LONG-RUNNING NEW YORK TALE STABILIZED NOT CONTROLLED MAKES LOS ANGELES DEBUT

Character actor and playwright Frank Blocker premieres his long-running edgy solo comedy to Los Angeles audiences in the 2013 Hollywood Fringe Festival. Directed by Jeffrey Edward Peters, STABILIZED NOT CONTROLLED pays homage to the Big Apple in this story of an evil landlord fighting his rent-stabilized tenants for control of a 5-floor walk-up. Developed at New York’s Stage Left Studio, the play uses dialogue and conversations lifted from subway conversations, corporate hallways, and the city streets to create a fictional story that happens in almost every rent-stabilized apartment in New York.
STABILIZED enjoyed a 10-month run in 2012 courtesy of Cheryl King Productions and E-Merging Writers. Blocker worked with movement specialists and vocal coaches Kathy Kelly Christos and Amy Jones to develop a rich set of truly New York characters such as aging and recovering sex addict Lorna Breedlove, diabolical landlord “Killer” Joe Tennent, and a plethora of 12-stepping City dwellers who are all fighting for their home: the story of a man’s love for property.
Blocker last appeared in two Los Angeles productions earlier this year: Southern Gothic Novel, which received an LA Stage Alliance “Ovation Recommendation” and was previously nominated for a New York Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, and David Bertolino’s titillating The Deep Throat Sex Scandal at The Zephyr Theatre.
STABILIZED not controlled runs through the end of June as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival and is appearing at The Visceral Company venue, The Lex, 6760 Lexington Avenue. Showtimes are June 9 & 16 at 7:00pm, June 23 at 5:00pm, June 25 at 8:00pm, and June 27 & 29 at 10:30pm. All tickets are $10.
Blocker is also appearing in The Visceral Company production of THE BABY, playing the misunderstood Mama Wadsworth. Director Peters has just released his new graphic novel Melvin G. Moose, Toode Dick, and also created the graphics for the show.

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StabilizedNotControlled.com
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CherylKingProductions.com

BIOS

FRANK BLOCKER. Born in San Bernadino, California and raised in Arizona and Oklahoma, Frank Blocker spent his youth in Atlanta before settling on New York City for a decade before moving to Los Angeles. As an actor, he received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Solo Performance (2009), an Ovation Recommendation by the Los Angeles Stage Alliance (2013), was part of the Obie-winning production of West Village/East Village Fragments by Peculiar Works Project and performed with Emmy-nominated composer Garth Koren in cabaret Songs of Viscera as the vocalist (2012). Dubbed “redoubtable character actor” by New York Magazine, “flawless” by The New York Times, “gifted monologist” by Broadway World and “perfection” by LA Weekly, he coaches privately and guest lectures at colleges, conferences and high schools. Highlight roles include a wide range of styles: Mortimer in Brecht’s Edward II, Peculiar Works Project’s Don Quixote, original works by Pamela Parker, multi-character performances, and small forays into film. His first play, Eula Mae’s Beauty, Bait & Tackle co-authored with Chuck Richards, was a hit for 10 years in Atlanta before opening under off-Broadway contract on Theatre Row in 2001, running for 8 weeks. Patient Number received the Inner Voices Social Issues One-Act Play Award, having its premiere at Actors Express in Atlanta. Other one-act winners include The Wisconsinners at the Dubuque Fine Arts Center and Kiss and Fade at the Short Attention Play Festival in Boston. Comedy Suite Atlanta premiered at the 78th Street Studio Theatre in NYC and Stabilized Not Controlled premiered at NYC’s Stage Left Studio where it ran for ten months, making its LA premiere in 2013. Other plays include Clarabee in Wichita Falls, Air Marshals, and Good Jew. Blocker also edited and published Stage THIS! Ten-Minute Plays (edited w/ Jan Herndon), Stage This, TOO! More Ten-Minute Plays (edited w/ Sydney Stone and Murray Scott Changar), and Stage THIS! Volume 3 (edited w/ Stone and Dana Todd), as well as sci-fi novel The Slaves of Votarus (Changar). He is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, SAG/AFTRA and Actors’ Equity Association. He regularly consults other playwrights on writing, dramaturgy, editing and play production. Blocker has been playwright-in-residence for Creative Mechanics Theatre Company NYC and Clayton State College and University, and was a guest speaker/playwright at New York University, Florida State College in Jacksonville, and Mississippi State Theatre Association’s annual conference.

CHERYL KING is the owner, and artistic and managing director of Stage Left Studio, the only solo show repertory theatre in NYC. She is the resident acting coach at All My Children, the Emmy-winning daytime drama at ABC. Her performance background includes multiple careers, in vaudeville/burlesque, mime, 13 years in standup comedy and 12 years in theatre in NYC. Her internationally acclaimed solo show, “not a nice girl”, has had runs Off-Broadway in NYC, in Los Angeles and Ft. Collins, CO. Her television credits include ABC’s 20/20, and Faking It on TLC, in an episode that was also featured on Oprah! She created and hosts in Forbidden Kiss LIVE, an erotica series with a cast of 8 artists, and regular guest stars, all who contribute original material. This celebrated show has been running at Stage Left for three years. She formed her own production company, Cheryl King Productions, in 2000, and has produced several acting retreats, over 300 showcases, and three years of V-Day events. She is the creator of the Left Out Festival, a festival of gay performance art, which sold out 12 of 16 shows in April 2008 at Stage Left Studio, and resulted in large donations to Bailey House and GMHC. For her work in promoting gay performance, she was chosen as one of the 100 Women We Love in GO Magazine’s June 2008 Atlanta Pride Issue. In November 2008 she was chosen “Person of the Year” by nytheatre.com. She also created the Women At Work Festival, which had its second run at Stage Left in October 2008, and which contributed funds to Friends of Niger, the Young Girls Scholarship Fund. Ms. King has curated solo shows for the Estrogenius Festival at ManhattanTheatreSource since 2005. Ms. King is co-writer of full-length play Arturo’s Window, which has been presented as a staged reading at several NY theatres, and has been offered a main stage production at the York Theatre in NYC. She teaches writing workshops, and has written a book about her technique called “Writing Your Heart Out.” She is a contributing writer to Glenn Alterman’s “Creating Your Own Monologue” and the arts paper Soul of the American Actor. She is an advisory board member of ARIA and a member of the Dramatists Guild In addition to private coaching in acting and writing, she directs solo show artists Frank Blocker, Cyndi Freeman, Beth Bongar, Karen Thibodeau, Cheryl Smallman, Susan Rankus and River Huston.

THE VISCERAL COMPANY is a Los Angeles-based company dedicated to producing theatre and films in the horror, thriller, and sci-fi genres. Founded in early 2010 around the production of the award-winning short film BUGBABY, the company’s primary focus is to explore these genres in live theatre, with a particular emphasis on dark, strange, and macabre themes. Preview production FOUR SHADOWS played to packed houses in July 2010. In October, the company presented an evening of one-act plays entitled TALES TO DIE FOR. February 2011 saw the West Coast premiere of Scott T. Barsotti’s zombie play THE REVENANTS. Summer 2011 brought Radha Bharadwaj’s tale of personal and political torture CLOSET LAND, garnering their first LA Weekly Award nomination in the process. The second season began with DEAD OF NIGHT, a fully authorized, original adaptation of short stories by Stephen King. Classic ghost story THE TURN OF THE SCREW won two LA Weekly Awards, spooky environmental play GHOST LIGHT was their first Hollywood Fringe Festival Entry. In 2013, Visceral produced critically-acclaimed productions of VERONICA’S ROOM and KILL ME.