Michael Schantz, Ted Caine et al. Lead Attic Theater's THE TUTORS, Now thru 5/26

The Attic Theater Company presents a limited run of Erica Lipez's (story editor for Suits on USA) play The Tutors. The production will be directed by Drama League Directors Project Alumnus Laura Braza, and performances are tonight, May 18th through May 26th at The Access Theater.

Erica Lipez is a playwright based in New York City. She attended Harvard University and received her MFA from the Tisch School of the Arts Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU (2009). Recent New York/Regional stage credits include readings/workshops of her full-length plays, Bottled Up (The Public Theatre, Kennedy Center, Furious Theatre Company/Naked Angels), The Tutors (Williamstown Theatre Festival, Theater Row), and Fingers (Babel Theatre Project). Productions include Recess (Yale Summer Cabaret), Aquifer (Theater Masters at Rattlestick), Bully To You (Williamstown Theatre Festival, Art.Party.Theatre.Company, INTAR), and a musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol (Foothills Theatre). She is a recipient of a 2009/2010 Dramatist Guild Fellowship, a 2009 Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights' Workshop, and is a member of the 2009 Theater Masters National MFA Playwrights' Festival. Erica recently served as a staff writer on the Fox series Lone Star and is currently a story editor on the hit USA show Suits.

In Erica Lipez's play The Tutors, Joe and Toby, along with the many other residents of New York City who work a job in order to do something else, tutor high school students. Heidi anonymously helps write college admissions' essays online. Together, they run a friendship-finding website from their apartment, except that their work with students starts to invade their lives and, in Heidi's case, her subconscious. The Tutors by Erica Lipez tests what people who are so plugged into the digital world and online friendship do when confronted by the real thing.

Laura Braza (Artistic Director, Attic Theater Co.) is a Drama League Directors Project Alumnus, and spent the past summer at the Hangar Theatre. Previous directing credits include work at NYU with Stella Adler's Company and Atlantic Theater Company's Stage II with ATC students. Laura is also a member of the Literary Staff at the Hangar Theater. She has assistant-directed several critically acclaimed productions, including Love Child and a one-night revival of The Good Thief with Carl Forsman, as well as The Temperamentals and The Dining Room with Jonathan Silverstein.

The set will be designed by Julia Noulin-Merat, the Attic's resident scenic designer, whose work has been seen at The Flea (These Seven Sicknesses), Opera Boston, Commonwealth Opera, Hangar Theater, Gerald Lynch Theater – Lincoln Center, the Drama League, as well as "Guiding Light" (CBS), and "Inside The Actors Studio: Jim Carrey" (Bravo).

For more info visit: www.theatticpresents.org

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