Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) announces the first virtual presentation of its 2020 TRU Voices New Plays Reading Series, Featuring Two World Premiere Readings, presented with generous support from The Storyline Project. The series, a benefit for Theater Resources Unlimited to help make up for financial losses due to COVID-19, will take place on Sunday, June 14, 2020 at 2:30pm EDT and on Wednesday, June 17, 2020 at 2:30pm EDT. Information and ticketing can be found through onthestage.com at https://www.onthestage.com/theater-resources-unlimited/

The series will comprise world premiere readings of two timely and resonant plays: No Entry by Marc Paykuss, which follows Jews who were displaced after being liberated from Nazi camps and placed in interim detention camps, and Disbelief, a Cassandra Tale by Garret Jon Groenveld, which uses the Cassandra legend to catalog the struggle of women being believed and having their voices heard. 

This year’s TRU Voices Series is being performed under an agreement with the Performers’ Unions through the Theatre Authority. Tickets are being offered for free during this time of crisis, with the hope that those who are able will support TRU with tax deductible donations.

World Premiere Reading
No Entry
by Marc Paykuss
Produced by James Simon
Directed by Melody Bates
Sunday, June 14 at 2:30pm EDT 
No Entry is a fictional historical play centering around a group of liberated Polish Jews in a displaced persons camp, facing the challenges of rebuilding their lives, and waiting for the world to open its doors to them.

World Premiere Reading
Disbelief, a Cassandra Tale
by Garret Jon Groenveld
directed by Jess Cummings
Wednesday, June 17 at 2:30pm EDT
Disbelief  is the story of Apollo’s gift to Cassandra, rethought for today, from her point of view.  This updated telling adds a contemporary perspective on how women are perceived and controlled and disbelieved (or dismissed). Scintillating language explores the parallels of belief in a higher power, with belief in a powerful man, versus a woman of power, struggling to be believed.  And for the first time the two most famous women of the Trojan War, Helen of Troy and Cassandra, actually  speak to each other, without a man around at all.  The play draws a gentle parallel to our 2016 election, and a candidate who told the truth, was systematically undermined and disbelieved.  

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Marc Paykuss (Playwright, No Entry) is a former award-winning entertainment copywriter from Los Angeles now residing in Boston.  No Entry is his first full-length drama.  In 2019, his first play, The Tinker Bell Situation, received a staged reading by the Core Artist Ensemble at the Barrow Group Theatre in New York City, and has been produced several times since.  His other plays can be found on the New Play Exchange website. 

James Simon (Producer, No Entry): Tony Award nomination for the revival of Bells Are Ringing, Off Broadway Alliance winner for The Woman In Black.  Associate Producer of Tony winning revival of Pippin. Broadway producing credits include The Velocity Of Autumn, Play On!, assisted with Peter & The Starcatcher, Rent, Victor / Victoria, Metamorphoses, the 2012 revivals of Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf and Glengarry Glen Ross, and others. 

Melody Bates (Director, No Entry) is a native Oregonian actor, writer, and director based in Brooklyn. The NY Innovative Theatre Awards have recognized her work with eleven nominations and three awards, in categories including Lead Actress, Ensemble, Full-Length Play, and Original Music. She has performed at The Public Theater, BAM, CSC, Boston’s A.R.T, Theatre des Amandiers (Paris), Cankarjev Dom (Ljubljana),and the Metropolitan Opera, where she recently appeared as a solo dancer in Agrippina. Her plays include R & J & Z (forthcoming from Original Works Publishing), The Cabaret at the End of the World, and Avalon.  www.melodybates.com

Garret Jon Groenveld (Playwright, Disbelief, a Cassandra Tale) is a poet and playwright living in San Francisco, CA with an MFA in Poetry and an MA in Playwriting from San Francisco State University. He also studied with Edward Albee at the University of Houston. He’s a founding writer of PlayGround and an inaugural member of the Writers in Residence program at the Playwrights Foundation. His play Missives had well received productions in San Francisco and New York. His play, The Hummingbirds, is a winner of the 2012 GAP Festival from the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley and the winner of the Internationalists Global Playwrighting Prize. This prize included six presentations in six countries (including New York, Berlin and the Netherlands) and has led to productions worldwide, including an ongoing tour of Romania and an extended run in Mexico City, Mexico. The Hummingbirds had in workshop with Olympia Dukakis at the Lark and was in the Theatre Resources Unlimited (TRU) Reading Series in 2015 (with Ellen McLaughlin). His play, The Empty Nesters, was in 2014’s Theatre Resources Unlimited Reading series and had a production workshop production in San Francisco in 2015. An open-ended tour of the show premiered in San Francisco in 2016 and a tour is planned for 2019 with stops in LA, Chicago and New York.

Jess Cummings (Director, Disbelief, a Cassandra Tale) is a New York City-based director, actress, and film producer. Her directing credits include the award-winning short film Good Luck (in Farsi) by Neil LaBute, Fog, and the upcoming short Data Recovery. As an actress, she has performed for many years on Broadway, off-Broadway, and regionally, and her tv/film credits include Bloodline, The Big C, Law & Order:CI, Astraea, and Gold, among others. As a producer, she has garnered awards internationally, winning Best Feature at numerous festivals in both North America and Australia. Jess is also a noted acting coach. Working under the mentorship of Bob Krakower, she is a head on-camera teacher at The Freeman Studio and has high-profile clients in both television and film.

Molly Morris (Producer, Disbelief, a Cassandra Tale) is a proud co-producer of Come From Away (Broadway, West End, Toronto, North American Tour, Australia) and Diana, A True Musical Story.  She is passionate about the development of original plays and musicals.  Molly is on the associate board of Rosie’s Theatre Kids.  

Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) is the leading network for developing theater professionals, a twenty-seven-year-old 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization created to help producers produce, emerging theater companies to emerge healthily and all theater professionals to understand and navigate the business of the arts. Membership includes self-producing artists as well as career producers and theater companies.
 
TRU publishes an email community newsletter of services, goods and productions; offers a Producer Development & Mentorship Program taught by prominent producers and general managers in New York theater and also presents Producer Boot Camp workshops to help aspirants develop business skills. TRU serves writers through a Writer-Producer Speed Date, a Practical Playwriting Workshop, How to Write a Musical That Works and a Director-Writer Communications Lab; programs for actors include the Annual Combined Audition. Programs of Theater Resources Unlimited are supported by The Storyline Project, the Montage Foundation and the Leibowitz Greenway Foundation. For more information about TRU membership and programs, visit www.truonline.org.