“Terrifically engaging and fascinating!
It’s what you call a good time.”
– The New York Times
THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT
by Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell
based on the book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal
directed by Brendan Burke
Oct 7th – Oct 23rd
LIFESPAN OF A FACT follows Jim Fingal, a fresh-out-of-Harvard fact checker for a sinking literary magazine. When his editor charges him with the assignment of checking an article by a prominent literary powerhouse, John D’Agata, the magazine hopes this is the article that will change their fortunes. When not everything checks out, Fingal and D’Agata go head to head as hard facts battle against emotional truths in a high-stakes and hilarious verbal showdown.
Playwright Jeremy Kareken
Jeremy is a playwright living in New York and Baltimore. His short plays HOT ROD, BIG TRAIN, and 80 CARDS have been performed around the country and internationally. He served as a speech writer and policy analyst for two presidential campaigns. His awards include the Sewanee Conference’s Dakin Fellowship for FARBLONDJET, and Guthrie/Playwrights Center’s Two-Headed Challenge for THE SWEET SWEET MOTHERHOOD. The Hamptons Film Festival Screenwriters Conference selected Kareken and David Murrell for their horror-comedy script about haunted breast implants—“THESE! Conquered the Earth!” In 2018, PlayPenn shortlisted Jeremy’s new political satire about an illiterate king, THE RED WOOL. Born and raised in Rochester, New York, and a graduate of the University of Chicago, he has taught at NYU, NYIT, the Actors Studio Drama School, and currently teaches at the Acting Studio—New York. A lifetime member of The Actors Studio, Jeremy occasionally acts and for 18 years served as the researcher for Bravo TV’s “Inside the Actors Studio.”
Playwright David Murrell
David Murrell was born and raised in New York City. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School and the University of Chicago, currently lives in Queens, and has written a sea chest’s worth of TV and film treatments and spec scripts. Access Theater (NYC) and the Cleveland Public Theatre each produced his play DUCTWORK and the Hamptons Film Festival Screenwriters Conference selected his and Jeremy Kareken’s feature screenplay about haunted breast implants, “THESE! Conquered the Earth.” In 2019, the Outer Critics Circle co-awarded David its John Gassner Playwriting Award for THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT.
Director Brendan Burke
Playwright Gordon Farrell
Trained as a playwright at the Yale School of Drama, Gordon received an MFA in 1986 and went from there to work with major Hollywood studios, initially as a story analyst for Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures, and eventually as a screenwriter. He has written for hire and sold screenplays to Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers, MGM, and ITC. As a playwright, from 2009 to 2013, Gordon worked with dozens of women on New York’s Lower East Side who wanted to tell their personal stories on stage. The series of monologue plays that grew out of it was called IN THE RED ROOM/EVERY WOMAN DANCES FOR SOMEONE. In May 2019 the fully dramatized version, GIRLS WHO WALKED ON GLASS, played to SRO houses and rave reviews in Buffalo and is scheduled to transfer to New York City in 2020. His other plays have been produced in San Francisco, at the Alleyway Theatre, at the Yale School of Drama, and at Primary Stages in New York. He is the author of “The Power of the Playwright’s Vision,” published by Heinemann Press in 2001. It has been translated internationally and become a standard playwriting text at colleges and universities in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Cast
Steve Brady
Logan Marks
Kathy McCafferty
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The MainStage at SHADOWLAND STAGES
157 Canal Street, Ellenville, NY 12428
PERFORMANCES: OCT 7TH – OCT 23RD
EVERY THUR, FRI, SAT AT 8PM | SUN AT 2PM
FIRST SAT (OCT 8TH) AT 2PM – VAXXED & MASKED PERFORMANCE
PREVIEWS:
FRIDAY OCT 7TH AT 8PM
SATURDAY OCT 8TH AT 2PM
OPENING NIGHT:
SATURDAY OCT 8TH AT 8PM
RUN TIME: TBA
TICKET PRICES:
PREVIEWS – $34
THURSDAY – SATURDAY at 8pm – $42
SUNDAY MATINEE at 2pm – $37
DISCOUNTS: Discounts are available online for students (must present ID at door). For Group Sales (10 or more to the same performance) information click here.