THE SUNSET LIMITED Stars Tucker Smallwood and Ron Bottitta at the Rogue Machine Theatre in Los Angeles, CA

THE SUNSET LIMITED Is Written by Cormac McCarthy and Directed by John Perrin Flynn and Will Run from November 6 through December 19, 2010

Tucker Smallwood and Ron Bottitta star in The Sunset Limited at the Rogue Machine Theatre at 5041 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA from November 6 through December 19, 2010. The Sunset Limited was written by Cormac McCarthy and directed by John Perrin Flynn.  The synopsis of the play:  “On a subway platform in New York City, an ex-con from the South saves the life of an intellectual atheist who wasn’t looking for salvation. Now, the reformed murderer ventures to offer salvation of another kind, bringing the failed suicide victim back to his Harlem apartment for an articulate and moving debate about truth, fiction and belief.”

Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels, ranging from the Southern Gothic, Western, and post-apocalyptic genres.  He has also written plays and screenplays. He received the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for The Road. His 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.  He received a National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award for his 1992 novel All the Pretty Horses.  He is frequently compared by modern reviewers to William Faulkner. McCarthy is increasingly mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature by the influential and well informed Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet

Director of The Sunset Limited at the Rogue Machine Theatre,  John Perrin Flynn also directed the critically acclaimed Los Angeles premiere production of Craig Lucas’ Small Tragedy  at The Odyssey Theatre and the world premiere of John Pollono’s Lost and Found at The Lounge Theatre.  He was an executive producer and director of Lifetime’s long running, award winning series Strong Medicine and has produced two other series and 14 television movies or miniseries, including the Emmy nominated Burden of Proof.  He attended The London School of Music and Dramatic Art and has a M.A. in Theatre from Illinois State University.   John is the founder and Artistic Director of Rogue Machine.

In 1967, Tucker Smallwood was a television director for WBAL in Baltimore when he was drafted into the Army.   Following his commissioning as an Infantry Officer, and six more months as an Infantry Tac Officer at Ft. Benning, Smallwood attended Jump School, Special Warfare School at Ft. Bragg and Vietnamese Language School at Ft. Bliss. He then commanded a five-man Advisory Team (MAT-36) to Vietnamese Regional Force troops in the Mekong Delta. Following months of hospitalization, surgeries and recovery, he extended his Army commitment for three more months to teach patrolling and counter-insurgency tactics to Engineer Officer Candidates at Ft. Belvoir, in Virginia. 

Today, Smallwood has developed an impressive and extensive acting resume, and has performed in productions for the Mark Taper, Cast Theater, Odyssey Theater, NY’s Public Theater and regional theaters.  His films include The Cotton Club (1984), Contact (1997), Deep Impact (1998), The One (2001), Spectres (2004), False Prophets (2006) and Black Dynamite (2009). On television, he has been a series regular and guest star on numerous series such as Space: Above and Beyond, Millennium, Babylon 5, The X-Files, Seinfeld, Malcolm & Eddie, Star Trek: Enterprise, Friends, and portrayed God on The Sarah Silverman Program.  Smallwood is an accomplished country blues guitarist and is the author of Return To Eden, an anthology of essays describing his experiences as an Army Advisor, his life as an artist coping with PTSD and his return to Vietnam in 2004.

Ron Bottitta moved to the U.S. in 1979 from the U.K.  to study History at U.C. Berkeley.  He then joined the M.F.A. Acting program at N.Y.U.  He has appeared in over 75 plays, playing an assortment of characters from Nazis to lyrical guys in doublets, IRA rebels, pompous hotel detectives, cowboy politicians and lots of guys with anger issues or terminal illnesses.   In 2006 he portrayed Anton Chekhov in "Chekhov and Maria" at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles, in a production that moved to the Barrow Group Theatre in NYC in July of 2006. In November Chekhov and Maria (2007) , starring Ron and Gillian Brashear made it onto film, directed by the legendary Eric Till, for a spring 2008 release.  In 2008 he joined L.A.'s Rogue Machine Theatre to play the sympathetic and psychopathic killer "Leftie" in the world premiere of "Razorback", by John Pollono.  Bottitta has appeared in number films and television series, including Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Boston Public, A Lot Like Love, Jericho, Pirates of the Caribbean:  At World’s End and Lost.

Rogue Machine seeks to be a theatre of ideas and a theatre of imagination; a theatre which creates worlds which mirror and examine contemporary culture and current manifestations of conscience and consciousness. It strives to be a theatre that will be theatrical, complex and ambiguous, and absent of ideology. It nurtures new works and introduce works new to Los Angeles. Rogue Machine Theatre will engage the community with art that creates a dialogue and resonates with the audience after the curtain closes.  For more information, call (323) 930-0747 or visit:  www. Roguemachinetheatre.com