Theatre Incognita Opens with ‘Danny and the Deep Blue Sea’

Theatre Incognita will launch its fifth season with John Patrick Shanley’s bare-knuckle romance Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.
Performances take place Friday and Saturday, Sept 20 & 21 at 8 pm, with matinees on Saturday at 2 pm and Sunday (9/22) at 3 pm at Risley Theatre on the Cornell campus. Advance tickets are $8 for students and seniors and $10 general, available through Ticket Center Ithaca (607.273.4497 or ithacaevents.com); tickets are also available at the door ($15 all.)
Shanley, winner of both a Pulitzer and an Oscar for his dramatic writing, landed on the map with the NYC premiere Danny… (starring an unknown John Turturro) five years before the movie Moonstruck,
Two lost souls hovering on either edge of thirty, strike up a conversation in a dive bar in the Bronx. Their somewhat violent coming together turns into a night of dreams and a possible new life for both.
The cast includes Ithaca native Sam Wallace as Roberta, and A.J. Sage as Danny. Incognita’s Artistic Director Ross Haarstad directs.
Haarstad, fresh from directing an acclaimed production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for The Homecoming Players, chose this play for the actors. “Sam recently returned to her hometown for a stretch before trying her wings in the city, and I was dying for a chance to work with her. And AJ has been Incognita’s right-hand man as stage manager all last season, so it was time to showcase his acting chops,” says the director.
“The play is the equivalent of sitting at ringside watching a prize fight that concludes in a loving embrace.” (New York Times)
Sam Wallace was last seen as Balthazar/Seacoal in Much Ado About Nothing (Ithaca Shakespeare Company). She received her BA in theatre from a collection of schools and programs, including the British American Drama Academy, Oberlin College, and Sarah Lawrence College. AJ Sage is an actor, playwright and stage manager. He has appeared once onstage and twice offstage for Theatre Incognita (Our Town, The Importance of Being Earnest). Favorite roles include Borachio (Much Ado About Nothing), Stinky Holloway (Moose Murders), and the Player King (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead).
More information is available at theatreincognita.org.