Theatre Press Releases PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS
ANNOUNCES SIXTH & FINAL PRODUCTION
FOR ITS 2011/2012 SEASON:
MAPLE & VINE
the New York premiere of a new play by JORDAN HARRISON
directed by Obie Award winner ANNE KAUFFMAN
Playwrights Horizons, under the leadership of Artistic Director Tim Sanford and Managing Director Leslie Marcus, is proud to announce the sixth and final production of its upcoming 2011/2012 Season. Completing the theater company’s line-up is the New York premiere of MAPLE & VINE, a new play by Jordan Harrison (Doris to Darlene at Playwrights Horizons, Act a Lady, Amazons and Their Men), directed by Obie Award winner Anne Kauffman (The Thugs, Stunning, Naked Angels’ This Wide Night, Mr. Harrison’s Act a Lady).
MAPLE & VINE will be presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street) as the third production of the season. The play had its World Premiere this March, also directed by Ms. Kauffman, as part of The Humana Festival of New American Plays. In his review of that production, Charles Isherwood of The New York Times called it, “Piquantly funny, cleverly executed and darkly playful.”
MAPLE & VINE joins the following five previously-announced productions (in Season order):
COMPLETENESS – the New York premiere of a new play by Itamar Moses (The Four of Us, Bach at Leipzig), directed by Obie Award winner Pam MacKinnon (Clybourne Park, The Four of Us, Occupant, Peter and Jerry), presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater. COMPLETENESS will be the first production of the season, beginning performances in August 2011.
MILK LIKE SUGAR – the New York premiere of a new play by Kirsten Greenidge in her New York debut, directed by Obie Award winner Rebecca Taichman (Menopausal Gentlemen, Orlando, The Scene), presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater.MILK LIKE SUGAR will be presented as a co-production with the Women’s Project and La Jolla Playhouse.
ASSISTANCE – the New York premiere of a new play by Leslye Headland (Bachelorette), directed by Trip Cullman (A Small Fire, The Drunken City and Manic Flight Reaction at PH, Bachelorette), presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater.
THE BIG MEAL – the New York premiere of a new play by Dan LeFranc (Sixty Miles to Silver Lake for P73/Soho Rep, In the Labyrinth at Soho Rep), directed by Obie Award winner Sam Gold (Circle Mirror Transformation and Kin at PH, Tigers Be Still, The Aliens,The Coward), presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater.
RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN – the World Premiere of a new play commissioned by Playwrights Horizons with funds from the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, by Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie Award winner Gina Gionfriddo (Becky Shaw). Directed byPeter DuBois (Becky Shaw, Measure for Pleasure, Jack Goes Boating, Artistic Director of Huntington Theatre Company), the play will be presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater.
Bios and production details for the first five productions of the 2011/2012 Season can be found starting on page 3 of this release. Casting information and dates for all six shows will be announced in the coming months.
Three brand-new subscription packages to Playwrights Horizons’ 2011/2012 season are now available: a 6-show Subscription package ($225, four Mainstage and two Peter Jay Sharp Theater productions); FlexPass (4+ tickets, $45-50 per ticket); and Membership ($55 membership fee + one ticket at $40 or less for each show, as desired). In addition, the company will continue to offer 30&Under Membership ($20 membership fee + one $20 ticket for each show, as desired); and Student Membership ($10 membership fee + one $10 ticket for each show, as desired). In addition to discounts on all Mainstage season attractions, subscribers receive priority booking and seating, ticket exchange privileges, parking and dining discounts, and exclusive mailings of Playwrights Horizons Bulletins. Packages are available at www.ticketcentral.com.
