2006 PRESS RELEASE

Playwright/Director Robert Armin will present a special performance of his 1999 two-character play, Letters From the Inside, at Benjamin N. Carodozo High School in Bayside, Queens on May 9, 2006 for Grade 9 and 10 students.  Based upon the award-winning epistolary novel by Australian writer, John Marsden, this powerful and emotionally charged drama deals with domestic violence and its effect on the lives of two teenage girls, Mandy and Tracey, living on opposite sides of the world.  This unique production, created specifically for Cardozo, will present Armin's production to students who enthusiastically read and analyzed the novel in their Grade 9 Reading/Writing Seminar class.  The opportunity for Cardozo to sponsor the production arose through a year-long email correspondence that developed between the director and the Grade 9 reading/writing teacher at Cardozo, Nancy Orens, who first introduced the novel to her 9th grade students during the Spring 2005 term.  Mrs. Orens says, "My students cannot wait to see the book come to life!  Students from my class last year are still talking about the book!  Many of the students could not put the book down until they finished reading it!"

Armin first learned about John Marsden's novel, Letters From The Inside, by reading a November 1994 review in the Sunday Book Review section of The New York Times.  Described as a “direct and penetrating dramatization of the troubling hidden lives of two teen-age girls,” Armin rushed out to buy a copy of the book minutes before the store closed and completed reading it by nightfall.  The next morning, he began his quest to secure the American stage rights to the book, a quest which ended successfully several years later when he contacted Marsden through an email address he found on the Internet.  Marsden granted Armin permission to adapt the novel into a play and enthusiastically supported Armin's idea of Americanizing the character of Mandy.

Armin met actress Jenny Zerke, who plays Mandy in the stage adaptation of Letters From The Inside, when she attended a performance of Armin's recent NYC revival of the musical, What Makes Sammy Run? at the West End Theatre in Manhattan.  Upon being introduced to her after the show, Armin immediately knew that he had found his Mandy and offered her the role after a single audition.  Zerke, who graduated from Georgetown University last May, most recently appeared in a D.C. play festival with Washington Women in Theatre and will be making her New York stage debut in Letters From The Inside.

Gretchen Poulos, who plays Tracey, the angry young Australian girl, is a New York City actress who recently appeared in Saddam: The Musical at the Arthur Seelen Theatre.  A graduate of Cornell University, Poulos auditioned for What Makes Sammy Run? and, although she wasn’t cast in that show, found herself the director’s first and only choice for the role of Tracey. 

The upcoming performance at Cardoso High will mark the first production of the play since its New York City premiere in 1999, but Armin looks forward to many more performances in the future.  "I'd like to see an off-Broadway production of Letters From The Inside for regular theatergoers," Armin said, "with special matinee performances for student audiences.  It's unusual to find a drama that appeals equally to both teenagers and their parents," he added, “but Marsden’s characters and themes are pretty much universal.”

  

Jenny Zerke (Mandy) and Gretchen Poulos (Tracey)
(For high resolution copies, click on each photo)

If you represent a theatre company interested in staging
Letters From The Inside,
please contact Robert Armin for more information.