PlayBill
May 31 2009
Couples Test Limits in Ayvazian’s Make Me, Opening in NYC May 31
By Kenneth Jones
31 May 2009
Atlantic Theater Company’s world-premiere production of Leslie
Ayvazian’s relationships play, Make Me, with Anthony Arkin, Candy
Buckley, Jessica Hecht, J.R. Horne, Richard Masur and Ellen Parker,
opens May 31 after previews from May 20.
The production, directed by Atlantic associate artistic director
Christian Parker, plays to June 14 at Atlantic Stage 2 at 330 West
16th Street.
According to ATC, "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."
*
With this play, 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.
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 for which
he directed plays by Tina Howe, Keith Reddin and Rolin Jones.
Make Me features scenic design by Anna Louizos, costume design by
Theresa Squire, lighting design by Josh Bradford and sound design by
Jill BC DuBoff.
Arkin appeared in Broadway’s I’m Not Rappaport and Off-Broadway’s The
Waverly Gallery; Buckley appeared in Broadway’s After the Fall,
Thoroughly Modern Millie, Cabaret and Ring Round the Moon and
Off-Broadway’s Shockheaded Peter, Valhalla and Communicating Doors;
Hecht most recently appeared in Julius Caesar on Broadway and in
Howard Katz; Horne returns to Atlantic following starring in the world
premiere of Ethan Coen’s Almost an Evening at Atlantic Stage 2 and The
Theatres at 45 Bleecker Street; Masur appeared in Broadway’s Democracy
and The Changing Room and Off-Broadway’s Dust, A Feminine Ending, The
Ruby Sunrise and Sarah, Sarah; and Parker’s New York City work
includes House/Garden, Plenty, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Fen, The Heidi
Chronicles and more.
Ayvazian’s other plays include High Dive, her one-woman show about
turning 50; Rosemary and I, which was named a Susan Smith Blackburn
Prize finalist; Lovely Day, which premiered at City Theatre in
Pittsburgh; Footlights, a one-woman show about shoes; and one-act
plays Practice; Hi There, Mr. Machine; Twenty Four Years; Deaf Day and
Plan Day.
Make Me received workshop productions by the Cape Cod Theatre Festival
and the Adirondack Theatre Festival, both directed by Martha Banta.
Make Me will play Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 PM and Saturday and
Sunday matinees at 2:30 PM. All tickets are $45 and are available by
calling Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or by visiting
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