Playwrights Horizons, currently celebrating its 40th Anniversary Season, is a writer’s theater dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American playwrights, composers and lyricists and to the production of their new work. Under the leadership of artistic director Tim Sanford and managing director Leslie Marcus, the theater company continues to encourage the new work of veteran writers while nurturing an emerging generation of theater artists. In its 40 years, Playwrights Horizons has presented the work of more than 375 writers and has received numerous awards and honors, including a special 2008 Drama Desk Award for “ongoing support to generations of theater artists and undiminished commitment to producing new work.” Notable productions include five Pulitzer Prize winners: Bruce Norris’ Clybourne Park (2011 winner), Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife (2004 Tony Award, Best Play), Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles (1989 Tony Award, Best Play), Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George – as well as Adam Bock’s A Small Fire, Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation (three 2010 Obie Awards including Best New American Play), Edward Albee’s Me, Myself & I, Melissa James Gibson’s This (2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist), Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie’s Grey Gardens (three 2007 Tony Awards), Craig Lucas’s Prayer For My Enemy and Small Tragedy (2004 Obie Award, Best American Play), Adam Rapp’s Kindness, Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation (2005 Obie Award for Playwriting), Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero, David Greenspan’s She Stoops to Comedy (2003 Obie Award), Kirsten Childs’s The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (2000 Obie Award), Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey’s James Joyce’s The Dead, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins, William Finn’s March of the Falsettos andFalsettoland, Christopher Durang’s Betty’s Summer Vacation and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Richard Nelson’s Goodnight Children Everywhere, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s Once on This Island, Jon Robin Baitz’s The Substance of Fire, Scott McPherson’s Marvin’s Room, A.R. Gurney’s Later Life, Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s Floyd Collins and Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley’s Violet.
Playwrights Horizons’ season productions are generously supported by The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
Playwrights Horizons is supported in part by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. In addition, Playwrights Horizons receives major support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, Time Warner Inc., the Charina Endowment Fund and the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation.
PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS’ 2011/2012 SEASON
COMPLETENESS
New York premiere of a new play by Itamar Moses
Directed by Pam MacKinnon
Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street)
How does a computer scientist hook up with a molecular biologist? He blinds her with science, of course. When Elliot builds a computer program to help Molly with her research project, the variables in their evolving relationship shift as rapidly as the terms of their experiment. This deft and imaginative new meta-comedy shows that even the most sophisticated algorithm may freeze in the face of life’s infinite possibilities.
Itamar Moses (Playwright) is the author of the full-length plays Outrage, Bach at Leipzig, Celebrity Row, The Four of Us, Yellowjackets, Back Back Back and Completeness, and various short plays and one-acts. He is presently adapting Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude. His work has appeared Off-Broadway and elsewhere in New York, at regional theatres across the country and in Canada, and has been published by Faber & Faber, Heinemann Press, Playscripts Inc., Samuel French, Inc. and Vintage. He has received new play commissions from The McCarter Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The Wilma Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club and South Coast Rep Repertory. Mr. Moses holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU and has taught playwriting at Yale and NYU. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, MCC Playwrights Coalition, Naked Angels Mag 7 and is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. He was born in Berkeley, California, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Pam MacKinnon (Director) returns to Playwrights Horizons, where she won an Obie Award for her direction of Bruce Norris’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Clybourne Park. She most recently directed the critically-acclaimed Steppenwolf production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf that was also seen at Arena Stage. Other recent credits include Smudge by Rachel Axler (Women’s Project), A Lifetime Burning by Cusi Cram (Primary Stages), Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance (Arena Stags), All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (Intiman Theatre), The Four of Us by Itamar Moses (MTC), Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s Good Boys and True (Steppenwolf), the New York debut of Edward Albee’s Peter and Jerry (Second Stage), Bruce Norris’ The Unmentionables (Woolly Mammoth) and the world premieres of both John Fugelsang’s All The Wrong Reasons (NYTW) and The Four of Us by Itamar Moses (Old Globe). Other credits include David Mamet’s Romance (Goodman); Gina Gionfriddo’s After Ashley (Philadelphia Theatre Company); Bach at Leipzig by Itamar Moses (NYTW); world premiere productions of Alice the Magnet by Erin Courtney (Clubbed Thumb), Sheri Wilner’s Father Joy (CATF and SPF), Victor Lodato’s 3F, 4F (Magic) and Edward Albee’s Peter and Jerry (Hartford Stage); and the U.S. regional (Alley) and European (Vienna) premieres of Edward Albee’s The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia. She works frequently with Clubbed Thumb, Inc., where she is an Affiliated Artist, and at New York Stage and Film on new play development. Pam is an alumna of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, the Women’s Project Directors’ Forum, the Drama League Fall Production Fellowship and is a member of SSD&C.
