I AND YOU - Play about Youth, Life, Love and Human Connection

Penguin Rep Theatre, the Stony Point-based nonprofit professional theatre, launches its 2022 mainstage season with I AND YOU by Lauren Gunderson, one of the country’s most widely produced authors for the stage, starting Friday, April 29, artistic director Joe Brancato announced today.

“I AND YOU is an inspiring work about youth, life, love, and the mystery of human connectedness,” Mr. Brancato says. “We are excited to have the play kick off Penguin’s mainstage season, which this year is comprised of four fully staged productions that share stories that uplift and entertain.”

According to executive director Andrew M. Horn, the production will follow Penguin’s pre-season special events – the well-received world premieres of SMALL and FAR FROM THE HOME I LOVE – and marks the return of “the Penguin Rep Theatre experience --- new works in the inviting environs of our repurposed barn in Stony Point, New York – and brings it into a new, more accessible chapter with lower ticket prices.”

In I AND YOU, the last thing Caroline wanted was a classmate named Anthony walking into her life to work on a school project. But as the two let down their guards and share their secrets, they embark on a journey of exploration that will leave audiences breathless.

Author Lauren Gunderson has been one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015. She is a two-time winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for I AND YOU and THE BOOK OF WILL, the winner of the Lanford Wilson Award and the Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, and a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and John Gassner Award for Playwriting.

Under the direction of Thomas Caruso, Outer Critics Circle Award and Lucille Lortel nominee who staged the Broadway national tours of MATILDA, GHOST and MASTER CLASS, the cast features Johnathan Dougan (as Anthony) and Mairéad O’Neill (as Caroline).

The production is designed by David Goldstein (set), Martin E. Vreeland (lighting), Myra Oney (costumes), and Max Silverman (sound).

I AND YOU will be presented through May 15. Performances are scheduled Thursdays at 7 p.m., Fridays at 7:30 p.m. Saturdays (2 shows) at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. There is also a specially discounted matinee scheduled at 2 p.m. on Friday, April 29.

Individual tickets to I AND YOU and the other mainstage productions are priced at $39 (including facility fee and service charge). Discounts are available for groups of 10 or more and young people (30 and under).  There is a student discount. Tickets are half-price ($19.50) with discount code STUDIS.

Performances take place at Penguin’s intimate, 108-seat theatre, located at 7 Crickettown Road. “The converted barn, circa 1880, has never been more inviting” (The New York Times). Says Mr. Horn, “it’s theatre so close you can feel it, with comfy upholstered seats and no seat more than 30 feet from the stage.” The theatre is air conditioned, handicapped accessible, and has plenty of free parking.

During its closure due to COVID-19, Penguin made physical modifications to its venue to make the theatergoing experience safer and more comfortable. Air filtration was upgraded, air circulation modified to ensure increased exchange of inside and outside air, and high-intensity UVC light installed inside the ductwork to remove airborne and surface contaminants.

To order tickets or for further information, visit Penguin Rep’s website at www.penguinrep.org
or call 845-786-2873.

ABOUT PENGUIN REP THEATRE

Joe Brancato was a high school English and drama teacher in 1977 when he peered into an abandoned 1880’s hay barn in Stony Point, New York, and envisioned the space repurposed into a theatre.

More than 40 years later, Penguin Rep – the theatre Brancato started with Francine Newman-McCarthy and runs with executive director Andrew M. Horn -- has grown from a summer theatre to become one of the Hudson Valley’s most influential nonprofit cultural institutions, reaching tens of thousands of theatergoers each year at its home, in New York City and beyond – with its work moving to Off Broadway and to stages across the country and around the world.

Penguin has presented more than 150 productions – over 100 directed by Brancato himself -- for more than 400,000 people from the lower Hudson Valley and beyond. And Mr. Brancato has brought together accomplished professional actors – David Canary, Michael Cullen, Tim De Kay, Ann Dowd, Gregg Edelman, Michael Esper, Barbara Feldon, Tovah Feldshuh, Beth Fowler, Deborah Hedwall, Celeste Holm, Richard Kline, Andrew McCarthy, Lizbeth Mackay, Michele Pawk, and Karen Ziemba, among others – to star in new and noteworthy plays by such playwrights as Lee Blessing, Ronald Harwood, Allan Knee, Arthur Laurents, Warren Leight, Jon Marans, William Mastrosimone, Lainie Robertson, James Sherman and Elizabeth Swados.