DCT MAINSTAGE 2008
Diverse City Theater Presents
Cassandra Medley's NOON DAY SUN
directed by Gregory Simmons
The Beckett Theatre, August 14 - 30 @ 8PM

Starring
Obie Award Winner Ron Cephas Jones (Two Trains Running, Jesus Hopped the A Train)
Helen Hayes Award Winner Gin Hammond (The Syringa Tree)
Melanie Nicholls-King (HBO's The Wire, How She Move)
Film and Television Star Michael McGlone (Brothers McMullen, The Kill Point)
with Penelope Darcel and David Newer

For Immediate Release
Press Contact:
Janet Appel Public Relations LLC
212-258-2413
jannetappel54[at]aol.com

NEW YORK—Diverse City Theater Company ("DCT") today announced a star-studded cast for its upcoming mainstage production of NEA-honoree Cassandra Medley’s play, NOON DAY SUN, winner of the Theatrefest Award for Best Play, opening at Theatre Row’s The Beckett Theatre located at 412 West 42^nd Street in New York City for a limited run beginning August 14 to August 30, 2008.

NOON DAY SUN is a compelling play about identity and a woman’s flight from an undesirable past. Wendy, whose secret birth name is "Zena," is a Negro-identified woman who is passing for white. Suddenly on a "white hot day in August,” she crosses paths with her black husband from the past.

Award-winning playwright Cassandra Medley, whose play Relativity earned The August Wilson Playwriting Award and was a sold-out hit at Ensemble Studio Theater’s First Light Festival, earned the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in 1986, and was awarded a New York State Council on the Arts Grant for 1987. She was a 1989 finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award in Playwriting, won the 1990 National Endowment for the Arts Grant in Playwriting, the 1995 New Professional Theatre Award, the 1995 Marilyn Simpson Award, and was a 1994 finalist in the Eugene O'Neil National Playwrights Conference. Her other plays include Ms. Mae, Ma Rose, Waking Women, Dearborn Heights, and Maiden Lane, among others.

“This play profoundly explores and examines the universal resonance of ‘passing,'" said Victor Lirio, DCT's Founder & Artistic Director. "NOON DAY SUN is not just about race ... it is about identity and, ultimately, love. Every character in the play is passing as someone else to hide from an undesirable past. The core circumstance is quite extraordinary. We are thrilled to present NOON DAY SUN as our 2008 mainstage offering and a cast of stellar actors.”

Director Gregory Simmons returns to DCT for the third year having directed Joe Byers’s Veils (The Clurman Theatre, 2006), Tennessee Williams’s I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow (Ensemble Studio Theatre, 2007) and SNAPSHOTS Plays that featured Stuart Harris’s Colleen Ireland, Linda Faigao-Hall’s The A Word and Lydia Stryk’s The End Of Civilization As We Know It (The Beckett Theatre, 2007).   As an actor, his Broadway credits include Tenessee Williams's Not About Nightingales (The Queen, directed by Trevor Nunn, New York premiere in association with London's Royal National Theatre) and Howard Korder's Search and Destroy (Roger), Circle in the Square; John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation (with Stockard Channing), Lincoln Center Theatre. Other New York and resident credits include: Djanet Sears' Harlem Duet (AUDELCO nomination for Best Actor); Tillers (Israel), New York Theatre Workshop; Hamlet (Rosencrantz), Shakespeare Theatre of Washington DC; Black No More (Max), The Guthrie Theater and Arena Stage; Twelfth Night (Sebastian), Shakespeare on the Sound; Romeo and Juliet (Benvolio), The Merry Wives of Windsor (Pistol), To Kill a Mockingbird (Tom), Alabama Shakespeare Festival; As You Like It (Silvius), Huntington Theatre; Fences (Corey), Syracuse Stage.

NOON DAY SUN features Helen Hayes Award Winner Gin Hammond* (The Syringa Tree), Obie Award Winner Ron Cephas Jones* (Gem of the Ocean, Jesus Hopped the A Train, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot), Melanie Nicholls-King* (HBO’s The Wire, Relativity), Michael McGlone (Brothers McMullen, The Kill Point), David Newer* (Dinner with Friends) and Penelope Darcel*.

 * appearing courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association

Performance schedule for NOON DAY SUN are as follows:

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 7PM:  Invited Dress
Thursday-Saturday:  August 14 – August 16 @ 8:00PM
Monday-Saturday:  August 18 – August 30 @ 8:00PM
Saturday:  August 30 @ 2:00PM

Producers:  Natasha Marco, Martha Zamirski; Set & Lighting Design:  Maruti Evans; Sound Design:  Elizabeth Rhodes; Costume Design:  Arnulfo Maldonado; Creative Director:  David Derr; Production Stage Manager:  Kathryn “China” Hayzer

The Beckett Theatre at THEATRE ROW
410 West 42nd Street (between 9th & 10th Avenues)

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About Diverse City Theater Company

Diverse City Theater Co. Inc., is an independent not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization-run by artist playwrights, directors and actors - that focuses on promoting diversity and multiculturalism in the theater arts. Its mission is to commission, develop and produce powerful and though-provoking original plays that explore and examine diversity issues in our national culture, create multiculturally fluent theater audiences and advocate the non-traditional casting of actors.

Formed in 2003, Diverse City Theater Co., Inc. is based in New York City. For more information, visit the organization's website at www.diversecitytheater.org.