MILK LIKE SUGAR
New York premiere of a new play by Kirsten Greenidge
Directed by Rebecca Taichman
Co-production with the Women’s Project and La Jolla Playhouse
Playwrights Horizons Peter Jay Sharp Theater (416 West 42nd Street)
With potential for more but nowhere to put it, sixteen-year-old Annie’s got a choice: honor the pregnancy pact she made with her friends, or find the path to a brighter future. In this searing, sharply observant new play, Kirsten Greenidge finds savage humor and gritty poetry in one inner-city girl’s struggle to carve out a life beyond the only one she knows.
Kirsten Greenidge (Playwright) was recently a Huntington Theatre Playwrighting Fellow. Her work includes Milk Like Sugar (commissioned by La Jolla Playhouse/TheatreMasters), Bossa Nova (world premiere at Yale Rep and recipient of a 2010 Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award), The Luck of the Irish (world premiere at Huntington in 2012, originally commissioned by South Coast Rep and recommissioned by Huntington), Rust (Magic Theatre Company) and Sans Culottes in the Promised Land (Humana Festival). She was recently NEA/TCG playwright in residence at Woolly Mammoth, and is also playwright in residence at CompanyOne, which has produced many of her plays, including “Grimm” (nominated Best New Play, Independent Reviewers of New England), 103 Within the Veil(Best New Play, Independent Reviewers of New England), A More Perfect Union and The Gibson Girl. Ms. Greenidge has enjoyed experiences at Sundance (Utah and Ucross), Magic Theatre, National New Play Network, Cardinal Stage, South Coast, Pacific Playwrights, Madison Rep, Page 73, Hourglass, Bay Area Playwrights, Playwrights Horizons, New Dramatists, The Taper, A.S.K., the O’Neill, the Guthrie, Mixed Blood, McCarter, Humana Festival, Moxie, the Huntington, and New Georges. Ms. Greenidge has been awarded the Lorraine Hansberry Award from the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival and Sundance’s Time Warner Award. She attended Wesleyan University and The Playwright’s Workshop/University of Iowa and is a member of New Dramatists and Rhombus. She is currently working on commissions from Yale Repertory Theatre and Denver Center Theatre.
Rebecca Taichman (Director). Off-Broadway: Orlando (adaptation by Sarah Ruhl, CSC), Second Stage: The Scene by Theresa Rebeck (starring Tony Shalhoub and Patricia Heaton); The Ohio Theatre: Menopausal Gentleman (Special Citation Obie Award). Regional: Oregon Shakespeare Festival: She Loves Me; Shakespeare Theater Company: currently Cymbeline, Twelfth Night, Taming of the Shrew; McCarter Theatre: Twelfth Night; upcoming world premiere musical Sleeping Beauty Wakes book by Tachel Sheinken, music and lyrics by Groove Lilly; ACT: At Home at the Zoo by Edward Albee; Woolly Mammoth: Dead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl (world premiere), The Velvet Sky by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (world premiere), The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl (2006 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Resident Play); Yale Repertory: The Evildoers by David Adjmi (world premiere), Iphigeneia at Aulis by Euripides; The Huntington: Mauritius by Theresa Rebeck (world Premiere); The Humana Festival: The Scene by Theresa Rebeck (world premiere); Round House Theatre: The Diary of Anne Frank adapted by Wendy Kesselman (winner of three Helen Hayes awards), A Body of Water by Lee Blessing; The Prince Music Theatre: The Green Violin by Elise Thoron with music by Frank London (2003 Barrymore Award for Outstanding Direction of a Musical); The Market Theater: Swimming in March by Kate Robin; The Theatre Offensive: The People vs. The God of Vengeance. Instructor: The O’Neill National Theater Institute, MIT, Yale University, the University of Maryland. Training and Affiliations: TCG New Generations Grant Recipient with Woolly Mammoth, Drama League Directing Fellowship, Yale School of Drama graduate.
MAPLE & VINE
New York premiere of a new play by Jordan Harrison
Directed by Anne Kauffman
Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street)
Katha and Ryu have become allergic to their 21st-century lives. After they meet a charismatic man from a community of 1950s re-enactors, they forsake cell phones and sushi for cigarettes and Tupperware parties. In this compulsively authentic world, Katha and Ryu are surprised by what their new neighbors – and they themselves – are willing to sacrifice for happiness.
