Obie Award winner Renata Hinrichs presents live performances of her acclaimed drama about the ripple effect of a single act of kindness.
May 9 - June 27, 2021 at the cell theatre
“Well crafted and beautifully written... A story about kindness, about acceptance, bullying, peer pressure, friendship, breaking down of stereotypes and all of it told through the sublime, heart lifting performance of Hinrichs.” – Front Row Center
“Moving, funny and more relevant by the minute.” – Somewhere in Transition
“An easy mix of cleverness and charm, wisdom and innocence. Animated by skillful shifting from character to character, her likable performance grows easy to believe and hard to resist.” –Blogcritics
“Not only is it good theater, it’s also the sort of presentation I find to be needed during these rapidly changing times.” -- Ewing Reviewing
“I was captivated by this memoir… vivid and powerful.” – Theater Reviews From My Seat
“Truly impressive… RANDOM ACTS should not be missed.”-- Electronic Link Journey
Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre hosts RANDOM ACTS, a solo play written and performed by Obie Award winner Renata Hinrichs. Performances begin May 9 at the cell. Performances will be presented open air for a strictly limited audience of 18 with masks and social distancing required.
RANDOM ACTS opens in the 1960’s at the height of the Civil Rights movement. It is here, on the south side of Chicago outside a church that straddles the black and white neighborhoods, that a scared five-year-old white girl finds kindness in chaos. How far can the ripple of one act of goodwill go? Now grown, one girl's story proves that the effect of even a small good deed can reach further than ever imagined.
RANDOM ACTS is written and performed by Renata Hinrichs. It received the Best Storytelling Script Award from the United Solo Festival in 2014 and was published by Indie Theater Now. It premiered Off-Broadway in February 2019 at TBG Mainstage Theatre. Hinrichs has performed the play at both the Hewitt School and Packer Collegiate Institute as part of their diversity programs. It has also been performed at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation for an interfaith gathering and in Waterbury Center, Vermont. In the fall of 2020 Hinrichs performed pop up performances in parks and gardens in NYC for socially-distanced audiences.
Renata Hinrichs is a founding member of Big Dance Theater, co-directed by Annie-B Parsons and Paul Lazar. With Big Dance Theater she has performed in New York, London, and the Georgian Republic, as well as at The American Dance Festival and The Yard, winning an Obie award for Best Ensemble Performance for A Simple Heart. She is currently a member of FAB Women of the Barrow Group, where she first performed and developed Random Acts. Other acting credits include the lead role in the short film Happy Now, which won first prize at both the Cannes Film Festival and the Deauville Film Festival. Theater credits: Dorset Theater Festival, Boise Contemporary Theater, The Barrow Group, EST, Soho Rep, Ohio Theater. TV: DeadBeat, The Blacklist, Law and Order: SVU, and Jessica Jones (Netflix). Ms. Hinrichs trained as an actor at the T. Schreiber Studio and The Barrow Group School with Carol Fox Prescott, Carol Reynolds, Seth Barrish, and Lee Brock. Other acting teachers include Bob Krakower, Tim Phillips, Tony Spiridakis, Maggie Low, and Devin Shackett. She studied writing and playwriting with Lisa Kron, Roderick Menzies, Maia Danziger, and Seth Barrish.
Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre (Artistic Director Kira Simring) is a non-profit dedicated to the incubation and presentation of new works that mine the mind, pierce the heart, and awaken the soul. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the cell has successfully moved into the digital sphere by streaming virtual concerts and programming such as Dark Matter Immersive’s Garden of Eden (New York Times’ Top Ten Things to Do This Week), Tolerance Party (Time Out New York Best Theater to Stream this Week), the Room | to | Breathe series with Bright Shiny Things, Nourishment "Bites" with Holdtight Dance Company, Apex Sky, Harps Uncovered and Liquidverse a psychedelic & meditative show exploring the images of the cosmos through oil based dyes by Liquid Light Lab and music by composer and technical director of the cell Ricardo Romaneiro. Past productions include Found, Hoard (co-produced with Off the Wall), The Pink Unicorn (starring Alice Ripley co-produced with Out of the Box), The Evolution of Mann, Bastard Jones (Drama-Desk Nominated), Crackskull Row, Hard Times: An American Musical, The McGowan Trilogy, Hey Jude, Horse Girls and more. www.thecelltheatre.org @thecelltheatre
RANDOM ACTS runs Sundays May 9 & 23 at 4pm and Sundays, June 6-27 at 5pm. Running time is 75 minutes. Patrons are required to follow all city-mandated COVID-19 precautions including mandatory mask wearing, limited capacity, filling out a contact-free survey for symptoms and potential exposure, and a digital temperature check upon entry. Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre is located at 338 West 23rd Street. Tickets are $20, available at www.SpinCycleNYC.com.