This April is a great opportunity to focus the spotlight on one of our oldest and most prestigious member companies: Theater Ten Ten. Theater Ten Ten was founded in 1955, for which they stake their claim as New York City's longest continuously operating Off-Off Broadway theatre.

With a mission to hire established professionals along with young, emerging artists, Ten Ten produces a yearly season of mainstage shows, special performances, workshops, readings, and a Cabaret Concert Series, embracing a range of comedy, drama, musical, and light opera with an emphasis on the classics and a commitment to nontraditional casting.

Theater Ten Ten has received seven IT Award nominations and Greg Horton took home the 2006 IT Award for Outstanding Actor In A Lead Role (The Singapore Mikado).

Their lauded production of The Singapore Mikado, by Charles Berigan and David Fuller and directed by Fuller, was part of a long association with Gilbert and Sullivan going back more than 20 years. In 1997, they mounted the first New York revival of George S. Kaufman's Hollywood Pinafore, which garnered critical acclaim and lead to publication by Dramatist Play Service.

So the announcement of their new offering should delight fans: The 103rd Annual Performance of Ruddigore, or The Witch's Curse, presented by Murgatroyd's Hospital for Mental Rehabilitation, Ruddy Gore, Maine opens this month for a five-week run. Touted as "Gilbert & Sullivan like you've never seen it before," this unique adaptation of the G&S classic (with a Marat-Sade style bent) is set in an asylum with performers playing patients who are playing characters in Ruddigore.

With a creative team that includes past nominees (notably David Fuller as adaptor/director), the production features a traditional ten role, "no chorus" ensemble including past IT recipient Greg Horton and nominees David Tillistrand and Cristiane Young.

In the show, inmates and staff of a mysterious mental hospital on Maine's rugged eastern shore re-enact an annual tradition of a musical comedy as a tribute to the hospital's dubious founder, Rupert Murgatroyd, and a much needed source of entertainment as well as "therapy," utilizing an array of therapeutic puppets.

The 103rd Annual Performance of Ruddigore, or The Witch's Curse, presented by Murgatroyd's Hospital for Mental Rehabilitation, Ruddy Gore, Maine runs April 24th through May 24th. For more tickets and information, visit www.theatermania.com or call 212-352-3101.