Jordan Harrison (Playwright) was last represented at Playwrights Horizons with his play Doris to Darlene. His other plays include Maple & Vine (2011 Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville), Futura, Act a Lady (2006 Humana Festival, GLAAD Media Award nomination), Finn in the Underworld (Berkeley Repertory Theatre), Amazons and their Men (Clubbed Thumb), Kid-Simple (2004 Humana Festival), The Museum Play (Washington Ensemble Theatre), and Fit for Feet (2003 Humana Festival). His work has also been produced or developed at American Theater Company, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Geva Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, PlayLabs, Portland Center Stage, Seattle Rep, Signature Theatre Company, Soho Rep, the SPF Festival, the Tokyo International Arts Festival, and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. He is currently working on a musical for Ars Nova, a children’s play for the Arden Theatre, as well as a play for Actors Theatre of Louisville/Berkeley Rep. Jordan is the recipient of a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2009 Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, the 2008 Kesselring Fellowhip, the Heideman Award, a Theater Masters’ Innovative Playwright Award, Jerome and McKnight Fellowships, and a NEA/TCG Playwright in Residence Grant. With Sally Oswald, he edits the annual Play: A Journal of Plays, devoted to the life of plays on the page. A graduate of Stanford University and Brown University’s MFA Playwriting program, Jordan is a resident playwright at New Dramatists. He currently teaches playwriting at SUNY Purchase.
Anne Kauffman (Director) won an Obie Award for her work on The Thugs by Adam Bock (SoHo Rep). She previously collaborated with Jordan Harrison on the World Premieres of Maple & Vine (Humana Festival, 2011) and Act a Lady (Humana Festival, 2006). Other New York credits include This Wide Night with Edie Falco and Alison Pill (Naked Angels), Stunning by David Adjmi (Lincoln Center Theater 3), Dan LeFranc’s Sixty Miles to Silver Lake (SoHo Rep/Page 73), God’s Ear by Jenny Schwartz (Vineyard/New Georges), The Loyal Opposition by Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas (NYTW), Hang Ten by Karen Hartman (Women’s Project), The Ladies by Anne Washburn (The Civilians), Dot (Clubbed Thumb) and Sides: The Fear Is Real (Culture Project). Regional work includes We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Yale Rep), Becky Shaw (Wilma Theater, Barrymore Awards for Best Production, Best Director), Six Degrees of Separation with Tim Daly and Margaret Colin (Williamstown), Communist Dracula Pageant (American Repertory Theater), Have You Seen Steve Steven(13P), Doubt (Asolo Repertory Theater) and Typographer’s Dream (Encore Theater). In 2011, she will also be directing Mr. Harrison’s The Flea and the Professor as well as The Civilians’ You Better Sit Down: tales from my parents’ divorce (this summer at Williamstown). Anne is a 2010 recipient of the Lilly Award in Direction and a 2010 recipient of the Alan Schneider Director Award. She is a Usual Suspect at NYTW, an alumnus of the Soho Rep Writers and Directors Lab, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, The Drama League of New York, a founding member of The Civilians and was a 2003-2004 New Dramatist Resident Director and a member of New Georges Kitchen Cabinet. Anne received her MFA in directing from UCSD.
ASSISTANCE
New York premiere of a new play by Leslye Headland
Directed by Trip Cullman
Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street)
For these young assistants, life is an endless series of humiliations at the hands of their hellacious boss, a powerful uber-magnate. In rare moments of calm when the phone calls stop rolling, Nick and Nora and their traumatized co-workers question whether all their work will lead to success — or just more work. Leslye Headland’s ASSISTANCEis a biting, high-octane satire about our attraction to power and what we’re willing to sacrifice to stay in its orbit.
Leslye Headland (Playwright) is a Los Angeles-based playwright and screenwriter. She is the writer/director of the Seven Deadly Plays series, which was produced by and premiered at the IAMA Theatre Company in Los Angeles. The series includes Cinephilia (lust),Bachelorette (gluttony), Assistance (greed), Surfer Girl (sloth), Reverb (wrath) and The Accidental Blonde (envy). Bachelorette also enjoyed a sold-out, extended run at Second Stage Theatre Uptown in July 2010, which the New York Times called “vivid, entertaining and witheringly funny.” Other New York credits include Cinephilia at Theatre Row. Ms. Headland is currently working on her final play for the series (pride), as well as commissions for Second Stage Theatre and South Coast Repertory. On Television, she wrote the first and only season of “Terriers,”created by Ted Griffin and produced by Shawn Ryan, on FX. She is currently developing two projects with Gary Sanchez Productions (Adam McKay and Will Ferrell)—her 2008 Black List screenplay of Bachelorette and a pilot based on Julie Klausner’s memoir, I Don’t Care About Your Band. She holds a B.F.A. in Drama from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and studied at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School where she was awarded the Robert Moss Prize.
