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“ELOQUENTLY WRITTEN – DEEPLY MOVING” Thursday Night Theater Club Presents

A Classic True-life Tale in THE ELEPHANT MAN

By Bernard Pomerance

Opening March 21 at El Portal Theatre Press Review Night: March 22, 2019

LOS ANGELES (January 28, 2019) – Thursday Night Theatre Club is proud to present a classic true-life tale and heart wrenching story that depicts the best and the worst of humanity. The Elephant Man is an eloquently written play by Bernard Pomerance, and is being directed by Robyn Cohen at The Historic El Portal Theatre. Running March 21 – 23 and April 3 – 14, 2019. Tickets: www.ElPortalTheatre.com ABOUT THE SHOW Taking place in Victorian England 1884, this gripping drama is based on the real life events of Joseph Carey Merrick. The Elephant Man is the story of a 19th century Englishman who has an unprecedented physical deformation. As a victim of a rare skin and bone disease called Proteus Syndrome, Merrick eventually becomes the star of a traveling freak show circuit. When the renowned Dr. Frederick Treves takes Merrick under his care, he is astonished by the young

man’s brilliant mind, unshakable faith, and passionate desire for love, acceptance and romance. Merrick‘s astonishing and moving story is the basis for this Tony award winning play. Part of that story includes Merrick’s acquaintance with a beautiful actress, Mrs. Kendal. She becomes entranced by Merrick‘s pure and genuine soul. As a complex friendship between the three main characters blossoms, Dr. Treves and Mrs. Kendall struggle to protect Merrick from the severity of his worsening condition, as well as from a world of opportunism, exploitation that make achieving a normal life seem all but impossible. THE CAST OF THE ELEPHANT MAN John Ralston Craig – “Frederick Treves” Skip Pipo – “Carr Gomm / Conductor” Tom Vitorino – “John Merrick” Alice L. Walker – “Mrs. Kendal” Jon Sperry – “Ross / Bishop Howe” Jennipher Lewis – “Miss Sandwich / Pinhead” Vanessa Vaughn – “The Duchess / Pinhead” Albert Soratorio – “Belgian Policeman” Robin Roth – “Princess Alexandra / Nurse” Nathan Wallace – “Policeman/Snork /Doctor #1” Jay Parker – “Pinhead Manager / Lord John” Logan Padilla – “Orderly Will” David Revaza – “Orderly / Porter” THE PRODUCTION TEAM Written by Bernard Pomerance Directed by Robyn Cohen Technical Direction by Edwin Pleitez Co-Produced by Tom Vitorino and Alice L. Walker Produced by Thursday Night Theater Club Production Assistant: Sasha Panfilova Sound Engineering by Beau Bancroft Set Design by Lillian George Lighting Direction by Bo Tindall Costume Design by Melissa Marks Stage Managed by Brenna Howe Flyman / Stage hand: Brian Green Photography by Jason Ross Levy D/P/Videography by David Ruano Media Content Producing by Albert Soratorio Publicity by Sandra Kuker PR HISTORY OF JOHN JOSEPH MERRICK Joseph Merrick has been the subject of many medical studies, documentaries and works of fiction. Born in Leicester in 1862 at the age of five, Merrick began to develop physical deformities to his skin, face, arms and feet. When he was 11 years old his mother died from bronchopneumonia, and his father remarried shortly thereafter. By 17, his relationship with his father had deteriorated and Merrick was forced to take up residence in a workhouse. After several years of destitution, Merrick sought to escape and found his way into a human oddities show in London where he was exhibited as 'The Elephant Man.’ In 1884, a doctor named Frederick Treves happened to witness Merrick being exhibited in a store front across the road from where he was working at the London hospital. Dr. Treves rescued Merrick from his abusive situation, and admitted him into the London Hospital where Merrick lived until his untimely passing in 1890. He was 27 years old. Pomerance’s work brims with intelligence and ideas regarding human nature and the arbitrariness of life. Ideas that are as relevant today as they were in the Victorian era.

