Photos: Inside Opening Night of NIGHT OF JANUARY 16TH

Ruth Stage, in association with Neil and Nancy Weidner, is now presenting Ayn Rand’s Night of January 16th, directed by Theo Devaney. The limited 12-performance engagement  runs through Sunday, October 18 at Theatre Five at Theatre Row, 410 West 42nd Street in New York City.

The complete cast includes Christa B. Allen as Karen Andre; Maryam Basir as District Attorney Flint; Hannah Beemer as Lady Justice; Dylan Joseph Lee Catania as Siegurd Jungquist; Matt de Rogatis as Bjorn Faulkner and “Guts” Regan; Nelson DePasquale as John Hutchins; Milton Elliott as Elmer Sweeney; Prince Hamadi as Dr. Kirkland and James Chandler; Jim Kempner as John Graham Whitfield; Bethany Lanza as Magda Svenson; Joe Pandosh as Homer Van Fleet; Emily Slass as Nancy Lee Faulkner; Gary Stevens as Defense Attorney Stevens; and Theo Devaney as Judge Heath.

Directed by Theo Devaney, Ruth Stage’s Night of January 16th radically reimagines Rand’s courtroom thriller as a bold, heightened descent into a dark, purgatorial parallel reality. On the night of January 16th, financier Bjorn Faulkner falls from the penthouse of his own skyscraper, and Karen Andre, his former secretary, lover and closest confidante, is accused of his murder. But the question is not only whether Karen killed him. It is whether the depth of her love, loyalty and understanding makes her guilty, or makes her the only person capable of telling the truth about who Bjorn really was.

To Karen, Bjorn was not simply a corrupt tycoon or reckless seducer, but a man of terrifying vitality: brilliant, dangerous, wounded and larger than the world that sought to condemn him. As witnesses attempt to reduce him to scandal, fraud or victim, Karen’s memory of Bjorn becomes both her defense and her undoing. She is placed not only on legal trial, but on spiritual and psychological trial, pursued by desire, guilt, memory and threatening forces beyond the visible world.

At every performance, 15 audience members serve as the jury, drawn into the trial and ultimately charged with determining the verdict. Their decision determines which conclusion the company performs that evening, implicating the audience in the central question of the play: what kind of truth do they believe?