Trip Cullman (Director) returns to Playwrights Horizons after most recently directing Adam Bock’s A Small Fire and previously directing Bock’s The Drunken City and Sarah Schulman’s Manic Flight Reaction. He also recently directed Adam Rapp’s Nursing (part ofThe Hallway Trilogy at Rattlestick), Leslye Headland’s Bachelorette (Second Stage) and Eli Clark’s Edgewise (p73/The Play Company). Other New York credits include Lloyd Suh’s American Hwangap (Play Company/Ma Yi), Terrence McNally’s Some Men (Second Stage), Robert Farquhar’s Bad Jazz (Play Co.), Gina Gionfriddo’s US Drag (stageFARM), Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s Dark Matters (Rattlestick), Roland Schimmelpfennig’s Arabian Night (Play Co.), Bert V. Royal’s Dog Sees God (The Century Center), Glen Berger’s The Wooden Breeks (MCC Theater), Bock’s Swimming in the Shallows (Second Stage), Paul Weitz’s Roulette (EST), Brooke Berman’s Smashing (Play Co.), Rinne Groff’s Of a White Christmas (Clubbed Thumb), Ken Urban’s The Happy Sad (SPF ’09), Gary Sunshine’sSweetness and Brooke Berman’s Sam and Lucy (both at SPF ’04), The Wau Wau Sisters (Ars Nova), Jonathan Tolins’s The Last Sunday In June (Rattlestick and Century Center). Regional credits include Lloyd Suh’s American Hwangap (Magic Theatre), John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation (Old Globe), Richard Greenberg’s The Injured Party (South Coast Rep), Terrence McNally’s Unusual Acts of Devotion (La Jolla Playhouse), Keith Huff’s A Steady Rain and The Petersons Project (both at New York Stage and Film), Lauren Weedman’s Rash (The Empty Space, Seattle). Upcoming: Chris Durang’s Betty’s Summer Vacation (Bay Street) and Bess Wohl’s Touch(ed) (Williamstown Theater Festival). Artistic Associate, The Play Company. Training: Yale School of Drama.
THE BIG MEAL
New York premiere of a new play by Dan LeFranc
Directed by Sam Gold
Playwrights Horizons Peter Jay Sharp Theater (416 West 42nd Street)
Somewhere in America, in a typical suburban restaurant on a typical night, Sam and Nicole meet. And sparks fly, setting in motion an expansive tale that traverses five generations of a modern family, from first kiss to final goodbye. A stunning, big-hearted play that spans nearly eighty years in a single sitting, THE BIG MEAL tells the extraordinary story of an ordinary family.
Dan LeFranc (Playwright) received the 2010 New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award for Sixty Miles to Silver Lake,premiered by Page 73 Productions and SoHo Rep. His other plays include Origin Story, Bruise Easy, Night Surf, In The Labyrinth, The Big Meal, The Fishbone Fables, Backyard, Kill The Keepers and Catgut. His most recent play, The Big Meal, received its world premiere at American Theater Company in Chicago. Awards include the Whitfield Cook Award, the John C. Russell Fellowship, a Djerassi Resident Artists Program Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony/Alpert Foundation Residency; and commissions from Yale Rep, Berkeley Rep, and American Theatre Company in Chicago. He is a proud member of New Dramatists, the MCC Playwrights Coalition, and a former member of the SoHo Rep Writer/Director Lab. A graduate of the MFA playwriting program at Brown University, Dan served as visiting faculty in Literary Arts at Brown and head playwriting instructor of the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. He was recently a visiting lecturer at University of Rochester and Whitman College. Sixty Miles to Silver Lake is published by Samuel French and his short play Hippie Van Gumdrop is published in The Backstage Book of New American Short Plays 2005, edited by Craig Lucas. He was born and raised in Southern California.
