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idnight Sun, a new script by actor Chris Eigeman, has been selected for the annual screenplay reading presented jointly by WFF and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. The collaboration began in 2000 and is now part of WTF's popular "Fridays at 3" reading series.
This year's event will take place on Friday, July 23rd at 3:00pm in the auditorium of the Paresky Center on the Williams College campus. Tickets are $5 and are available at (413) 597-3400, at the WTF box office, online at wtfestival.org, or at the door on the day pending availability.
Midnight Sun tells the gripping, highly personal story of the young people recruited behind a cloak of top secrecy to help develop the atomic bomb toward the end of World War II. It offers a fascinating, kaleidoscopic look at scientific genius, personal ambition, and moral conflict. The script, which received grants from Tribeca Film Institute and the Sloan Filmmaker Fund, will be produced by actor/WTF alumnus Kevin Spacey and Trigger Films and will shoot this fall under Eigeman's direction starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kate Bosworth. In Williamstown, a dozen members of the WTF acting company will play 35 characters.
Chris Eigeman started out as a member of the WTF Apprentice Workshop in 1985. His career took off with a hilarious, acerbic performance in Whit Stillman's film Metropolitan, followed by leading roles in Stillman's Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco. He also appeared in Path to War, Kicking and Screaming, Maid in Manhattan, The Perfect You (WFF/2002) and The Treatment (WFF/2006). TV audiences have seen him in "Gilmore Girls," "It's Like You Know," and "Malcolm in the Middle." Eigeman's directing debut Turn the River with Famke Janssen and Rip Torn premiered at the Museum of Modern Art, won Best Screenplay at the Hamptons International Film Festival, and was nominated for the John Cassavetes Prize at the Independent Spirit Awards.
"I'm delighted this has worked out," says WFF executive director Steve Lawson. "It's been terrific to watch Chris develop as an actor since he was a kid at WTF 25 years ago, and now he's successfully branching out into writing and directing. Midnight Sun promises to be a remarkable film, and we're lucky to be giving the screenplay its only public reading before the cameras roll."
The Williamstown Film Festival's 12th season will run October 15 through 24. Complete schedule will be announced and tickets and Passes will go on sale in mid-September.
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