Flux Theatre Ensemble

We are happy to announce an incredible lineup of contestants for our second Family Feud Benefit on Nov 21! We hope you can join us. Buy your tickets in advance for only $15 online. Tickets are $20 at the door. If you can't join us on Nov 21, you can still support Flux by purchasing a raffle ticket. You don't need to be at the event to win. We have some amazing prizes this year including a PAID walk-on role on Law & Order SVU, a themed illustrated portrait of your pet and an Anything Goes poster signed by Sutton Foster and members of the Tony Award winning cast! Get your raffle tickets here.

Now, without further ado, we announce this year's contestants for Flux Family Feud! See you on November 21 at Fontanas - 105 Eldridge Street (between Grand and Broome) ((and yup, this is a location change!))

JOHNNA ADAMS
Johnna is the 2011 recipient of the Princess Grace Award. On her wild ride as a playwright so far, she has mingled with an all inmate cast at the Mitchellville Theatre Project at the Iowa Women’s Correctional Institution In the Absence of Angels, 2006) and participated in a fully nude talkback in front of a nude audience at the Naturist Society’s Western Naturist Gathering at the Lupin Naturist Club (Nude on the Beach, 2002). Other plays include Gidion’s Knot; The Anguisher; Hripsime; Hued Moll; Lickspittles, Buttonholers and Damned Pernicious Go-Betweens; The Angel Eaters Trilogy (produced by Flux Theatre Ensemble); Sans Merci, Cockfighters and The Sacred Geometry of S&M Porn. She is a past Reva Shiner Award winner, winner of the OC Weekly’s Best Original Play award (twice), finalist for the Princess Grace Award, finalist for the Christopher Brian Wolk Award, finalist for the National Art’s Club’s Playwrights First Prize; finalist for the William Saroyan Prize and New York Innovative Theatre Award nominee. Her play Lickspittles, Buttonholers, and Damned Pernicious Go-Betweens will be produced by Impetuous Theatre in 2012. Johnna’s plays Angel Eaters, Rattlers, 8 Little Antichrists, Sans Merci, Cockfighters and The Sacred Geometry of S&M Porn are published by Original Works Publishing (originalworksonline.com)

Reed Birney just finished appearing in Adam Rapp's Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling at The Atlantic. He received a Special Drama Desk Award last May in recognition of the three plays in which he appeared last season: A Small Fire at Playwrights Horizons and, at the Roundabout Underground, Tigers Be Still and The Dream of the Burning Boy. He was in Annie Baker’s hit, Circle Mirror Transformation at Playwrights Horizons. For the New York premiere of Sarah Kane’s Blasted at Soho Rep, he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. He was Dr. Sweet in the original New York cast of Bug and played Tony Blair in Stuff Happens at the Public. Next summer he will appear as Vanya in Annie Baker's translation of Uncle Vanya at Soho Rep, directed by Sam Gold. He has also received three OBIEs and a Drama Desk Award. On film, he can be seen in Clint Eastwood’s Changeling, Morning Glory with Harrison Ford and Jeff Lipsky’s Twelve Thirty. In August he filmed Imogene with Annette Benning and Kristin Wiig.

JAMES COMTOIS
James Comtois is the co-founding co-artistic director of the New York-based theatre company Nosedive Productions, which was named a "Person of the Year" by nytheatre.com in 2009. He's written over 20 plays in the past 10 years, many of which have been staged by Nosedive. The New York Times recently compared him to Conor McPherson and Tracy Letts. Published plays include The Adventures of Nervous-Boy, Suburban Peepshow, and Infectious Opportunity. Other recently staged plays include Colorful World, The Little One, Otty and Captain Moonbeam. He lives in Brooklyn and has two cats. He thinks they're very cute.


JOSHUA CONKEL
Joshua Conkel is a playwright, culture vulture and Navy brat who hails from the pine forests of rural Washington State. He is the author of MilkMilkLemonade (Best Off Off Broadway Show of 2009-NY Press, published by Playscripts), The Chalk Boy (Published by Original Works Publishing), Lonesome Winter (co written with Megan Hill), The Sluts of Sutton Drive and I Wanna Destroy You as well as countless short plays, of which he is a prolific and enthusiastic writer. Conkel’s work has been seen all over the country as well as internationally and has been developed by The Management, Soho Rep, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Old Vic, Dixon Place, The Flea and more. He is the Co-Artistic Director of The Management, and a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Soho Rep Writers/Directors Lab, TOSOS and The Dramatists Guild. He is currently finishing a graphic novel adaptation of The Chalk Boy for First Second Books, an imprint of Macmillan, and was recently named one of Next Magazine’s “Who’s Next 2011.” Alumnist of Youngblood and the TS Eliot Old Vic US/UK Exchange. BFA in theater, Cornish College of the Arts.

SHAY GINES
Shay is a founder and driving force of the New York Innovative Theatre Awards. She graduated from the Actors Training Program at the University of Utah with a dual degree in theatre and marketing. She then made the smartest decision of her life and (despite her father’s wishes) chose to pursue a career in theatre. Since then she has done everything from spackling walls at the Pasadena Playhouse and running follow-spot for the Pioneer Theatre Company to serving as the Artist in Residence for Touchstone Theatre. She has performed in theatres of all sizes from 30 seats to 1,000 across the country, from L.A. to NYC. She is an award winning producer whose Off and Off-Off-Broadway shows include: Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jig, What the F**k?!, Hamlet and Muse of Fire. Shay was a Founding Member and the Producing Director for Esperance Theatre Company. She is currently one half of the producing team for Theatrical Fair, an active member of TOSOS II and of Emerging Artists Theatre Company where she also serves as an Associate Director.