Sam Gold (Director) was represented at Playwrights Horizons this season with his critically-acclaimed production of Bathsheba Doran’s Kin. Also at Playwrights, he won a 2010 Obie Award for his direction of Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation, also winning for his direction of Baker’s The Aliens at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. He’s recently directed The Coward by Nick Jones at Lincoln Center Theater’s LCT3 and Tigers be Still by Kim Rosenstock at Roundabout Theatre Company. Other New York credits include directing Stephen Belber’s Dusk Rings a Bell (Atlantic Theater Company), Nick Jones’ Jollyship the Whiz-Bang, which played to sold out runs at Ars Nova in 2008 and The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival in 2010. Other credits include Noah Haidle’s Rag and Bone(Rattlestick), Sam Marks’ The Joke (Studio Dante), Betty Shamieh’s The Black Eyed (New York Theater Workshop), Colin McKenna’s The Secret Agenda of Trees (Cherry Lane), The Threepenny Opera and Marlowe’s Edward II (Juilliard), and Anne Carson’s translation of Electra (Williams College). From 2003 to 2006, Sam served as the dramaturg at The Wooster Group. He is a Roundabout Associate Artist, NYTW Usual Suspect, a Drama League Directing Fellow, a recipient of the Princess Grace Award, and a graduate of the Juilliard Directing Program. He most recently directed Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County at The Old Globe and his future projects include Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at Williamstown Theatre Festival in Summer 2011. Sam Gold, Nick Jones, and Dave Malloy are currently developing a new musical Homunculus, which has been commissioned and will be produced by Center Theatre Group.
RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN
World Premiere of a new play by Gina Gionfriddo
Directed by Peter DuBois
Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street)
After grad school, Catherine and Gwen chose polar opposite paths. Catherine built a career as a rockstar academic, while Gwen built a home with her husband and children. Decades later, unfulfilled in polar opposite ways, each woman covets the other’s life, commencing a dangerous game of musical chairs – the prize being Gwen’s husband. With searing insight and trademark wit, this comedy is an unflinching look at gender politics in the wake of 20th century feminist ideals.
Gina Gionfriddo (Playwright) was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Becky Shaw, which had its world premiere at the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville and its New York premiere Off-Broadway at Second Stage. In 2011, the play opened in London at The Almeida Theatre. Other productions of Becky Shaw include The Huntington Theatre, South Coast Repertory, The Wilma, Actor’s Express and Lawlor Studio in Australia. Her other plays include After Ashley (Humana Festival; Off Broadway at The Vineyard Theatre; regional theatres throughout the country; and abroad in Poland); U.S. Drag (Off-Broadway by the stageFARM and regional productions); Guinevere (O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference); and the one-acts Squalor and America’s Got Tragedy (commissioned and presented by the stageFARM). Gina has received an Obie Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an Outer Critics Circle Award, The Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, and an American Theatre Critics Association/Steinberg citation. She has written for the television dramas “Law & Order,” “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” “Cold Case” and the upcoming “Borgia.” She has contributed essays on rock music to the literary journal, The Believer, and short fiction to Canteen. Gina attended the MFA Playwriting Program at Brown. She has taught writing at Brown, Providence College and Rhode Island College. She is currently working on a commission from Center Theatre Group.
Peter DuBois (Director) is the Artistic Director of the Huntington Theatre Company, where he most recently directed Craig Lucas’s Prelude to a Kiss and Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw, as well as the world premiere of David Grimm’s The Miracle at Naples. He also recently directed the Off-Broadway run of Becky Shaw at Second Stage Theatre and its world premiere at The Humana Festival. He served for five years as a director, associate producer, and resident director at The Public Theater, preceded by five years as the artistic director of the Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska. Public Theater directing credits include the LAByrinth Theatre Company’s productions of Bob Glaudini’s Jack Goes Boating and A View from 151st Street (both NY Times Critics’ Picks); Measure for Pleasure (SSDF Callaway Award for Excellence in Direction; Drama League Award nomination for Distinguished Production of a New Play); Richard III with Peter Dinklage (a Newsday top-ten of 2004); Adrienne Kennedy’s Mom, How Did You Meet the Beatles (NYT Critics’ Pick); andBiro (NYT Critics’ Pick). His directing credits at Perseverance include the West Coast premiere of Suzan-Lori Parks’ In the Blood and the world premiere of Chay Yew’s The Long Season. Regional credits include a revival of Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and productions at Trinity Repertory Company and California Shakespeare Theater. Prior to leading Perseverance, Mr. DuBois lived and worked in the Czech Republic, where he co-founded Asylum, a multinational squat theater in Prague.
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