SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT Begins Performances on Monday at Soho Playhouse

Southern Discomfort, the newest addition to the SoHo Playhouse's (15 Vandam Street, NYC) eclectic Off-Broadway lineup, will begin performances on Monday, March 25. Written in the Southern Gothic tradition of Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers, Elisabeth Gray's Southern Discomfort is a comedic exploration of loneliness and the drastic measures people take to overcome it. Southern Discomfort, presented by New Umbrella, has an opening night set for April 1, and will play on Monday nights until May 27.

Miss Gray can also be seen on Broadway this season in Breakfast at Tiffany's, playing multiple roles night to night and understudying Holly GoLightly and all other female characters. She is also co-creator and star of this season's hit mockumentary web series Understudies.

Miss Gray brings a collection of idiosyncratic characters to life in Southern Discomfort: from a one-armed teenage boy selling Civil War reenactment weaponry at his family's gun stall, to a former beauty queen in a plastic surgeon's office obsessed with facial symmetry, to a forlorn tow truck driver in love with an African-American-Mormon stripper. The men and women Miss Gray portrays in the show are all based on real, true Southerners she has met and known in her years growing up in the South.

With a title like Southern Discomfort, it will be no surprise that audience members are allowed (nay, encouraged) to drink in their seats; Southern cocktail specials will be served at the bar. In addition, the evening's performance will be accompanied by live music performed by a rotation of bands and musicians, including the Chapin Sisters, most recently on tour with She & Him.

"Southern Discomfort evolved out of my desire to explore an honest vision of the contemporary South and the bizarre, wondrous people who inhabit it. The challenge and the fun of the project has been to discover compassion for characters who- on the surface, at least- warrant none, who would be overlooked by an outsider as slovenly or boring or materialistic or racist or demented- you name it. As Flannery O'Connor concluded 'For me, anything that is comic is truly tragic and anything that is tragic is truly comic,'" says Miss Gray.

Southern Discomfort plays at the SoHo Playhouse on Mondays at 8:00 p.m., starting Monday, March 25, 2013 until May 27, 2013. Written and performed by Elisabeth Gray. Directed by Daniel Zimbler. The running time is approximately 60 minutes without an intermission. Tickets are available for $20. To purchase tickets, visit: www.sohoplayhouse.com or call (866) 811-4111.

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