Lunar Energy Presents BY RIGHTS WE SHOULD BE GIANTS World Premiere, 10/18-11/3

Lunar Energy Productions will present the World Premiere of By Rights We Should Be Giants, created and written by Lunar Energy ensemble members Nadia Sepsenwol and Tim Van Dyck, October 18-November 3 at The Secret Theatre (4402 23rd Street between 44th Avenue and 44th Road, Long Island City).

The production will be directed by Christopher Diercksen (The Seagull at The Secret) and will feature Bob C. Armstrong (All’s Well That Ends Well with New York Classical Theatre), Brenda Currin* (Obie Award winner for Wendy Kesselman’s My Sister in This House with Second Stage Theatre), Rebecca Hirota, Caitlin Johnston, Mariana Newhard, Casey Robinson, Theo Salter, George Salazar* (Godspell on Broadway), Nadia Sepsenwol, Brendan Spieth*, and Liesel Allen Yeager.

The creative team will include Set Design by Jonathan Cottle, Lighting Design by Alana Jacoby (Death Valley with AntiMatter Collective), Costume Design by Kristen M. Singer (The Seagull for Wandering BArk Theatre Company), and Original Music by Franklin James Fisher. The production will be Stage Managed by Aislinn Curry.

*Appearing courtesy of the Actors’ Equity Association

In 2008, a Midwestern family of would-be intellectuals and frustrated artists are facing the possibility of economic ruin, when they are unexpectedly visited by a company of soldiers returning from Afghanistan. Inspired by Anton Chekhov’s classic drama Three Sisters, By Rights We Should Be Giants sheds light on the dwindling American middle class and the challenges of starting anew in a rapidly changing world.

The production, presented by the Lunar Energy Productions at The Secret Theatre (4402 23rd Street between 44th Avenue and 44th Road, Long Island City) will play a three-week engagement October 18-November 3; Wednesday through Saturday at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm (no performance Wednesday, October 31). Tickets ($18) may be purchased online at www.smarttix.com or by calling 212-868-4444.

NADIA SEPSENWOL (Co-Writer) has a recent MFA in acting from Columbia University. Acting credits include: Before Placing Me On Your Shelf (with Lunar Energy Productions); Spoon River Anthology (Invisible Dog); Three Graces (3LD/Ice Factory Festival); Romeo and Juliet (Classic Stage Company); The Tempest (Folkswang Festival, Essen, Germany); Big Love (Setkani/Encounters Festival, Brno, Czech Republic); and Waiting for Godot. Her adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata was produced as part of her honors thesis in comparative literature at The University of Virginia.

TIM VAN DYCK (Co-Writer) attended the University of Virginia where he majored in English. A founding member of Third Man Productions he has written and performed in numerous plays around the city.

CHRISTOPHER DIERCKSEN (Director) specializes in developing and directing new plays. Previous directing credits include: Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, translated by Graham Schmidt; The Henchmen by Bryce Norbitz; MASTODON JUAN by Katharine Sherman; Crawl For It by Joshua Conkel; Parabolas by Kelley Girod. As Literary Manager for Lunar Energy Productions, he runs MOONSHINE: a quarterly play development reading series: In Antarctica, Where It Is Very Warm by Jona Tarlin; Dreams Of The Penny Gods by Callie Kimball. Christopher trained at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and is a graduate of Albright College.

LUNAR ENERGY is a New-York based theater company dedicated to transformation and re-imagination. In a culture of habit, routine, and been-there-done-that fatigue, we believe it is vital to seek out the surprising in the familiar. To that end, our productions play with perspective and context in order to reveal unexpected aspects of stories and situations we thought we knew.

Previous productions include Katharine Sherman’s Christopher Marlowe’s chloroform dreams at The Red Room (April 2012), Before Placing Me On Your Shelf, adapted and directed by Philip Gates from poems by James Tate, (FringeNYC 2011, Manhattan Theatre Source) and like the night by Katharine Sherman at The Tank (April 2009). Lunar Energy also produces MOONSHINE, a reading series geared towards new play development.

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