MULTIPLE AWARD WINNING PRODUCTION THE ELEPHANT MAN is based on the life of Joseph Merrick, The play opened in London in 1977. It premiered on Broadway in 1979 and won all of the major theater awards, including three Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, four Drama Desk Awards, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. It was revived in both 2002 and 2014. Thursday Night Theatre Club is proud to open The Elephant Man at El Portal Theatre. THE ELEPHANT MAN is set to open March 21 – 23 and April 3 - 14, 2019. Red Carpet Gala and Press will be invited to review on March 22 @ 8PM. Information and tickets now on sale through The El Portal website: www.ElPortalTheatre.com Located at 5269 Lankershim Blvd. No. Hollywood, CA. 91601 Additional information about Thursday Night Theater Club: www.ThursdayNightTheaterClub.com Running time: 135 minutes (including intermission) (818) 508-4200

### BIO’S

John Ralston Craig - Frederick Treves John Ralston Craig’s stage credits include 'Hello Out There' by William Saroyan and 'Twelfth Night' as Feste the Jester, 'Rabbit Hole', 'Doubt', and 'Dog Sees God' He was also in a film adaptation of Anton Chekov's 'The Seagull.' On the east coast, John appeared in back to back productions of Tom Stoppard's classics, 'Arcadia' and 'Rosencrantz and Guildentstern are Dead.' Later on He appeared as Connie Rivers in The Grapes of Wrath

all through Boston Theatre Works. His training includes Playhouse West LA, Cohen Acting Studios and Larry Moss. John has written and performed in numerous short films and is currently finishing his second feature film script. He is a lover of Shakespeare and Calvin and Hobbs, practices martial arts and snowboarding and maintains his gratitude of his fellow artists for their inspiration and support.

Skip Pipo - Carr Gomm / Conductor Skip is very happy to be working with this amazingly talented cast and crew. His credits include LA Theater Works national tour of Dracula, Copenhagen, How I Learned to Drive, Mrs. Warren's Profession (LA Weekly nominee), LADCC award nominated Equus and Enron, and the North American tour of West Side Story. Also in LA and Seattle, Midsummer Night's Dream, Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, and School for Wives.

Skip also has numerous commercial and film credits and has been featured in many series made for new media.

Tom Vitorino- John Merrick Actor, producer and/Co-founder of Thursday Night Theater Club; is thrilled to be taking on the role of John (Joseph) Merrick in TNTC’s production of The Elephant Man at the historic El Portal Theatre. /// THEATRE select; A View From The Bridge (El Portal Theatre), Noises Off (The Olivier Theatre), Hamlet (The Randall L. Jones Theatre), Light Sensitive (Playhouse West), Othello (Adams Memorial Theatre), The Wasteland (Liberty Theater off

Broadway), 12 Angry Men (The Little Theatre), It’s Only A Play (The Little Theatre), Burn This (Craft Avenue

Theatre), Breaking Legs (Westside Arts Theatre) /// FILM select: Called & Chosen (James C. Kelty), Top Of The World (Sydney Fury), Fly Me To The Moon (Jeff Becko), Somebody (Henry Barrial)*Official Sundance Film Festival Selection, Blue Light Special (Rich Rodriquez) *Award winning short film at Cinevegas, Blood Is Thicker (Adventure Pictures), The Seventh Veil (Amin Q. Chaudhri), Love & War II (Starline Entertainment), Baby Blues (American Independent Media), A Letter From Home (Tony Savant) /// BROADCAST select: Has appeared in numerous national broadcast campaigns, including for Coca Cola, Yamaha, and Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s. Appeared on the ABC Soap Opera, Port Charles (Season 3, Larry), Lords Of The Mafia (Don Goldman for PBS), Last Don (Michael Martin). /// STUDIES select: Wolf Trap Farm/Bobby Lewis, Joseph Bernard’s Actors Studio/Joseph Bernard, Stella Adler Conservatory/Stella Adler, Elizabeth Sabine Studio/Elizabeth Sabine, Playhouse West/Various Instructors, Studio 4/James Caan/Matthew Scott Snyder, and currently The Cohen Acting Studio/Robyn Cohen.

Alice L Walker – Mrs. Kendal A Chicago native, Alice began her career as a ballet dancer, performing with Joffrey Ballet, Ballet Chicago, Ballet Austin and Ontario Ballet Theater of Canada, to name a few. She joined the Chicago theater scene studying at Piven Theater Workshop then in L.A. at Playhouse West with Robert Carnegie and with famed coaches Larry Moss and Tom Toddoroff and with Robyn Cohen. Her tv credits include ABC’s Secrets of A Small Town,

Fresh Off The Boat, and The Office spinoff, The Trainer, and the upcoming series, Choreographers directed by Bernard Rose, as well as working in commercials for companies like Ford and Leinenkugal’s Beer. Her select film credits include Riddance opposite Jim Parrack (Best Actress award PWFF), Abruptio (coming 2020), opposite Jordan Peele, A Numbers Game opposite Ken Howard and Steven Bauer and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari directed by David Lee Fisher. Also a writer and producer, Alice’s original screenplay musical, Le Grand Jete was made an Official Selection of The Beverly Hills Film Festival and is among several of her scripts in development or option. She’s produced music videos for Snoop Dogg, choreographed and directed ballets like Cinderella: A Rock and Romance Ballet/El Portal and taught acting at The Youth Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles. Her first love being theater, she has always found her home there performing in Beauty & The Beast, The Sound of Music, Shrek The Musical, A Chorus Line, Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge, and coming this fall she will play her most challenging role yet of Claudia Draper in Tom Topor’s Nuts at El Portal Theater for Thursday Night Theater Club.

