Autumn Will Be a Little Late This Year: Velocity, with Estelle Parsons and Stephen Spinella, Postpones Broadway Bow | Playbill

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News Autumn Will Be a Little Late This Year: Velocity, with Estelle Parsons and Stephen Spinella, Postpones Broadway Bow Eric Coble's new two-character play, The Velocity of Autumn, which was scheduled to open on Broadway this spring with a cast led by Academy Award winner Estelle Parsons and two-time Tony winner Stephen Spinella, has been postponed.

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Estelle Parsons

Lead producer Larry Kaye, also the producer of the postponed Miss Firecracker Contest, told the New York Times that he was unable to find "a suitable theater this season that would be a great fit for this two-person, very intimate play." Although the producer has yet to raise the entire capitalization for the new work, he hopes to present Velocity on Broadway during the 2013-14 season.

Molly Smith, artistic director of Arena Stage in Washington, DC, was scheduled to direct the 90-minute dramatic comedy, which would have marked the Broadway debut of playwright Coble.

The Velocity of Autumn, according to press notes, "swirls around 80-year-old Alexandra, an artist facing the indignities of old age and her family’s insistence on moving her to a nursing home.  With nothing to lose, Alexandra has locked herself in her Brooklyn brownstone with a pile of Molotov cocktails and is now in a standoff with her children and the police.  When Alexandra is visited by her youngest son Chris - who has climbed into her second floor window ending a 20-year absence from her life - in the blink of an eye the emotional bombs start detonating."

Parsons was scheduled to star as Alexandra with Spinella as her son Chris.

Autumn had its world premiere at Boise Contemporary Theater in Idaho in April 2011, and played to sold-out audiences in Cleveland’s Beck Center for the Arts in Ohio in April 2012. Playwright Coble's plays have been produced Off-Broadway, throughout the U.S., and on several continents, including productions at The Kennedy Center, Denver Center Theatre Company, New York and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, Alliance Theatre, The Cleveland Play House, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, South Coast Repertory, Asolo Repertory, Indiana Repertory, Coterie Theatre, Great Lakes Theater Festival, Stages Repertory and The Contemporary American Theatre Festival.  His plays include Bright Ideas (Manhattan Class Company, directed by John Rando), Natural Selection (Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival, directed by Marc Masterson), The Dead Guy, A Girl's Guide to Coffee and The Giver. Coble has been recognized for his work with an Emmy nomination, the AT&T Onstage Award, the National Theatre Conference Playwriting Award, the AATE Distinguished Play Award for Best Adaptation, an NEA Playwright in Residence Grant and a TCG Extended Collaboration Grant.

The play was to be produced by HOP Theatricals.

 
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