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The Impulse to embrace his valiant Leslie,
forgive his sins and trespasses in ultimate comprehension of their source,
is overwhelming. Cohen’s pugilistic play with Duerr in it, will have the
same effect on audiences when it runs on Broadway. – DailyFreeman
Great voyeur theater…Duerr is riveting.
-- Metroland
Artful, aching comedy tinged with anger
and sadness. Seth Duerr is nothing less than superb. His performance is
a feast. The Punishing Blow is a magnificent assemblage of
history and brilliant dysfunction, a tour de force for actor and playwright
alike. – Woodstock Times
THE YORK SHAKESPEARE COMPANY
Proudly Presents the New York Premiere
of the
The Punishing Blow
An Illustrated Lecture Delivered
by Order of the Orange County Criminal Court
Written by Four-time Emmy Award-winner
and New York Times “Ethicist”
RANDY COHEN
Performed and Directed by SETH DUERR
THREE-WEEK LIMITED ENGAGEMENT
AUGUST 13 – AUGUST 28, 2010 AT THE KIRK
THEATRE
OPENING NIGHT IS FRIDAY, AUGUST 13 AT 8
P.M.
TICKETS ON SALE NOW AT TELECHARGE.COM
THE YORK SHAKESPEARE COMPANY is
pleased to announce the New York Premiere of Randy Cohen’s THE
PUNISHING BLOW, directed by Seth Duerr, who together
will be conducting Q&A sessions after every Saturday and Sunday matinee.
THE PUNISHING BLOW will play a three-week limited engagement
at the Kirk Theater (410 West 42nd Street address). Performances
begin Friday, August 13 and continue thru Saturday,
August 28. Opening Night is Friday, August 13
(8 p.m.).
PRESS IS WELCOME AT ALL PERFORMANCES
Working in the classical Actor-Manager
system, Seth Duerr directs and performs in four-time Emmy Award-winner
and New York Times “Ethicist” Randy Cohen’s The Punishing Blow:
An Illustrated Lecture Delivered by Order of the Orange County Criminal
Court. Duerr directs and plays Leslie, an anti-Semitic college
professor whose court-ordered public lecture is this play. Dark, yet humorous,
Leslie’s lecture transcends its purpose and becomes a reflection on the
nature of hate and of the professor himself. Following the performance,
both Cohen and Duerr will hold a Q&A session on this provocative one-man
show.
After being arrested for drunk driving
followed by an anti-Semitic rant, college professor Leslie (Duerr) can
avoid jail time if he enters rehab, attends anger management classes, and
gives a lecture on a figure from a list of The 100 Most Influential Jews
of All Time. Rather than choose a more famous figure, such as Einstein
or Moses, he picks Number 82: Daniel Mendoza, the 18th century
British bare-knuckle boxing champion and father of “scientific boxing.”
In presenting the life and times of Mendoza,
Leslie allows details about his personal life to creep into his monologue.
The audience discovers, through quick and sardonic asides, what led him
to this point, gaining insight to the professor’s tumultuous marriage,
arrest, sentencing, and character. The Punishing Blow is an exploration
of anti-Semitism, boxing, marriage, and of a man’s own insecurity and
bitterness.
THE PUNISHING BLOW plays
the following regular schedule through Sunday, August 28:
Wednesdays at 8pm
Thursdays at 8pm
Fridays at 8pm
Saturdays at 2pm
Saturdays at 8pm
Sundays at 3pm
There is an added performance on Tuesday
Aug 24, 2010 at 7pm
Tickets are $18 and are now available
online at http://www.telecharge.com
or by calling 212-239-6200. Tickets may also be purchased in-person at
the Theatre Row Box Office, 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. daily. TDF vouchers accepted.
Running Time: 84 minutes, no intermission
Website: http://www.yorkshakespeare.org
Talkbacks with Randy Cohen and Seth
Duerr every Saturday at 2pm and Sunday at 3pm. In addition, they will join
guest speakers at the following performances:
· Wednesday,
August 18: David Margolick, an American
journalist
who was a contributing editor at Condé
Nast Portfolio . Before
joining Portfolio, Margolick was a longtime contributing editor at Vanity
Fair , where he wrote
about culture, the media, and politics.