Jon Sperry – Ross/Bishop Howe Jon Sperry has been acting for over 35 years and is thrilled to be working with the Thursday Night Theater Club for the first time. Jon has appeared on film, TV, commercials, web-series and on stage in New York, Los Angeles and regionally. One of his favorite recent roles was Howard opposite the brilliant Mark Rydell in a staged reading of Death of a

Salesman at the Actors Studio in Los Angeles. His other favorite roles include Froggy in The Foreigner, Don Baker in Butterflies Are Free, Richard in Baby Dance, Ben Stark in Rocket to the Moon, Trofimov in The Cherry Orchard, Clive in Five Finger Exercise, Charles Thompson in 1776, and Man One from Neil Labute’s Filthy Talk for Troubled Times. After graduating from Wesleyan University with a degree in Theater, Jon studied at Circle in the Square Professional Workshop in New York. Jon is also one of the top dialect and voice coaches in America. A native of San Francisco, California, Jon has lived, coached and taught in New

York, Los Angeles, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Athens, and Buenos Aires, and is the resident speech, dialect and voice teacher at The Actors Studio in Los Angeles, where he is a lifetime member.

Jennipher Lewis – Miss Sandwich/Pinhead Jennipher is a graduate of the Theater Department at UCLA. After many years in the San Diego theater scene, Jennipher moved north to Los Angeles, where she has appeared in three different horror films; all with Devil in the title. Some of her recent roles include: Leonato in “Much Ado About Nothing(Unlikely Shakespeare Co.),” Mistress

Overdone/Provost in “Measure For Measure”(Method & Madness Co.), Countess Rousillon in “Alls Well That Ends Well”(Long Beach Shakespeare Co.) , and Prospero in “The Tempest”(Dean Productions). Jennipher is honored to work with the talented group of artists at Thursday Night Theater Club.

Vanessa Vaughn – Duchess/Nurse/Pinhead/Understudy Mrs. Kendal Vanessa is excited to return to the El Portal stage alongside this wonderful cast and crew, in this, her first show with Thursday Night Theater Club! Some LA credits include Lady Macbeth in Macbeth; The Stepmother in Cinderella (A Ballet) performed at El Portal, and Mother in LoveSick, a role she originated and played at LOFT Ensemble in Downtown LA and in NYC (Best of Fringe NYC). Partial NY & regional credits include: Barbara Demarco in

Shear Madness (Kennedy Center); Olympe in Camille, and Ariel in Wintertime (Round House Theatre); Suzanne/The Countess in Picasso at the Lapin Agile (The Sanford Meisner Theatre); Chloe in Arcadia, and Valerie in The Weir (The Warehouse Theatre) and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (Upstate Shakespeare Festival). You can catch Vanessa getting stabbed in an old episode of Criminal Minds, and you can see her as Hilly Bottoms, the recurring Evil Nun, turned Nurse, turned "Dracomorph" character in the Space Hospital web series.

Jay Parker – Pinhead Manager/Lord John Jay Parker is an actor, playwright and director. He was the founder and managing director of Mosaic Lizard Theater. He has been involved in the theater arts all of his life and is honored to be part of this wonderful production.

Nathan Wallace – Snork/English Police Officer Nathan is originally from Tupelo, Mississippi and is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory where he earned a BFA in Acting. He is honored to be in the theatrical production of the The Elephant Man. His theatrical credits include: A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Time of Your Life, The Crucible, Macbeth, and Living Dead in Denmark.

