To Center Stage in Santa Barbara on June 12, 13 & 14
Winner of prestigious EDINBURGH FESTIVAL Fringe First Award

After a Fringe First win in Edinburgh and a successful run off London’s West End, Sue Turner Cray’s Manchester Girl stops in Santa Barbara for only 3 shows at the Center Stage  on June 12, 13 and 14 at 8pm, before heading to New York City.
“THERE ARE NO FAT MODELS!”…Those words served as a mantra for British born Turner-Cray while she strutted her stuff on the runways working as a fashion model in 1980s Tokyo, Japan. Twenty years later, the favorite phrase of her portly booking agent continued to haunt her and helped turn her angst into the hit show, Manchester Girl, a dizzying odyssey through Tokyo’s highflying 1980s fashion world, a vivid journey of hilarious culture clash, discos, drugs, and heartbreak.

The one woman show features Turner-Cray’s 11 different characters including Manchester girl Sara, who is appalled by the limited life of girls around her – life in a sock factory, boyfriend, pregnancy, and marriage – and aspires to escape her English working class roots and seek a better life. This drives her to a foreign land to face the hazards and opportunities of life as a western model in Japan where she struggles to stay a size 2 or risk deportation and sends her on a heroic journey of self-discovery, transformation, and truth.

The Los Angeles Times says “Turner-Cray doesn’t let us regret a minute spent in her company” while The London Times gives the show 4 stars, “An intelligent, moving and relentlessly intense piece of work… feels as vital as if it were written in her own life blood.” Adds the Huffington Post, “Manchester Girl breathes stoic affirmation for women in search of self in an undertow of uncertainty. It dazzles the mind and spirit. Academy Award winning editor Richard Harris is in charge of major technicalities blending moving and photographic images as projectionist. Harris gives great backdrop and vision to Cray’s manifesto destiny and in this case the Titanic does not sink. It soars!”

The play features a vintage Geisha kimono designed by Charlotte Frizelle-Bird and various cinematic elements of city skylines and Japanese wood block art. Images were shot and edited by Turner-Cray and cinematographer Jonathon Millman, and overseen by Academy Award winning editor Richard Harris (Titanic). Carl Mahoney is lighting and sound operator.

Tickets are $40 and can be purchased: BOX OFFICE (805) 963-0408 (V/TDD) or online http://centerstagetheater.tix.com
Press Contact: Tracey Miller, TMA, Inc. tracey@tmapublicity.com  609-383-2323, ext.11