· Wednesday,
August 25: Binnie Klein, author of Blows to the Head: How Boxing
Changed My Mind.
· Thursday,
August 26: Paul Lukas, an ESPN contributor who obsesses over sleeve
lengths, sock stripes, and other uniform minutiae in his Uni Watch column,
and has been appearing on Page 2 since 2004.
· Friday,
August 27: David Rakoff, a Canadian-born writer based in New York
City who is noted for his humorous, sometimes autobiographical non-fiction
essays. Rakoff is an essayist, journalist and actor and is a regular contributor
to Public Radio International's This
American Life .
BIOGRAPHIES
RANDY COHEN (Playwright)
was born in Charleston, South Carolina and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania.
He attended graduate school at the California Institute of the Arts as
a music major studying composition. His first professional work was writing
humor pieces, essays, and stories for newspapers and magazines (The
New Yorker, Harpers, the Atlantic, Young Love Comics).
His first television work was writing for “Late Night with David Letterman”
for which he won three Emmy awards. His fourth Emmy was for his work on
“TV Nation.” He received a fifth Emmy as a result of a clerical error,
and he kept it. Currently he writes “The Ethicist,” a weekly column for
the New York Times Magazine syndicated throughout the U.S. and Canada.
SETH DUERR (Actor/Director)
starred in the World Premiere of this play two years ago and the subsequent
NYC premiere in 2009. He has appeared in 31 productions of Shakespeare.
Roles include: Iago, Claudius, Talbot, Margaret, Chorus, Leontes, Antonio
(Tempest), as well as directing and playing the title role in Coriolanus,
Timon of Athens, King Lear, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Titus Andronicus,
and Richard III. He is the Founder/Artistic Director of The
York Shakespeare Company and was the Assistant Artistic Director of the
Jean Cocteau Repertory, playing Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet;
The Cook in Mother Courage; Lexy in Candida; and Cléante
in The Miser. For The Public Theater he has twice appeared in Shakespeare
in the Park: Macbeth directed by Moisés Kaufman and Romeo and
Juliet directed by Michael Greif. Mr. Duerr wrote and directed the
first author-approved adaptation of one of Ian McEwan's novels, In Between
the Sheets. He recently reprised his performance as Captain Ahab in
Orson Welles’ Moby Dick—Rehearsed, touring the country with The
Acting Company. Recent performances as John Proctor in The Crucible
for manhattantheatresource and Tupolski in The Pillowman at APAC
as well as directing and playing Jamie in YSC’s production of Long
Day’s Journey Into Night. Film: The Summoning of Everyman (Death),
The Kindergarten Shuffle and the forthcoming The Jew of Malta
(Barabas). He is the lead vocal actor in the new World of Warcraft:
Cataclysm. Mr. Duerr is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association
and The Dramatists’ Guild and serves on the Advisory Board of Wingspan
Arts with Donna Murphy and Scott Schwartz.
The York Shakespeare Company was
founded in 2001 by its current Artistic Director, Seth Duerr. Working under
the classical Actor-Manager system, YSC produced the critically acclaimed
repertories of Richard of York, Julius Caesar, and Richard
II in 2001; Coriolanus,Timon of Athens, King Lear,
and Henry V in 2002; Richard of York, Macbeth, and
Hamlet in 2003; Henry IV Parts I & II, Titus Andronicus,
and Waiting for Godot in 2004; the first author-approved adaptation
of an Ian McEwan novel, In Between the Sheets, in 2006; Nagle Jackson’s
The Quick-Change Room in 2007; and Randy Cohen’s solo-comedy The
Punishing Blow, The Merchant of Venice & Marlowe’s The Jew
of Malta in 2009. Richard of York, a conflation of Henry
VI Part III and Richard III was published in 2003. http://www.yorkshakespeare.org
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