Synopsis:
The artistic director steps onto the stage to deliver his opening night speech, but something is amiss. It seems he has been drinking. His tongue is loosened. And he seems to be having a really bad day. Slowly but surely the artistic director comes apart at the seams and in the process reveals himself to be a truly remarkable (and truly unreliable) thinker on the subject of sin, god, sexuality and theatre.
Jim Shankman is a an actor and a writer. Six of his plays have been produced in New
York: four in the New York International Fringe Festival and two at HERE Arts. The
Screenwriter Dies Of His Own Free Will won the Award for Outstanding Excellence in
Playwriting in the New York International Fringe Festival and was subsequently
produced at The Blank State Theatre in Cleveland. It is currently available as a podcast
from the Ashland New Play Festival at Play4Keeps.org. His play Teardown won a Julie
Harris Playwriting Award for 2020. His newest play The Church Of St. Luke In The
Fields premiered in the 2018 New York International Fringe Festival. His play Heartless
Bastard and his alt-rock musical Billy And The Killers had back to back world premieres
at HERE Arts in New York. Heartless Bastard was a semi-finalist at the O’Neill
Playwrights Conference Suicide Math had a successful run in the New York
International Fringe Festival. His solo piece Kiss Your Brutal Hands, which he
performed at the United Solo Festival on Theatre Row, won the festival’s Best Actor
Award. He performed an expanded version of Kiss Your Brutal Hands in the New York
International Fringe Festival. Alien Child has had staged readings at The New Group
and The Abingdon Theatre and a workshop production at T. Schreiber Studio. His plays
Electric Light and Fortress of Solitude have also had developmental readings at The New
Group. Sleep With Me (a play with music) received a workshop production at The
Emerging Artists Theatre Notes From A Page Festival. A Jew From East Jesus was a
Finalist of the 2013 Jewish Plays Project. His novel Tales Of The Patriarchs is available
at Amazon.com. He has had short fiction and one-act plays published with Azure,
Lumina, Popcorn Fiction, Apricity and Poydras Review. He has a BA from Princeton in
Philosophy and an MFA in Fiction from the Writing Program at Sarah Lawrence College.
NOTE: There are no refunds.
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