Photos: First Look at Chris Weikel's PRIDE HOUSE at The Flea Theater

Production images have been released for Chris Weikel's Pride House, opening tonight and running through February 10 at The Flea Theater in NYC, representing the first production of the 50th Anniversary Season of TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence), NYC's oldest and longest producing LGBTQIA+ theater company. A special ASL-interpreted performance will be staged this Wednesday, January 24 at 7:00 p.m.

Check out the photos below!

Igor Goldin (Yank!, With Glee) directs a cast of thirteen, including London Carlisle, Gail Dennison, Dontonio DeMarco, Desmond Dutcher, Jessica DiSalvo, Jamie Heinlein, Alex Herrera, Aaron Kaplan, Calvin Knegten , Jake Mendes, Patrick Porter, Raquel Sciacca, and Tom Souhrada.

It’s 1938 in the remote beach community of Cherry Grove on Fire Island, and Beatrice Farrar is planning a party for her colorful, flamboyant friends from the New York theatre scene who are visiting. As the guests descend on her summer home, Pride House, she hopes it will be smooth sailing. When several of the “family folk,” the more conservative Long Islanders who vacation in Cherry Grove with their children, arrive for the festivities, things take a decidedly stormy turn. Literally. Little does Beatrice realize, but it is the eve of the great hurricane of 1938, an event which changes Fire Island in ways that reverberate to the present day.   

Tickets are $40 and can be purchased by visiting https://www.tososnyc.org/ or clicking the button below. The running time is two hours and thirty minutes, including intermission.

TOSOS’s 50th Anniversary Season will also include a reading series of six plays by LGBTQIA+ artists; multiple fundraising events that are open to the public, like TOSOS’s annual cocktail party (May), Pride party (June), and Gala (October); and the company’s second full production of the year, the reimagination of Doric Wilson’s Street Theater, to be staged at The Flea Theater in July.

Chris Weikel (playwright) - His play Secret Identity was produced by TOSOS in residence at The Flea, and the company also presented his Pig Tale: An Urban Faerie Story in New York as well as at the Absolut Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival. His Penny Penniworth was produced Off-Broadway by Emerging Artists Theatre Company (EAT). Weikel was commissioned by American Stage Company to write an adaptation of Dylan Thomas's A Child’s Christmas in Wales for the company's 2000 season. Chris is a judge-at-large for the New York Innovative Theatre Awards and a regular contributor to Drunken! Careening! Writers! at KGB. Weikel received an MFA in playwriting from Hunter College in New York City studying under Tina Howe. His work has been developed at InterAct Theater in Philadelphia, The Lark in New York, as well as the Kennedy Center ACTF/NNPN MFA Playwrights workshop. Weikel was a 2008-09 Dramatist Guild Fellow, the 2007 recipient of the Robert Chesley Award for emerging gay playwrights, the 2008 recipient of the Irv Zarkower Award, and he is a 2011 Recipient of the Rita and Burton Goldberg Award. He was a 2013 NYFA Fellow, and the 2014 Recipient of the Smith Prize Commission for Political Theatre.

Igor Goldin (director) is a New York City based director and educator. He devotes much of his time developing original plays and musicals for the stage: Austen’s Pride, a new musical of Pride & Prejudice (Carnegie Hall, NYC; Seattle 5th Ave; ACT of CT; The REV/Finger Lakes, NY; La Mirada/McCoy Rigby, CA); Brett Ryback & Eric Ulloa’s Passing Through (Goodspeed Musicals, CT); Eric Ulloa’s Reindeer Sessions, and 26 Pebbles (both World Premieres, The Human Race Theatre, OH); John Mercurio’s Academy  (Tuacahn New Works Festival, UT), Adam Gwon/Michele Lowe’s The Proxy Marriage (Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals, CT). Igor received a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Director of a Musical for the original Off-Broadway production of YANK!. Other Off-Broadway productions include the original musical, With Glee, and the new play, A Ritual of Faith, both New York Times Critic Picks. He has directed 11 musicals for the New York Musical Theatre Festival, 3 of which garnered him the NYMF Award for Excellence in Direction. Regionally he’s directed productions of Songs For A New World (Cape Playhouse, MA); Rock of Ages (ACT of CT & Engeman, NY); Matilda (co. dir./Mara Greer, Regional Premiere, Tuacahn, UT & Engeman, NY); Sweeney Todd (SALT Award nom, Director of the Year, The REV); A Christmas Story (The Human Race Theatre, OH); Mystic Pizza (New York Premiere), Kinky Boots, Newsies, Gypsy, Oklahoma, 1776, Memphis, West Side Story (“Encore” Theatre Award, Best Director), The Producers, Evita, The Music Man (“Encore” Theatre Award), Twelve Angry Men, and South Pacific (Engeman, NY); Crossing Swords and tick, tick…BOOM! (American Theatre Group, NJ). Igor is the Academic Department Director of Musical Theatre Performance at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in NYC. He was a top 5 Finalist for the SDC Joe A. Callaway Award for Distinguished Direction, a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and is a proud member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC).  

Other members of the production team include Set Designer: Evan Frank; Costume Designer: Ben Philipp; Lighting Designer: David Castaneda; Sound Designer: Morry Campbell; Stage Manager: Jesica Terry; Assistant Stage Manager: Cat Gillespie; Director of Production: Reesa Graham; and Press Representative: Paul Siebold / Off Off PR.

TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence) is New York City’s oldest and longest producing professional LGBTQIA+ theater company. In 1974, Off-Off-Broadway veteran Doric Wilson, cabaret star Billy Blackwell and director Peter dell Valle, started the first professional gay theatre company in NYC. It was called The Other Side of Silence—TOSOS for short. In 2002, directors Mark Finley and Barry Childs and playwright Wilson resurrected TOSOS. The company has produced over 30 mainstage shows and so many readings of new plays and works in progress we have trouble counting them all. 

Photo Credit: Richard Rivera