Thigpen, and David Townsend

ONE NIGHT ONLY - SUNDAY, January 23rd at 7PM

Seventh Street Small Stage, 43 East Seventh Street

(6 to Astor Place, R/W to 8th Street, F to 2nd Ave)

THE FIFTH IN a year-and-a-half-long series of TWENTY Fully produced, world-premiere plays commissioned by rising Phoenix rep to BE performed in the extremely intimate close quarters of the basement space of downtown restaurant Jimmy's No. 43

performances monthly from September 2010 - MARCH 2012

Admission is free; space is extremely limited reservations are strongly encouraged
and can be made by calling 212-946-5198 for more information please visit www.risingphoenixrep.org

Following the sold out performances and overflow crowds at its first four Cino Nights presentations (of Gary Sunshine's BEST SEX EVER, Mando Alvarado's (O)N THE 5:31, Courtney Baron's HERE I LIE, and Florencia Lozano's BUSTED), Rising Phoenix Rep continues the series on January 23rd at 7 p.m. with Kristen Palmer's THE STRAY DOG. Palmer describes THE STRAY DOG as "a play obsessed with the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova and dedicated to any who dare endure in the folly and the imperative that is art. Songs will be sung. Poems read. Dreams dashed. Vodka drunk. These are dangerous times."

The play will be directed by Rising Phoenix Rep Artistic Associate Julie Kline, and features Stephen Brown (Visions and Voices), Brian Miskell (The Sunken Living Room/Theater 80), Laura Ramadei (Keep Your Baggage With You/Theater for the New City), Jelena Stupljanin (Cirkus Columbia dir. Danis Tanovic), Haynes Thigpen (Our House/Playwrights Horizons), and David Townsend (Twelfth Night/Pearl).

Inspired by Joe Cino and his Caffe Cino-one of the original birthplaces of Off-Off-Broadway theatre and early home to such writers as Doric Wilson, Robert Patrick, John Guare, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, and William M. Hoffman-New York Innovative Theater Award winning company Rising Phoenix Rep has commissioned twenty playwrights to write new, full-length plays for the Seventh Street Small Stage, the intimate back room space at Jimmy's No. 43 in the East Village, where the company has produced critically acclaimed and award winning productions for the past five years.

Rising Phoenix Rep artistic director Daniel Talbott described the series as a place to tap into the raw, inspired, inventive, and pioneering work of the Caffe Cino, where the love of theatre and new work was joined with a scrappy, do-it-yourself work ethic. All shows will be rehearsed for a week and then fully mounted and produced, warts and all, for one night only with free admission.

Cino Nights are currently scheduled through March 2012 and will celebrate the spirit of indie theatre as a home for new plays and theatre artists as well as hopefully honor what has been said of the Caffe Cino: "the first studio of theater where playwrights can experiment as painters and poets have done for a century, free from the tyranny of audience, box-office, church, and criticism." The plays will be fully produced for one night only on a more or less monthly basis through March 2012. The playwrights, in the order their plays will appear, are:

Kristen Palmer's THE STRAY DOG will premiere on January 23, 2011; directed by Julie Kline and featuring Stephen Brown, Brian Miskell, Laura Ramadei, Jelena Stupljanin, Haynes Thigpen, and David Townsend.

Emily DeVoti: February 13, 2011

Lucy Thurber: February 27, 2011

Daniel Talbott: April 17, 2011

Jessica Dickey: May 22, 2011

Adam Szymkowicz: June 19, 2011

Laura Eason: July 17, 2011

Sheri Wilner: August 28, 2011

Daniel Reitz: September 18, 2011

Cusi Cram: October 2011

Crystal Skillman: October 23, 2011

Megan Mostyn-Brown: November 13, 2011

Charlotte Miller: December 11, 2011

Keith Reddin: January 2012

Dael Orlandersmith: February 2012

Jonathan Blitstein: March 2012

The previous productions in the series were:

Gary Sunshine's BEST SEX EVER premiered on October 3, 2010. It was directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel and featured Stephen Bel Davies, Cathy Curtin, Jimmy Davis, Mike Doyle and Jeffrey Nauman.

