Door Wide Open
Directed by Tony Torn
Produced by Rip Torn’s Sanctuary Theater Workshop
** featuring a score performed live by David Amram **
May 17 - June 22 at Bowery Poetry Club

Rip Torn’s Sanctuary Theater Workshop presents the World Premiere of Joyce Johnson’s Door Wide Open, a new play based on the love letters of novelist Johnson and infamous "King of the Beat generation" Jack Kerouac. The play stars Amy Wright as Joyce Johnson, Adira Amram, Meg Brooker and The Sopranos’ John Ventimiglia as Jack. It is directed by Tony Torn featuring a musical score written and performed live by legendary composer David Amram. Performances begin May 17th at Bowery Poetry Club.

In January, 1957 Allen Ginsberg set up a blind date between 34 year-old Jack Kerouac and 21 year-old Joyce Johnson. The two began a stormy love affair that lasted for 22 months -- a period which included the publishing of Kerouac’s seminal work On The Road. Kerouac spent much of his time drinking and traveling -- roaming Africa with William Burroughs, visiting his mother in Florida, and on a national publicity tour -- writing to Johnson throughout. Door Wide Open uses Jack and Joyce’s actual letters to chronicle an ill-fated, tempestuous relationship between two writers.

Joyce Johnson’s Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958 was published by Viking in 2000. The title comes from a cable that Joyce sent in response to Jack’s request to stay in her 113th Street apartment. She wrote about her experiences with Kerouac and others in the novel Minor Characters which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1984. Johnson was the inspiration for a character in Kerouac’s 1965 novel Desolation Angels. Her other novels include What Lisa Knew: The Truths and Lies of the Steinberg Case (1990), In the Night Café (1989), Bad Connections (1978) and Come and Join the Dance (1962).

John Ventimiglia plays Artie Bucco on the popular HBO series The Sopranos. His film credits include Jesus’ Son, Mickey Blue Eyes, I Shot Andy Warhol, Stonewall, Bullets Over Broadway, Party Girl, Woody Allen’s No Looking Back and Steve Buscemi’s Trees Lounge.

Amy Wright has starred in the original Broadway productions of Fifth of July (opposite Christopher Reeve) and Noises Off. Her film credits include The Accidental Tourist, The Amityville Horror, Breaking Away, Miss Firecracker and The Deer Hunter.

Tony Torn is an actor and director who has been called "a downtown Zero Mostel" by Time Out. He first appeared with Sanctuary at age 15 in the melodrama The Drunkard. As an actor he has appeared in Richard Foreman’s The Universe and Paradise Hotel, Richard Maxwell’s Caveman and Ionesco’s The Picture. His directorial credits with Sanctuary include J.M. Synge's In the Shadow of the Glen and Box by Juliana Francis.

Sanctuary Theater Workshop was founded in 1977 by Rip Torn and a company of actors including Geraldine Page, John Heard, and Amy Wright with a mission to produce both new and classical works. Recent productions by Sanctuary include Eugene Ionesco’s The Picture and 3.

David Amram is listed by BMI as one of their "20 Most Performed Composers of Concert Music in the US." He has composed over 100 orchestral and chamber works, two operas, music for Broadway (After The Fall, On The Waterfront, J.B., Caligula) and for film (Splendor in the Grass, The Manchurian Candidate, The Arrangement). His concerto for flute and orchestra, "Giants of the Night," commissioned in 2002 by James Galway, is a tribute to Kerouac, Charlie Parker and others. In addition to Kerouac, he has collaborated with such notables as Leonard Bernstein, Dizzy Gillespie, Dustin Hoffman, Charlie Mingus, Elia Kazan, and Odetta. He was composer-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic in 1966-67. His book Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac was published in 2002 by Thunder’s Mouth Press.

Door Wide Open runs May 17 - June 22 at Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery between Bleecker and Houston -- accessible from the F,B,D,V,4,5,6 trains at Broadway/Lafayette.) Performances are Saturdays & Sundays at 7:30pm. Tickets are $15. For reservations call 212-614-0505.