COUPLETS

COUPLETS takes us down the wonderfully complicated road of human relationships. A group of friends’paths intersect, diverge, and merge as they experience the twists and turns of falling in and out of love and lust. Mike Bencivenga has taken Shakespeare’s sonnets and constructed them into a hilarious and moving play which explores the evolving journeys of these very modern characters as they cruise, stall, or skid together through weddings and funerals, passionate outpourings and nasty hangovers. This thrilling arrangement of the Bard’s language sweetly and honestly celebrates the universal aspects of love and friendship, today and throughout all time.

Directed by playwright Mike Bencivenga, with music composed by Noel Katz, the COUPLETS cast includes LSTC members Stephen Aloi, Julie Hera, Jay Aubrey Jones, Suzanne Levinson, John McDermott, Misha Pogul, and Talia Rubel.

Mike Bencivenga has spent his career devoted equally to acting, writing, and directing in both theatre and film. He is the co-writer and director of the feature film HAPPY HOUR, which stars Anthony LaPaglia and Eric Stoltz, along with a few LSTC members. The film is garnering great press in the US and internationally.

LIGHTNING FALLS

Fall is in the air…can you feel it? Lightning Strikes sure can. Between the school-year beginning and the holidays approaching and baseball-fever brewing and the political world exploding and the leaves turning all around us, fall is definitely worth talking about! And we’re talking about it, alright - with the help of LIGHTNING FALLS, our original series of six one-act plays. Some hilarious, some heartfelt, some controversial, the thought-provoking plays of LIGHTNING FALLS explore many of the colorful, crackling issues that make up this great season of change. Please join us, jump right in!

Lightning Falls is a completely original series, proudly written, directed, and performed by LSTC members including: Stephen Aloi, Mike Bencivenga, Tom Cappadona, Julie Hera, Leo Jenicek, Daniel Kaufman, Suzanne Levinson, Alicia Levy, John McDermott, Jacqueline Noguera, Kevin Ross, Talia Rubel, Richard Harland Smith, and Julie Whitney.

THE viy

You get what you pray for!

Lightning Strikes presented the world premiere of THE VIY on March 17th, 2004, written and directed by our own Richard Harland Smith. You may remember Richard as the OOBR award-winning playwright that brought you IN THE PARLANCE.

THE EVIL DEAD meets WAITING FOR GODOT in this irreverent adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's 1833 supernatural short story, which was also the source of Mario Bava's classic Italian Gothic horror film BLACK SUNDAY. Borrowing from such disparate influences as Paul Sills' Story Theatre, the Borscht Belt humor of Mel Brooks and the foreboding shadowplay of German Expressionism, THE VIY attends the panic of roguish philosopher Khoma Brut, assigned to pray for three nights over the body of a dead girl who rises out of her coffin each midnight to torment him. Enacted by a large ensemble cast of players performing their own sound, music and visual effects, THE VIY is intended as a celebration of storytelling and the art of myth-making.

Cast: Stephen Aloi, Jamie Askew, Roy Bacon, Jeff Buckner, Tom
Cappadona, Michael Cuomo, Julie Hera, Karl Jacob, Leo Jenicek, Lou Kylis,
Suzanne Levinson, Michelle  Maryk, John McDermott, Misha Pogul, Jeremy
Schwartz, Jarrod Spector and Julie Whitney

NEW: Click here to see what the critics had to say about The Viy.

This performance was made possible in part by the Fund for Creative Communities/NYSCA, administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

This production is being presented through HERE's Supported Artist Program, which provides artists with subsidized space, as well as technical and administrative support.