Fashion Victims by Richard Alleman

Directed by Broadway actor Anthony Newfield, the first play, Bag Lady, finds a wannabe model played by Kelsey Sheppard taking a break from job hunting in a Greenwich Village park. Here, she encounters a wise old local played by Broadway and television veteran Michael Potts (The Prom, The Wire) who just might change her life. The second play, No Room at the Ritz, features two-time Tony Award nominee Alison Fraser (The Secret Garden, Romance/Romance) as a legendary fashion editor-in-chief who discovers she is about to be unceremoniously fired.

Playwright Alleman has a unique perspective on the world of fashion, having worked as a writer and editor at Vogue for three decades. “It’s a crazy world,” he says. “But I don’t regret one minute of my time there. If anything, I felt privileged. Of course, there was a dark side to it as well, but all that makes a great background for stories and plays.”

Only 100 tickets are available for this exclusive online event, and almost half of them have already been sold! The link to access the live Zoom event will be emailed to all ticketholders.

All proceeds from this reading will go to the charitable programs of the Episcopal Actors’ Guild which has been providing emergency financial assistance and career support to NYC’s professional performing artists of all faiths and none since 1923.

Tickets: $15-$100
To purchase tickets, click here

RICHARD ALLEMAN (Playwright) is the former Travel Editor and a long-time Contributing Editor at Vogue, where he recently co-edited, with Vogue’s Chloe Schama, Vogue on Location (Abrams), which documents the magazine’s travel coverage from the 1930s to the present. He has written for Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Africa Report, In Style, and British, German, and French Vogues. He is author of the classic Hollywood: The Movie Lover’s Guide and New York: The Movie Lover’s Guide (Penguin Random House). In addition to Fashion Victims, his plays include The Bunner Sisters (adapted from the Edith Wharton novella), Quiet Car, #HeToo, All About Ava, It Will Come, and Adrift (currently streaming on the Cape May Stage website).

ALISON FRASER (Elena Livingston) is a two-time Tony Award nominee. Broadway: The Secret Garden, Romance/Romance, Tartuffe, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and Gypsy. She won the 2018 Callaway Award for playing Lady Utterword in Heartbreak House. Off Broadway: Paradise Lost, Enter Laughing, Cinderella, Deathtrap, Squeamish, First Daughter Suite, March of the Falsettos, In Trousers, The Divine Sister, The School for Lies. Film and TV: Happy!, Gotham, Happy-ish, High Maintenance, Law & Order: SVU, The Thing About My Folks, The Sound of Silence. She has narrated over 100 audiobooks including the recent bestseller Dreyer’s English.

ANTHONY NEWFIELD (Director) Broadway: 1984, The Father, The Winslow Boy, The Columnist, The Royal Family, Waiting for Godot, Tartuffe. Off-Broadway: Ivanov, Susan and God, The Bad Infinity, Lady Windermere’s Fan, etc. Regional: To Kill a Mockingbird (Atticus Finch), Pride and Prejudice, An Enemy of the People, Orson’s Shadow, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Arcadia, Bent (Carbonell Award), etc. Ireland: The Normal Heart (Dublin/National Tour), Tom and Viv (Rough Magic), Peer Gynt (Gate Theatre). Tangier: The Crucible with Kenneth Branagh and Derek Jacobi. Film: I Melt With You, Diminished Chords, Miss Bertram’s Awakening, etc. Directing: Adrift, The Bunner Sisters, Quiet Car, Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, etc.

MICHAEL POTTS (Man in Park) Michael can be seen in the upcoming feature film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, starring opposite Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman. On Broadway, he was most recently seen in the Tony®-nominated musical, The Prom. He starred alongside Denzel Washington in the Tony®-nominated The Iceman Cometh. For his role in Iceman, Potts received the Richard Seff Award. In 2017, he starred as Turnbo in the Tony® Award-winning production of August Wilson’s Jitney. He’s also remembered for originating the role of Mafala Hatimbi in the Tony® Award-winning musical The Book Of Mormon. On television, Potts is widely recognized for his role as Brother Mouzone on HBO’s The Wire. He has numerous other theater, television, and movie credits. He’s garnered a Falstaff Award and an Obie Award. He was the 2018 Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in Theatre for Fordham University. Michael is a graduate of The Yale School of Drama.

KELSEY SHEPPARD (Linda/Meredith) is a New York-based actor, singer, and tap dancer! New York Theatre: Holy Ghosts (Urban Stages), Normalcy (Peter Jay Sharp Theater), And Then There Were None (The Secret Theatre), Scenes & Songs from Lerner & Loewe (HB Studio Performance Lab), 5×5 Drama Series (Theatre East). Regional: The Wedding Singer (Riverside Center for the Performing Arts), Artifice (Bloomington Playwrights Project), staged reading production of Richard Alleman’s adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Bunners Sisters (The Mount). Recent film projects include the short films Proud People and Bloodflowers. SAG-AFTRA.