TOSOS returns to the New York Fringe in 2010 with The Five Lesbian Brothers' The Secretaries, directed by Artistic Director Mark Finley. TOSOS, which scored a sellout hit and extension in 2009 with Meryl Cohn's And Sophie Comes Too, returns with a revival of the Brothers' 1993-94 production. The Secretaries will be presented at Venue #12, the Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher St., on the following dates:
* FRIDAY, August 20 @ 7:45pm
* MONDAY, August 23 @ 6:30pm
* TUESDAY, August 24 @ 7:15pm
* THURSDAY, August 26 @ 2:15pm
* SUNDAY, August 29 @ NOON
Tickets ($15 in advance, $18 at the door) can be purchased by phone at 866.468.7619), online at www.fringenyc.org, and in person at FringeCentral, 1 E. 8th St. noon-8pm daily.
"We read The Secretaries as part of our Robert Chesley/Jane Chambers Playwrights Project, and I totally fell in love with it," Finley said. "It absolutely works on so many levels--so funny and so sick because it's so true. How the characters treat each other is much worse than anything that happens with a chainsaw--okay, worse in a different way. TOSOS is always striving to tell stories that don't get told in the mainstream and The Secretaries is a perfect fit!"
Set in the mill town of Big Bone, Oregon, The Secretaries follows the lives of five women who work in the office of Cooney Lumber, where every 30 days...well something involving chainsaws and lumberjacks happens. And it's not pretty. The story is told in flashback by Patty Johnson (Elizabeth Whitney), as she recalls her initiation into the cult-like Cooney coven, led by Susan Curtis (Jamie Heinlein). Office suck-up Ashley Elizabeth Fratangelo (Karen Stanion) is jealous of the new arrival; office lesbian Dawn Midnight (Virginia Baeta) wants to go out with her (as does lumberjack Buzz Benikee, played by Baeta in a dual role); and Peaches Martin (Elizabeth Bell), just wants to eat something.
Elizabeth Whitney was seen in And Sophie Comes Too, and performed in her one-woman show: Wonder Woman: A Cabaret of Heroic Proportions at Emerging Artists Theatre and at the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival. Jamie Heinlein played the eponymous title character in last spring's Off-Broadway hit Penny Penniworth by Chris Weikel, directed by Mark Finley, at Emerging Artists Theatre. Karen Stanion appeared in And Sophie Comes Too, and starred as Sacramento heiress and ice-sculptor Margo Carstairs in Mark Finley's The Chiselers at EAT. Virginia Baeta is a member of The Queen's Company, New York City's all-female classical theater company, and was seen as Don Felix in their production of The Wonder on Theatre Row. Elizabeth Bell was seen in the award-winning The Mission by Joe Godfrey at the Fresh Fruit Festival and Spring EATfest, along with Mark Finley's Swans are Mean.
For more information, visit www.thesecretariestosos.com
About TOSOS: In 1974, playwright and gay activist Doric Wilson founded the first professional gay theatre company: The Other Side of Silence-TOSOS. In 2002, directors Mark Finley and Barry Childs and Wilson resurrected the company, rededicating it to an honest and open exploration of the life experience and cultural sensibility of the GLBT community and to preserving and promoting our theatrical past in a determined effort to keep an important literary heritage alive. TOSOS has presented a number of critically acclaimed plays by playwrights David Bell, Meryl Cohn, Linda Eisenstein, Mark Finley, Robert Patrick and Chris Weikel.
