Jan McArt's New Play Reading Series Presents SHOOTING STAR, March 10 at Lynn University

BOCA RATON, Fla. - March 3, 2014 - PRLog -- Jan McArt's New Play Reading Series presents Mildred Kayden's new musical
SHOOTING STAR on Monday, March 10, 2014 at 7:30 p.m.

Boca Raton, FL -- Composer/lyricist Mildred Kayden of Boca Raton and librettist Ed Bullins have been writing musicals together for forty years. Last year the partnership's musical STORYVILLEwas a hit in Manhattan at the York Theatre Company, and the year before that Kayden'sIONESCOPADE was revived at the York to rave reviews.

Now they've got a new one called SHOOTING STAR, which will receive a staged reading for one night only on March 10, 2014 at 7:30 p.m. at Lynn University as part of ‘Jan McArt's New Play Reading Series.'

SHOOTING STAR is a new musical about a young talent who sets out to pursue poetry, but soon finds herself pulled into life among the beautiful people and a commercial show business career via television, nightclubs and Vegas.

For the university’s staged reading, Wayne Rudisill directs a cast that includes Nicole Lee, Cerina Anderson, David Berry, Shenise Nunez, Michael Orozco, Kassiopia Ragoonanan and Andy Rogow, with Jon Randy Booth providing musical direction.

Jan McArt is the director of theatre arts program development at Lynn University, where this reading is the third in a series of staged readings that will be presented this winter/spring as part of Jan McArt's New Play Reading Series. The program develops new plays and musicals by renowned and respected playwrights and artists.

SHOOTING STAR will be presented in the Keith C. and Elaine Johnson Wold Performing Arts Center at Lynn University at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, March 10, 2014.

The next show to be presented in the play reading series is award-winning South Florida playwright Christopher Demos-Brown's new drama THE CHILD'S PLAY to be directed by Nicole Stodard on Monday, April 28.

Tickets for these Staged Readings are $10 each.  For more information, call 561-237-9000 or visit events.lynn.edu.

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Available for interview:
Jan McArt, director of Theatre Arts Program Development at Lynn University
Mildred Kayden, composer/lyricist
Wayne Rudisill, director
 MILDRED KAYDEN, lyricist and composer

Ms. Kayden’s recent production of Storyville with Ed Bullins has been produced at such venues as the York Theatre, Ford’s Theatre and San Diego Rep to wonderful reviews. She also wrote Sepia Star with Ed Bullins, which was performed at Harlem’s New Cotton Club. Her musical Jonescopade, based on the works of Eugene Ionesco, is currently enjoying its 30^th anniversary production in LA to rave reviews, in addition to productions Off-Broadway and in London, Los Angeles, The Hague, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., and an acclaimed 2012 York production. Other theatre works include: Pequod, Exhibition, The Riddle of Sheba, Cut the Ribbons, Popov’s Miracle/Popov’s Angel, Paradise Gardens East, Canterbury Tales, the operas The Last Word & Mardi Gras, Vanity Fair (based on Thackeray’s novel andCall the Children Home with book by the late Tom Babe (Primary Stages; five Audelco nominations). Ms. Kayden’s film scores include music for the documentaries Leaven for the Cities and The Procession, and music and lyrics for the animated film The Pumpkin Coach. For television she wrote music and lyrics forStrangers in the Land on NBC, Musically Speaking with Mildred Kayden,” her radio show on New York’s WEVD, featured interviews with such luminaries as Aaron Copeland, Hal Prince, Cannonball Adderley, Leopold Stokowski, Stephen Sondheim and Lotte Lenya; they are at the Paley Center for Broadcasting. Ms. Kaden studied musical composition with Ernst Krenek and Walter Piston, and was a member of the music faculty at Vassar College.

 ED BULLINS, book author

Born in Philadelphia, Edward Artie “Ed” Bullins grew up in a tough part of Philadelphia and was almost stabbed to death as a young man. In time he became an active participant in the black nationalist movement. As he became increasingly mistrustful of ideologies, however, he turned his focus almost entirely to the theater as a means of expressing the needs and aspirations of his people. By the mid-1960s, he had established himself, along with Imamu Amiri Baraka, as a leading playwright in America’s black theater. In works such as Clara’s Ole Man (1965), Goin’ a Buffalo (1968), and In the Wine Time(1968), Bullins depicts the lives of people in the ghetto and shows himself able to turn even their obscene talk into a special kind of poetry. His series of plays at that time collectively won the Vernon Rice Drama Desk Award. The Fabulous Miss Marie (1971) depicts the black middle class with equal poignancy and was awarded an Obie. The Taking of Miss Janie (1975), a study of American race relations, won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and an Obie Award. In addition, Bullins has received two Guggenheim fellowships, three Rockefeller Foundation playwriting grants, An AUDELCO Award, A National Endowment for the Arts playwriting grant and a Creative Artists’ Public Service Program Award. Bullins earned his B. A. degree from Antioch College in 1989 and his MFA in playwriting from San Francisco State University. In 1976 he received an honorary doctorate from Columbia College in Chicago.

WAYNE RUDISILL, director, has worked with Elizabeth Ashley, Edward Villella, Jane Alexander, Tony Roberts, Lee Strasberg, Carol Channing, Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Martin Charmin, William Gibson, Dorothy Loudon, Joseph Papp. With his mentor-- Harold Clurman, Founder of The Group Theatre, Director and Critic-- Mr.Rudisill served as Mr. Clurman’s Assistant Director on Arthur Miller’s new play, THE CREATION OF THE WORLD AND OTHER BUSINESS, the inaugural play which opened the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Mr. Rudisill worked to establish THE KENNEDY CENTER HONORS along with Roger Stevens, Chairman of the Kennedy Center, Lily Pope Guest, Founder and President of the FRIENDS OF THE KENNEDY CENTER, and George Stevens, Jr., Producer and Director. His professional life includes being President and CEO for 22 years at NATIONAL CONSERVATORY OF DRAMATIC ARTS, an accredited institution for post-secondary education. He has directed or produced over 200 productions, developed and taught creative theatre and arts management courses at the professional level, and served as Arts Management Administrator for Actors Repertory Theatre Company. In recent years, his work at Lynn University has included serving a Resident Director for the Plays Reading Series. He has directed Jan McArt and Steve Ross in Noel and Cole and A Good Thing Going, the Songs of Steven Sondheim, Elizabeth Ashley in Love Letters, A Person of Interest, And two Tony Finstrom’s plays: Murder on Gin Lane and Back Stage Story. Mr. Rudisill was awarded the AB degree from Elon College, North Carolina, and the Master’s Degree from The American University, Washington, D.C.