Dear Friends:

We're still celebrating the phenomenal success of our last season, as The Most Damaging Wound nets two nominations from the New York Innovative Theater Awards, for Outstanding Ensemble Performance (Michael Szeles, Ken Matthews, Michael Solomon, Chris Thorn, Bard Goodrich, and Megan McQuillan), and Best Actor in a Featured Role (Chris Thorn as Dicky)!

While we're still catching our breath from our busy fourth season, I wanted to let you know the details of our upcoming fifth season of exchanging challenging plays between the United States and Australia. We have an unbelievable lineup of great new plays in store for audiences and we need your financial support to make it happen.

THE EXCITING SEASON TO COME
Blair Singer, author of The Most Damaging Wound, joins The Production Company this season as our playwright-in-residence. Following a stint at the Geffen Playhouse (where he'll premiere his new play Matthew Modine Saves the Alpacas this fall), Blair returns to the Production Company and we're extremely honored to be presenting two of his new plays this year, each one written for an actor in our ensemble.

Meg's New Friend is a timely, provocative play about a local New York television features reporter who realizes that, in the age of Obama, she doesn't have one African-American friend. When she meets her best friend's new beau, a sexy African-American yoga teacher, Meg thinks she's found exactly what she was looking for. This play was written and named for Megan McQuillan (The Most Damaging Wound).

Told in successive monologues and played by one actor, No Reason to Run explores the question of how a person moves on when they've been a witness, or even a participant, in a death. This play was written for Michael Szeles (The Most Damaging Wound, Goats).

Finally, we'll be working with the wonderful Australian playwright Lally Katz on a full-length expansion of her 2007 Production Company play Goodbye New York, Goodbye Heart. Critic Aaron Riccio called the short version of this play "a peppy parable about what life means, when you strip away the false and fancy lights of the city and look for the love underneath." The wonderful director Kara-Lynn Vaeni returns to work with Lally and our ensemble to continue their exploration of this piece, in which a group of wanderers try to connect with each other in a virtual reality haven for suicides.

A REQUEST FOR YOUR SUPPORT
Audience members who have experienced one of our shows over the last four seasons have seen great plays, celebrated performances and high production values. We're hard at work on making this exciting upcoming season better than ever, but we simply can't do any of this without your donations. Ticket sales cover only a fraction of our production budgets and we rely on your donations to help us bring full productions of great new plays to life. Our costs include actor, designer and crew wages; rehearsal space and theatre rental; plus materials for set construction and more. Our $60,000 goal is modest by the standards of many New York theaters, but if we can reach that amount, we can do everything I've outlined here and more!

Please donate what you can to help our hardworking and dedicated ensemble bring these great plays and playwrights to the stage. Your donation is tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law and it's fast and easy to donate online! You can contact me with any questions at markarmstrong -at- productioncompany -dot- org.

Thanks for your continued support and enthusiasm! It's been a wonderful year for us and, with your help, I believe the best is yet to come for The Production Company!

Best wishes -- and hope to see you at the theater!

Mark Armstrong