ARKIN, HECHT, BUCKLEY, MASUR TO STAR IN AYVAZIAN’S MAKE ME AT ATLANTIC STAGE 2
Kenneth Jones
Playbill.com
rticle/128448.html
April 20 2009
Atlantic Theater Company’s world-premiere production of Leslie
Ayvazian’s relationships play, Make Me, will feature Anthony Arkin,
Candy Buckley, Jessica Hecht, J.R. Horne, Richard Masur and Ellen
Parker and will run May 20-June 14.
The production, directed by Atlantic associate artistic director
Christian Parker, will open Off-Broadway May 31 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 will feature 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
The world premiere production of Academy Award winner Ethan Coen’s new
triptych of one-act comedies, Offices, directed by Atlantic artistic
director Neil Pepe, is in previews at Atlantic’s mainstage, the Linda
Gross Theater (336 W. 20th Street), for a May 7 opening.