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Alumni News

MIBS alum pens off-Broadway play


Randall David Cook “Sake with the Haiku Geisha,” a new play by Randall David Cook, MIBS ’96, opened at the Perry Street Theatre in New York City Feb. 24 and will run through April 8. The Off-Broadway production is “part drama, part romantic comedy and part ghost story,” says Cook. It “blends traditional Japanese Noh theater with contemporary American drama.”

Part of the play was broadcast last year on BBC Radio, and it won the Best Play award at the Southeastern Playwrights Conference. It’s “easily my most personal work,” according to Cook, who worked on the play for six years.

Cook, who was in the French track of the Master of International Business Studies (MIBS) program (now called the International MBA), began writing plays after a production that he wrote for a MIBS internship project while in the south of France convinced him that his real talent – and his heart – lay in the theater.

His first screenplay, called “Quintet,” advanced to the finals of the 2001 Sundance Filmmakers Lab sponsored by actor/director Robert Redford. Another of his plays, a Southern Gothic murder mystery satire called “Third Finger, Left Hand,” played Off-Off-Broadway.

Cook has secured a discount for fellow MIBS grads who want to see the play. For previews (Feb. 24-March 1), MIBS and IMBA alums who use the code RDCNWP can purchase tickets for $30. After March 2 (when the play officially opens), tickets will be $45 for those alums using the code RDCMBA. Performances run Tuesday through Saturday at 8 p.m., with a Sunday matinee at 3 p.m. The Perry Street Theatre is in the West Village, just south of 11th Street and west of Seventh.

To purchase tickets, visit the SmartTix site (www.smarttix.com) and enter “SAKE.”