Photo Flash: Rising Phoenix CINO NIGHTS

Seventh Street Small Stage at Jimmy's No. 43

performances to continue monthly from September 2010 - february 2012
Admission is free; space is extremely limited

for more information please call 212-946-5198
or visit www.risingphoenixrep.org

Sunshine's Best Sex Ever is described as a gay sex farce (without the sex) in which unfashionable Jeremy takes his vaguely foreign boyfriend Kraatz on his kindergarten teacher's wedding cruise, hoping to settle a score with the groom. Secret desires mount on the high seas, while the wedding videographer tries to shoot his dream project on the side. A comedy about trying to top life's hottest moments. Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, the cast featured Stephen Bel Davies, Cathy Curtin, Jimmy Davis, Mike Doyle, and Jeffrey Nauman.

Best Sex Ever played to a sold out house at Jimmy's No. 43 to kick off Rising Phoenix Rep's Cino Nights series that will run through February 2012. Playwright Doric Wilson (whose play And He Made a Her was the first ever to be produced at the Caffe Cino in 1961) was on hand in the audience, and immediately following the performance he presented Rising Phoenix Rep artistic director Daniel Talbott with Joe Cino's ring passed down after his death by original members of the Cino.

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 eighteen 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 February 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 monthly basis through February 2012. The playwrights, in the order their plays will appear, are:

Gary Sunshine: October 3, 2010

Mando Alvarado: October 24, 2010

Courtney Baron: November 7, 2010

Florencia Lozano: December 12, 2010

Kristen Palmer: January 23, 2011

Emily DeVoti: February 13, 2011

Cusi Cram: March 20, 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

Crystal Skillman: October 23, 2011

Megan Mostyn-Brown: November 13, 2011

Charlotte Miller: December 11, 2011

Keith Reddin: January 2012

Dael Orlandersmith: February 2012

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

Gary Sunshine (Playwright) has been the recipient of a NYFA fellowship and a Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights. His play Sweetness was produced in the Summer Play Festival (SPF); Mercury was produced at HERE in association with Eve Ensler; The Names of Foods was produced by the eXchange; other recent productions include Kahn & Kant (Drama League Directors Project), Al Takes a Bride (Actors Studio; Sydney Mardi Gras Festival; King's Theater) and My President (Echo Theater Company). His work has been seen/developed at the Royal National Theatre Studio, New York Stage & Film, Playwrights Horizons, NYTW's Just Add Water Festival, Theatre of Note, P73 Productions, Rattlestick, The New Group, the New Company (London), Underwood Theater, MCC Theater, and The Actors Studio. His one-act play Al Takes a Bride was published in "The Best American Short Plays of 2001" (Applause), and by Playscripts, Inc. Gary wrote, co-created, and co-produced the documentary What I Want My Words to Do to You (Freedom of Expression Award, Sundance Film Festival; Audience Award, Lake Placid Film Festival; Crystal Award, Heartland Film Festival; HBO Audience Award for Top Documentary, Provincetown International Film Festival), which premiered nationwide on PBS's "P.O.V." He has been a staff writer on HBO's "Hung" and CBS's "As the World Turns" (WGA Award nomination). His first screenplay, Moscows, is currently in preproduction with Starry Night Entertainment. He received an A.B. from Princeton and an M.F.A. from NYU's Dramatic Writing Program. He is a member of Rising Phoenix Rep and an alumnus of New Dramatists.

Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Director) is the Artistic Director of Studio 42, and directed their Spacebar, ...Historie of the Barber-Surgeons and Friendly Fire. New York: Ars Nova, poortom, FringeNYC, EST, Vital, Drama League, Culture Project, Chashama, HERE, and others. Regional: Williamstown, Kennedy Center, American Stage Festival, Red Barn, Allentown Shakespeare, and Boston Playwrights. Additionally, he has helped develop new plays at NYTW, Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard, Dramatists Guild, Ma-Yi, New River Dramatists, Partial Comfort, 2G, TBTB, Williamstown, and Young Playwrights. A member of EST and a frequent collaborator with Youngblood. Associate director for Broadway's Tony-nominated Cry-Baby, and assistant director to Mark Brokaw, Nicholas Martin, Anna D. Shapiro, Dominic Cooke, Marion McClinton, Kate Whoriskey, David Petrarca, Darko Tresnjak, Michael John Garcés, Chris Shinn, and others. He has been a Resident Director at Playwrights Horizons, The Acting Company, and the Huntington Theatre Company. 2005 Drama League Fall Directing Fellowship, and 2007 Boris Sagal Fellowship at Williamstown. www.moritzvs.com

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 (Seventh Street Small Stage at Jimmy's No. 43); Gift by Mark Schultz and Ponies by Mike Batistick (FringeNYC).

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