ELLEN McLAUGHLIN
Ellen McLaughlin is an actor (Angels in America) and playwright (Tongue of a Bird, Iphigenia and Other Daughters and Septimus and Clarissa among many others) who is delighted to have been produced by Flux Theatre Ensemble in the summer of 2011. (Ajax in Iraq.)

ALFREDO NARCISO

Broadway: The Motherf**ker With the Hat (LAByrinth/Public/Gerald Schoenfeld Theater), A Streetcar Named Desire (Roundabout/Studio 54) New York: After (Partial Comfort), Thinner Than Water (LAByrinth), Measure for Measure; Chair (TFANA), Safe (Studio Dante), Drunken City (Playwrights Horizons), Ivo Van Hove’s Misanthrope (New York Theater Workshop), Microcrisis (Ma-Yi), Edgewise (Play Company/Page 73), among others. Regional: ART (Elliot Norton/IRNE nominations), Huntington (IRNE nomination), Two River, Long Wharf, HBO Comedy Arts Festival, Sundance Theater Lab, among others. Film/TV: Elliot Loves, Living & Dining, The Guys, “Unforgettable”, “Person of Interest”, “Law & Order”, “L&O: CI”, “Ugly Betty”, “Third Watch”, “All My Children”, “Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn”, among others. Recipient of the Charles Bowden award and member of Ensemble Studio Theater and Partial Comfort Productions.

SUSAN LOUISE O'CONNOR
Blithe Spirit on Broadway (Theatre World Award, Dorothy Loudon Fellowship, Outer Critics Circle Nom. Other NYC credits include: Desperate Writers, Apostasy, Marion Bridge, Children at Play, Paper Cranes, What to Do When You Hate All Your Friends, Never Swim Alone, See Bob Run, Susan Gets Some Play and Nerve. Winner of the NYC Fringe Festival's best actor award, two-time Innovative Award nominee and winner for lead actress in Packawallop’s the silent concerto, a nytheatre.com’s ‘person of the year’ & recently named a ‘Best-Kept Theater Secret’ by Our Town NY. Film & television credits include: Flying Scissors, Coming Up Roses, Acts of Worship, The Moment, The Day My Towers Fell, The Poets, Parallel Passage and Law & Order: CI.

LORI E. PARQUET
Lori E. Parquet is an actor and teaching artist from New Orleans, Louisiana. Like many of the students she teaches, her interest in theater began in high school in an after school program for acting. She went on to further her training by receiving a B.A. in Theater Arts from Cornell University. While a student there, she starred in plays such as Antigone, Metamorphoses, and A Midsummer's Night Dream. Upon graduating, Lori moved to New York City where she has performed with companies such as Flux Theatre Ensemble, The Drilling Company, and Freedom Train Productions. She has starred in various stage productions such as Dog Act, Murder in the Cathedral and Ajax in Iraq. Regionally, she has performed at The Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, NY and Peguin Repertory Theatre in Stony Point, NY. Lori also made her international debut recently with Epic Theatre Ensemble performing in Pillars of Society at Teater Ibsen in Skien, Norway. She is also an original member of the ensemble for Dispatches From (A)mended America, a new play taken from interviews conducted all over the South in the month leading up to the Obama Inauguration. Lori has starred in the short films A Love Grows in Brooklyn, Take One, and Keep the Change. When she is not acting or directing herself, she brings her love of theater to the New York City Public Schools as a teaching artist with Possible Arts, Epic Theater Ensemble, and Rising City Arts.

ADAM SZYMKOWICZ
Adam's play Pretty Theft was produced by Flux Theater Ensemble in 2009. His plays have been produced throughout the U.S., and in Canada, England, The Netherlands, Germany and Lithuania. His work has been presented or developed at such places as MCC Theater, Ars Nova, South Coast Rep, Playwrights Horizons, LAByrinth Theater Company, Primary Stages, The New Group, Southern Rep, Rising Phoenix, The Lark, Kitchen Dog, Theatre of Note, Naked Stage, Azuka Theater and Studio Dante among others. Plays include Deflowering Waldo, Open Minds, Anne, The Art Machine, Pretty Theft, Food For Fish, Hearts Like Fists, My Base and Scurvy Heart, Herbie, Incendiary, Old Fashioned Cold Fusion, Bee Eater, Temporary Everything, Susan Gets Some Play, Clown Bar, Fat Cat Killers, The Why Overhead, Elsewhere, Where You Can’t Follow, The Artist and Nerve. His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service and Samuel French. Adam received a Playwright’s Diploma from The Juilliard School's Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program and an MFA from Columbia University where he was the Dean’s Fellow. Szymkowicz is a two-time Lecomte du Nouy Prize winner, a member of the Dramatists Guild, Writer’s Guild of America, Primary Stages’ Dorothy Strelsin New American Writer’s Group, the MCC Playwright’s Coalition and was a founding member of the Ars Nova Play Group. He served as Playwright in Residence at the William Inge Center, received a grant from the CT Commission on Culture & Tourism, and was commissioned by South Coast Rep. He was the premiere Resident Playwright at The Chance Theater in Anaheim, CA and the first playwright to participate in Bloomington Playwrights Projects’ Square One Series. For more, go to adamszymkowicz.com

We look forward to seeing you at Flux Family Feud!