ATLANTIC STAGE 2 WILL BE HOME TO WORLD PREMIERE OF AYVAZIAN’S MAKE ME IN MAY
By Kenneth Jones

Playbill.com
rticle/126473.html
Feb 19 2009
NY

The final production of Atlantic Theater Company’s 2008-09
Off-Broadway season will be the world premiere of Leslie Ayvazian’s
modern-relationships play Make Me, directed by Atlantic associate
artistic director Christian Parker. Casting will be announced shortly.

Make Me will begin previews May 19, officially open May 31 and play
a limited engagement through June 14 at the intimate Atlantic Stage
2 at 330 West 16th Street.

According to Atlantic, "In Make Me, six pent-up Americans in three
different relationships have reached the end of their ropes. In
this naughty comic fugue, Leslie Ayvazian explores what happens when
the rules are changed just at the moment when people think they are
perfectly comfortable and the lengths to which some will go to be seen,
heard and obeyed."

Ayvazian makes her Atlantic Theater Company debut. Her acclaimed
Off-Broadway play Nine Armenians won the John Gassner Outer Critics
Award, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Kennedy Center’s Roger
L. Stevens Award. Her film credits include Showtime’s "Every Three
Minutes" starring Olympia Dukakis.

Atlantic associate artistic director Parker most recently staged the
New York premiere of Tina Howe’s play Birth And After Birth. Other
Atlantic credits include Jeff Whitty’s The Hiding Place and 10X20, a
festival of newly commissioned ten-minute plays by writers previously
produced at Atlantic.

Make Me will feature scenic design by Anna Louizos, lighting design
by Josh Bradford and sound design by Jill BC DuBoff.

Ayvazian’s second full-length play (after Nine Armenians), Singer’s
Boy, was produced at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco
directed by Cary Perloff. High Dive, her one-woman show about turning
50, premiered at the Long Wharf Theatre directed by David Warren,
produced in conjunction with The Play Company, and opened in New York
at Manhattan Class Company. It has since received many productions in
the U.S. and recently completed a successful run in Poland. Rosemary
and I, which was named a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist, received
a workshop at New York Stage and Film and a full production at the
Passage Theatre in Trenton, NJ, directed by Blair Brown. Her play
Lovely Day premiered at City Theatre in Pittsburgh in a production
directed by Tracy Brigden, and was produced in New York at The Play
Company where it was staged by Blair Brown.

Make Me received workshop productions by the Cape Cod Theatre Festival
and the Adirondack Theatre Festival, both directed by Martha Banta. She
has received commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast
Repertory Theatre and Wind Dancer Productions.

Make Me will play Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 PM, Saturday
matinees at 2:30 PM and Sundays at 2:30 PM. All tickets are $40
and are available by calling Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or by
visiting