DCT GREEN ROOM 2009
Please join us at the reading of Jack Gilhooley's play
THE CHECKERED FLAG
directed by Steven Ditmyer

on Monday, September 14th @ 7:30PM

The Beckett Theatre @ Theatre Row, 410 West 42nd Street
Features Stefano Da Fre, Allie Dunbar, Christopher Duncan, Rona Figueroa*,
Tamara Flannagan*, Regi Huc*, Robert Kruger, David Rubin and Sean Tant
ADMISSION IS FREE

About THE CHECKERED FLAG

This darkly comic play by award winning playwright Jack Gilhooley follows a young group of vibrant but socially ostracized auto racing fanatics who face a future that offers no jobs, no prospects and no place for them in 21st century America.

**Of THE TIME TRIAL, an early version of THE CHECKERED FLAG workshopped at New York Shakespeare Festival, the late JOSEPH PAPP wrote, "The predicament of a gang of small town, Southern outcasts struck me as profoundly human.  Speaking in a language as brutal and quick-witted as any New York street person's, they spend the day drinking and watching cars circle a race track. In many ways the play became a powerful account of lives going in circles; of drugs, sex and "speech" going nowhere. For these people, small-town America has become a raw, bloody maze containing nothing of lasting value. It's a mordant and unsparing work written without apology and, in an odd way, aimed directly at us."

**Excerpt from Introduction, Plays From The New York Shakespeare Festival, Broadway Play Publishing, Inc.

JACK GILHOOLEY, The Playwright

For the last 21 years, Jack Gilhooley has lived -- and written plays -- in West Central Florida. A New Dramatist alum, he has been awarded 2 grants from the NEA (Individual and International Artist), NYFTA, Florida State Arts Council (4), Puffin Foundation.(2), Fulbright Guest Artist residencies to Spain and Ireland, Ford Foundation developmental subsidies (5) and numerous other honors and awards. His plays have been developed and/or presented at NYSF, Mark Taper Forum, Long Wharf, Indiana Rep, Circle Rep, The Phoenix, Theatre Row, The Folger, The O’Neill Playwrights Confere nce, Sundance, Aspen, Carnegie Mellon, Mount Sequoyah, Avignon (FR), Southern Theatre Festivals and the Edinburgh, Capital (D.C.), and New York International fringes.

STEVEN DITMYER, The Director

Artistic Director of the Neighborhood Theatre Company where he directed his wife Tamara Flannagan in The Syringa Tree seen most recently at The Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Also for NTC: ‘ART’ and By the Sea, By the Sea, By the Beautiful Sea. He directed the OFF THE PAGE Reading Series for Tony Randall’s National Actors Theatre. Readings include: The Night Of The Iguana with Alec Baldwin and Judith Ivey and Golf With Alan Shepard with Jack Klugman, Charles Durning, Len Cariou and John Cullum. Off-Broadway: revival of James McLures full-length version of PVT. WARS, The Warrior by Jack Gilhooley (The Culture Project), Clean Living by Robert Askins (Diverse City Theater Co.), Fourplay: Four One-Acts by Bruce Jay Friedman featuring Brian Murray and a reading of Sardines (a new full length play by Mr. Friedman) with John Pankow and Dana Ivey. He is a Founding director of the ATrainPlays (written and performed in 24 hours) where he directed The Casseroles of Far Rockaway by Seth Bauer – winner of the 2004 Samuel French Festival. Steven recently directed Marian Seldes and Lois Markle in a reading of Andrew Bergh’s new play Kisses for Diverse City Theater. Steven is a founding member of the Neighborhood Playhouse Workshop where he directed over 50 new works. He studied with Sanford Meisner, Zoe Caldwell and Uta Hagen and is a graduate of The Neighborhood Playhouse.

ADMISSION IS FREE. LIMITED SEATING. "First come, first serve" seating.

* Member, Actors Equity Association

About Diverse City Theater Company

Diverse City Theater Company (“DCT”) develops and produces powerful and thought-provoking works that explore and examine our society’s diversity issues from social, cultural, gender and demographic perspectives; creates multiculturally fluent theater audiences; and advocates the non-traditional casting of actors to reflect the rich spectrum of our national culture and universality of the human spirit. DCT is an independent, non-profit 501(c)(3) theater organization based in New York.

For more information, visit the organization's website at www.diversecitytheater.org.