Roundabout Underground's Usual Girls to Hold One-Night Benefit Performance
(© Joan Marcus)
Roundabout Theatre Company has announced a one-night-only benefit performance of Ming Peiffer's Usual Girls, currently enjoying a sold-out world-premiere run at Roundabout Underground directed by Tyne Rafaeli. The performance will be held on Tuesday, December 19, at 7pm.
All proceeds will directly fund Roundabout Underground, including commissions for Peiffer's next play, Selina Fillinger's New York debut of Something Clean next spring, and more than two dozen readings and workshops for new work this season.
"When we launched Roundabout Underground in 2007 with Stephen Karam's Speech & Debate, we didn't fully realize the effect the program would have on the lives and careers of dozens of young writers and directors," said Roundabout artistic director and CEO Todd Haimes. "Roundabout invests around $500,000 in every Underground production, an important and worthy investment that we have no chance of earning back with only 62 seats in the Black Box Theatre. With the success of Ming's riveting and powerful play, I'm pleased we are able to host this event to underwrite a small portion of this investment."
Usual Girls opened on Monday, November 5, at the Black Box Theatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre and will continue its limited engagement through Sunday, December 23. The play is described as follows: "How do girls grow up? Quickly, painfully, wondrously. On an elementary school playground, a boy threatens to tell on the girls for swearing — unless one of them kisses him. But just before lips can touch, Kyeoung tackles the boy to the ground. The victory is short-lived. Over the coming years, Kyeoung's stories get stranger, funnier, more harrowing — and more familiar. This hilarious, explicit gut-punch of a play bursts with playwright Ming Peiffer's bold, explosive voice."
The cast is led by Midori Francis as Kyeoung, alongside Sofia Black-D'Elia, Abby Corrigan, Ali Rose Dachis, Karl Kenzler, Jennifer Lim, Ryann Redmond, Nicole Rodenburg, and Raviv Ullman.
