Atlantic Theater to Present Leslie Ayvazian's Make Me

Atlantic Theater Company will close its 2008-2009 season with the world premiere of playwright Leslie Ayvazian’s Make Me, the company has announced. Directed by Atlantic associate director Christian Parker, the limited engagement begins previews May 19 with opening set for May 31, and will play through June 14 at Atlantic’s Stage 2 Theatre. Casting will be announced shortly.

In Make Me, six pent-up Americans in three different relationships have reached the end of their ropes. In this naughty comic fugue, Ayvazian explores what happens when the rules are changed just at the moment people think they are perfectly comfortable and the lengths to which some will go to be seen, heard and obeyed.

Ayvazian makes her Atlantic Theater Company debut with Make Me. Her acclaimed Off-Broadway play Nine Armenians won the John Gassner Outer Critics Award, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Kennedy Center’s Roger L. Stevens Award. Film credits include Showtime’s Every Three Minutes starring Olympia Dukakis.

Parker most recently staged the New York premiere of Tina Howe’s play Birth And After Birth. Other Atlantic credits include Jeff Whitty’s The Hiding Place and 10X20, a festival of newly commissioned ten minute plays by writers previously produced at Atlantic for which he directed plays by Tina Howe, Keith Reddin and Rolin Jones.

The play will feature scenic design by Anna Louizos, lighting design by Josh Bradford and sound design by Jill BC DuBoff.