Robin S. Roth – Princess Alexandra/Nurse Originally from Queens, NY, Robin is making her third appearance with Thursday Night Theater Club. She has also performed locally in the Hollywood Fringe Fest, Fremont Centre Theatre, and Track 16 Theatre; in NYC at Gene Frankel Theatre and Manhattan

Rep; and in Kentucky at Studio Players and Act Out. Feature films include “Jessie The Golden Heart,” “You Should Meet My Son 2!” “Goin’ Around” and “Alien Anthropologists.” IMDB.me/robinroth Instagram @rothrobin24

Logan Padilla – Orderly Will Logan is excited to be making his debut with Thursday Night Theatre Club! Growing up in the theatre in Georgia, Logan has spent the last 10 years in New York City where he studied at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and went on to perform in numerous theatrical and television productions, and concerts. Having moved to Los Angeles five short months ago, Logan is ready to take to get back onstage, and what better

place to start!

Albert Soratorio – Belgian Police Officer Albert Soratorio is a CSULB theater graduate, from Los Angeles CA. He is a multidisciplinary artist with involvement in film, theater, & fine art. He is currently working on developing Ensemble Entertainment Productions, a Non-Profit organization intended on providing opportunities for under served communities in the entertainment industry. He continues to work on development teams with River Rock Productions, the newly formed

company Disposable Royalty Arts, & other independent filmmakers generating new content. This is his third time performing with TNTC. He was in A View From The Bridge and 26 Pebbles.

David Revaza – Orderly/Porter David first appeared on TNTC in “a View from the Bridge” and “26 Pebbles “. He is also known for playing in New York Film Academy projects, such as - “Voicecracking”, “Midnight Gift”, “Weight”, “Chance” and etc. He also graduated from music school. He is fluent in English and Georgian.

CALENDAR LISTING Life Style and Special EventsTheatre Areas: North Hollywood, Metropolitan Los Angeles, Los Feliz,

Eagle Rock, Glendale, Burbank, Toluca Lake, Hollywood, West Hollywood, Beach Communities, San Gabriel, and the San Fernando Valley

WHAT: “”THE ELEPHANT MAN” WHO: Written by Bernard Pomerance Directed by Robyn Cohen Technical Direction by Edwin Pleitez Co-Produced by Tom Vitorino and Alice L. Walker Produced by Thursday Night Theater Club Production Assistant Sasha Panfilova Sound Engineering by Beau Bancroft Set Design by Lillian George Lighting Direction by Bo Tindall Costume Design by Melissa Marks Stage Managed by Brenna Howe Flyman / Stage hand Brian Green Photography by Jason Ross Levy D/P/Videography by David Ruano Media Content Producing by Albert Soratorio Publicity by Sandra Kuker PR CAST: John Ralston Craig – “Frederick Treves” Skip Pipo – “Carr Comm/Conductor” Tom Vitorino – “John Merrick” Alice L. Walker – “Mrs. Kendal” Jon Sperry – “Ross/Bishop Howe” Jennipher Lewis – “Miss Sandwich/Pinhead” Vanessa Vaughn – “The Duchess/Pinhead” Albert Soratorio – “Belgian Policeman” Robin Roth – “Princess Alexandra/Nurse” Nathan Wallace – “Policeman/Snork/Doctor #1” Jay Parker – “Pinhead Manager/Lord John” Logan Padilla – “Orderly Will” David Revaza – “Orderly/Porter” WHERE: EL PORTAL THEATRE 5269 Lankershim Blvd. North Hollywood, CA. 91601 WHEN: All Performances March 21 – 23, 2019 and April 3 – 14, 2019 Thursday, March 21 @ 8PM

Friday, March 22 @ 8PM* - Red Carpet Gala & Press Night Saturday, March 23 @ 8PM* Wednesday, April 3 @ 8PM Thursday, April 4 @ 8PM Friday, April 5 @ 8PM * Saturday, April 6 @ 8PM* Sunday, April 7 @ 3PM Wednesday, April 10 @ 8PM Thursday, April 11 @ 8PM Friday, April 12 @ 8PM * Saturday, April 13 @ 8PM* Sunday, April 14 @ 3PM Select dates have an accompanying reception after the show; includes private viewing of 1 or 4 existing replicas of John Merrick’s skeleton, authentic correspondence between Dr. Treves, and other authentic artifacts. Price: $20. Reception Tour tickets available for the following performance dates: Friday & Saturday March 22, 23, April 5, 6, 12 & 13. GENERAL ADMISSION: $55.00 (Center Section) $40.00 (Orchestra / Side Sections) $25.00 (Orchestra / Upper Sides) RESERVATIONS: (818) 508-4200 http://www.elportaltheatre.com/elephantman.html FOR ADVANCE MEDIA INTERVIEWS or PRESS COMPS FOR MARCH 22ND CONTACT: SANDRA KUKER PR Sandra Kuker-Franco Email: SJKukerPR@gmail.com Tele: (310) 652-7222