Mando Alvarado's (O)N THE 5:31 premiered on October 24, 2010, directed by Taibi Magar and featuring Jolly Abraham, Sarah Baskin, and Bernardo Cubria.

Courtney Baron's HERE I LIE premiered on November 7, 2010, directed by Daniel Talbott and featuring Denis Butkus and Samantha Soule.

Florencia Lozano's BUSTED premiered December 12, 2010, directed by Portia Krieger and featuring Maggie Bofill, Audrey Esparza, Nate Miller, Puy Navarro, Ana Reeder, and Jeanine Serralles.

Reservations will be available one week before the performance each month. Seating is extremely limited. For reservations please call 212-946-5198; for more information please visit www.RisingPhoenixRep.org.

Playwright Kristen Palmer is a member of the 2010-12 Women's Project Theatre Lab and a 2010-11 Dramatists Guild Fellow. She received the 2008-09 Jerome Fellowship at the Playwrights' Center. Her plays include THE MELTING POINT, LOCAL STORY, THE HEART IN YOUR CHEST, DEPARTURES and GLOUCESTER POINT. They have been produced and/or developed with New Georges, Blue Coyote, The Playwrights' Center, P73, Soho Rep, Circle X, The Orlando Shakespeare Festival and others. She is an associate artist of New Georges, a Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab Alumni, associate playwright of P73 Productions, and a former company member of Printer's Devil Theatre in Seattle. She is a graduate of Bretton Hall College in Yorkshire, England and NYU's Gallatin School (MA) where she focused on Writing and Drama-In-Education.

Director Julie Kline's acting credits include Alternative Methods (NY/DC Fringe Festivals), Birthday, Three Sisters, Fall Forward, Don't Pet the Zookeeper, The Ride (Rising Phoenix Rep), Moment of Zen (Women's Project), Sometimes After Dinner (EST), The Eliots, transFigures (Stillpoint Productions), Secret Rendezvous (HERE Arts Center), Remedies (solo show - Ontological-Hysteric Theatre & Estrogenius Festival), No Place Like Home (Steppenwolf). Directing Credits: The S(He) Experiment - Tour Production (Roots&Branches Theater), The Really Important People (Workshop - Rising Phoenix Rep). Assistant Director: Lady (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), Rabbi Rabino (PS 122/Rattlestick), Too Much Memory (RPR/New York Theater Workshop). Julie is a Literary Associate of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, an Artistic Associate of Rising Phoenix Rep, and Associate Director with Roots&Branches Theater. BFA in Acting, The Theatre School, DePaul University, Chicago.

Founded in 1999 by Artistic Director Daniel Talbott, Rising Phoenix Repertory began by producing an ongoing reading series of new plays and has continued to add workshops, festivals, and highly praised productions of new plays. Recent productions include the acclaimed, sold-out Off-Broadway runs of Slipping, produced with Piece by Piece Productions and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, and Too Much Memory (also with Piece by Piece Productions) which transferred to the New York Theatre Workshop's Fourth Street Theatre after winning the FringeNYC award for Outstanding Play in 2008. Other recent productions include Ceremony, Afterclap, Birthday and Don't Pet the Zookeeper (Seventh Street Small Stage); 365 Days/365 Plays (Jimmy's No. 43 and The Public Theater); What Happened When (HERE Arts Center); Fall Forward (part of the Sitelines/River to River festival produced by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council); The Telling Trilogy (including The Ride, 2006 NYIT Award Nominee - Outstanding Original Short Script- Crystal Skillman), Rules of the Universe (Winner, 2007 NYIT Awards for Outstanding Original Short Script - Daniel Reitz and Director - Daniel Talbott), and Three Sisters (both at the Seventh Street Small Stage); Gift by Mark Schultz and Ponies by Mike Batistick (FringeNYC).