Subtitled A Trick In Four Acts, it's billed this way: "Great, a troubled young magician, is running from his past, the beautiful assistant that betrayed him, and the trick that tore them apart. He soon befriends Trilby, a waitress with a passion for magic, and initiates her into his haunted world: a place where cards change color, coins disappear, objects float and love is the biggest illusion of all. When a bitter secret is revealed and magic becomes a matter of life and death, their love is put to the test and Great realizes that he might not have been the one holding the cards all along."
EVN Productions and Ariana Jackson, in association with The Village Muse, present the production, which began previews Feb. 22. Talya Klein directs a cast that includes Martina Lotun, Ann Moller, Elizabeth V. Newman and Brett Schneider as Great.
Performances continue to April 5. The creative team includes Krystyna Loboda (set and lighting designer), Karen Murk Potter (costume and make-up designer), Peter West (magic consultant), Adria Badagnani (stage manager) and Sean Lambert (assistant stage manager).
The play received its world premiere in 2003 at Actors Theatre of Louisville, as part of the Humana Festival of New American Plays. Subsequent productions of the play have been presented in New York and Chicago.
Groff is a playwright and performer, born in New York, and raised in and around Tampa, FL. Her work has been produced by the Public Theater, Trinity Rep and Actors Theatre of Louisville, among others. She is the recipient of an Obie Award Grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Whiting Writers Award and a NYSCA Individual Artist Grant. She was a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, The Sundance Theatre Lab, The Australian National Playwrights Conference, The Perry Mansfield New Noises Festival and The Chautauqua Theater Company. Klein is an award-winning director and playwright whose work has been seen in New York, regionally and abroad. Her directing credits include the U.K. premiere of Keith Reddin's Black Snow and Peter Barnes' Red Noses (Baron's Court Theatre, London) as well as the American premiere of Samuel Adamson's Clocks and Whistles. While an undergrad at Duke University, Klein received The Alex Cohen Award for Initiatives in Theatre and was named one of eight Up-and-Coming Artists to Watch in the new millennium by The Raleigh News and Observer. She has worked at Manhattan Theatre Club and The National Theatre (London). She was Playwriting Fellow at the 2001 O'Neill Playwrights' Conference and a member of the 2004 Lincoln Center Directors Lab. This production marks her West Coast directing debut.
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