WCT Annual Benefit to Feature Mark St. Germain

On Saturday evening September 21 from 6 to 10 pm, Westchester Collaborative Theater (WCT)'s annual fall benefit at the Shattemuc Yacht Club, will feature multiple award-winning playwright Mark St. Germain. The author of Freud's Last Session (Off Broadway Alliance Award), Camping With Henry And Tom (Outer Critics Circle Award and Lucille Lortel Award), Forgiving Typhoid Mary (ranked among Time Magazine's "Year's Ten Best"), and Becoming Dr. Ruth, the story of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, St. Germain will deliver the keynote address.

WCT's festive event includes an open bar, DJ music and dancing, silent and "live" auctions, authentic Turkish fare courtesy of Melike of Ossining, and a live performance of a hilarious one-act play, Stephen Hersh's Viable that debuted at WCT's Brand New Summer Shorts in July and went on to the Aery 20/20 Festival in Garrison. Directed by NYU Tisch School of the Arts Drama Department Associate Chair Nathan Flower, it features WCT member Rachel Brill, Emma Welch and Henry Fulton Winship. Hersh and Flower will also address the audience.

Mark St. Germain's play Relativity starred Richard Dreyfuss at Theaterworks in Hartford and Mike Nussbaum at Northlight in Chicago and broke both theaters' box office records. It was selected for the National New Play Network Rolling World Premieres award and produced nationwide. He has also written musicals, screenplays, TV scripts, an award-winning children's book (Three Cups), and directed and produced a documentary (My Dog, An Unconditional Love Story) featuring Richard Gere and Glenn Close. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Writer's Guild East and is an Associate Artist at the Barrington Stage Company.

Nathan Flower has worked Off-Broadway, nationally and internationally, including: Shanghai Theatre Academy, BAM, Judson Church, Crossroads Theater, Center for Performance Research, Classic Stage Company, The Acting Company, Aquila Theatre Co, the Shakespeare Festival in Neuss-Germany, and the Festival at Syros-Greece.

WCT member Stephen Hersh was a finalist and received a Best Director award at a recent Aery 20/20. He was the lyricist of the musical, Going Up?!, winner of the New York New Works Festival in 2015 and has had numerous plays produced through WCT.

Tickets to the gala are available at https://wct2019fallfundraiser.brownpapertickets.com or at wctheater.org. Attendees will enjoy a beautiful Hudson River sunset at the Shattemuc Yacht Club, 46 Westerly Road in Ossining.

Says WCT Executive Director Alan Lutwin, "This has been an extraordinary year for WCT from our spring full-length play The Legend to our Brand New Summer Shorts Festival plus our hugely successful Saturday evening jazz masters series, acting classes for stage and camera, and our ongoing web series O-Town. We ask for your support so we can continue to flourish and contribute to the artistic revitalization of downtown Ossining."

Westchester Collaborative Theater is a multicultural, cooperative theater company located in Ossining, NY, dedicated to developing new work for the stage and bringing live theater to the community. It is comprised of local playwrights, actors, and directors who employ a lab approach in which new stage works are nurtured through an iterative process of readings, critiques, and rewrites. When work is ready for production, it is presented to the public at its theater space.

WCT is committed to furthering theater arts in our community. It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation and a recipient of production grants from ArtsWestchester and New York State Council on the Arts.