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Monday, February 5th at 7pm
SIX MEN DRESSED LIKE JOSEPH STALIN
by Dianne Nora
directed by Laura Dupper
Featuring: Josh Evans & Kate Middleton
stage manager: Kodi Lynn Milburn
TheatreLab, 357 W. 36th St., NYC, 10018
This existentialist dark comedy tells the story of unlikely partners brought together by fate…or something more sinister. When Soso is left for dead on the Eastern Front, Koba is tasked with training him to perform the role of a lifetime: Stalin’s body double. While Soso is a performer—trained to dance, juggle, and tour the countryside entertaining peasants, Koba is an Actor’s Actor, a student of Stanislavski himself (maybe you’ve heard of his System?). Inspired by the life of Felix Dadaev, one of Stalin’s known doubles, the play draws on the historical events of Stalin’s life and the acting methods of the 1940s as the doubles prepare for the Conference at Tehran, when three so-called Great Men (or were they merely players?) decided the fate of the 20th century.
Dianne Nora/Playwright (she/her) is a playwright, dramaturg, and comedy writer. In 2019, an abbreviated version of her play Monica: This Play Is Not About Monica Lewinsky premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe, where The Spectator listed it among the "Best of the Fringe." Her play for young audiences, Journey Around My Bedroom, was produced at New Ohio Theatre in 2020, and recommended by The New York Times (Top 5, Weekend Section). She assisted her mentor Tracy Letts on seven productions and workshops at Steppenwolf Theatre and on Broadway. She's a headline and features contributor at The Onion, America’s Finest News Source. She’s a winner of Inkwell Theater’s Lerner Fellowship and Playhouse on the Square’s New Works at the Works Playwriting Competition, a recipient of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Creative Engagement grant, and she was a member of Goodman Theatre’s Playwrights Unit. She was a finalist for The Working Farm at SPACE on Ryder Farm, the Ingram New Works Lab at Nashville Rep, and Rough Magic Theatre’s SEEDS program, and a semi-finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center (in 2014 and 2018), and the Princess Grace Award for playwriting. BA: NYU; MPhil: Trinity College Dublin; MFA: Columbia University School of the Arts.
Laura Dupper/Director is a NYC based director originally from Tennessee. She has worked at Manhattan Theatre Club, Dallas Theater Center, Signature Theatre, Second Stage Theater, and LCT3; she has also worked with Playwrights Realm, Barrington Stage, P73. Laura is passionate about the development of new plays and has worked on over 20 premiere productions in New York. Most recently, she worked on STEREOPHONIC by David Adjmi at Playwright's Horizons and was the Associate Director on Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's APPROPRIATE, now on Broadway. BFA from Southern Methodist University.
FEATURING...
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Kate Middleton/Koba credits include Music City (Ground UP Productions), Women Without Men (Mint Theatre), Shear Madness (New World Stages), The Other Place (MTC), The Late Christopher Bean (TACT), Asymmetric (59E59), Pratfalls (Abingdon). Favorite regional theatres include The Goodman (Chicago), The Huntington, St. Louis Rep., Pioneer Theatre, GEVA, Cape Playhouse, Dorset Theatre Festival, Triad Stage, Playmakers Rep., NJ Shakespeare, Weston Playhouse, Warehouse Theatre, Bickford Theatre. TV: “Chicago Fire,” “Elementary,” “Blacklist,” “FBI: Most Wanted,” “Orange is the New Black,” “Blue Bloods,” “Mercy,” “Law & Order,” “Law & Order: SVU,” Comedy Central. Film: Boston Strangler (2022), The Tender Bar, Spoiler Alert, Set It Up, Noah Wise, 40th, Obits, Showing Up, TIC, April Flowers. www.KateMiddletonActress.com
Josh Evans/SoSo favorite credits include Theatre: Remission (Columbia University); Post Concussive Syndrome (The Abingdon Theatre); Rubber Ducks and Sunsets (Ground Up Productions); The Importance of Being Earnest (Ground UP Productions). Film: Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Fox Searchlight Pictures); Killing the Dog (Six Part Productions); Annabelle (Hideout Hill, Cannes Film Festival). Television: “Gotham” (Fox); “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Amazon Video); “FBI” (CBS, Dick Wolf); “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” (Netflix), “Blacklist” (NBC). Graduate - UNC Chapel Hill and Michael Howard Studios. Company Member - Ground UP Productions. He would like to dedicate the work his parents and his wife. joshlevans.com
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