For Immediate Release/Photos Attached

The Midnight Company will extend the run of its production of Tennessee Williams' THE TWO-CHARACTER PLAY after its one-week run at Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis. It will play Fridays and Saturdays, 8pm, May 27-28 and June 3-4 at the Winter Opera Space St. Louis, 2322 Marconi, 63110, on The Hill. Tickets are $15 and may be purchased at BrownPaperTickets.com, with sales beginning Sunday, May 15. Tickets will also be available at the door, cash or check only.

The play is directed by Sarah Whitney, and features Michelle Hand and Joe Hanrahan in the cast. Hanrahan, Midnight's Artistic Director, said, "We're very excited about extending the run of this remarkable play, and about playing it in a different and much more intimate space. Audiences who saw it in the 500 seat Mummers Theatre at The Learning Center would see the same play here, but see it extremely close and personal, enhancing the power of Williams' passion and poetry."

Tickets are very limited, and reservations are recommended.

THE TWO-CHARACTER PLAY was ten years in the making for Williams, the longest he ever worked on a play. Influenced by Beckett and Pinter, Williams started writing it in the sixties, seeking to expand his style. It is partially autobiographical, the main characters based on Williams himself and his sister Rose, a later echo of his early THE GLASS MENAGERIE, which was also part of the Festival in a production from Upstream Theatre.

Premiering in 1975 in San Francisco and moving shortly afterward to Broadway, THE TWO-CHARACTER PLAY was experimental for its time, and its innovative style and language has since gained in power and intrigue.

In the play, Felice, a playwright, and his sister, Clare, are actors in a travelling company. But their troupe has abandoned them in a theater, branding them "insane." Felice is determined to finish his script – The Two-Character Play – a sordid Southern tale of a brother and sister abandoned in crumbling mansion, too frightened and insolvent to try to leave. (Their father has killed their mother, then killed himself, denying them the life insurance money they need to survive.) The play dips in and out, back and forth between the actors and their play, the siblings story and their imagined story. One of Williams' final major statements, it is his desperate ode to the stage, a haunted elegy on his family.

Sarah Whitney, Midnight's Associate Director, is directing THE TWO-CHARACTER PLAY. In addition to directing many Midnight productions (most recently HOUSE at The St. Louis Fringe Festival, and Conor McPherson's THE GOOD THIEF and ST. NICHOLAS in repertory), she has also directed locally for The Orange Girls (THE ROAD TO MECCA) and St. Louis University. She has directed many productions in her native Chicago.

Michelle Hand plays Clare. A founder and artistic force with the late, great Orange Girls, she has worked with Mustard Seed, Actors Studio, The Rep and many other companies in town, and is soon to be seen as Queen Elizabeth in St. Louis Shakespeare's RICHARD III in April.

Joe Hanrahan portrays Felice. Joe has performed in many Midnight shows, and has also worked with such local groups as Slightly Askew, The Black Rep, Upstream, and Tesseract . Joe will perform Midnight's THOMPAIN (based on nothing) in July.

Mark Wilson provides Lighting and Settings for the show, and Elizabeth Henning designed the costumes.

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MIDNIGHT TO PRESENT THOMPAIN (based on nothing) IN JULY AT HERBIE'S PERFORMANCE DATES ANNOUNCED

The Midnight Company will present Will Eno's THOMPAIN (based on nothing) at Herbie's Vintage72, 405 N. Euclid, 63108 in the Central West End, Fridays & Saturdays, 8pm, July 22 – August 6. It will be a 10-year anniversary revival production for Midnight, with Artistic Director Joe Hanrahan once again the performer, and Larry Dell once again directing.

Nearly indescribable, THOMPAIN was described thus by the NYTimes: "A surreal meditation on the empty promises life makes, the way experience never lives up to the weird and awesome fact of being…but also, in its odd, bewitching beauty an affirmation of life's worth…a small masterpiece." Ten years after the show's premiere, the Guardian said of an Edinburgh Festival production, "still one of the best monologues ever seen." Actor Joe Hanrahan calls it "Existential Stand-Up," while director Larry Dell describes it as "Stand-Up Tragedy."

Tickets will be on sale later in the spring at brownpapertickets.com. For more information, visit midnightcompany.com.