We're about to start previews -- it's a great time to get your tickets to MEN ON BOATS! October 17 - December 16, 2018 ACT's Strand Theatre << Here's us having some fun around the campfire in tech!
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 I'm delighted to be taking part in the 2018 Bay Area Playwrights Festival! This year, I'm working on Colonialism is Terrible but Pho is Delicious by Dustin Chinn. Here's the blurb:
Our starter takes place in 19th-century French Indochina, where a native finds herself in the kitchen of a colonial aristocrat. The second serving finds us in 1990’s Ho Chi Minh city as two Americans make first contact with the local breakfast. And for dessert, the charms of gentrifying modern-day Brooklyn. Colonialism is Terrible but Pho is Delicious is a three-course tasting menu of the tension that simmers between authorship and ownership across food culture, told across the history of Vietnamese noodle soup. There are six fantastic plays in this year's festival - discover the line-up at https://playwrightsfoundation.org/bapf2018. Performances run from July 22 - 29 at Potrero Stage. February to do list: 1. Watch Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir go for Ice Dancing Gold at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics 2. Watch Ray and ex-girlfriend/drug dealer Lydia go for Performance Gold at Center Rep in Red Speedo: centerrep.org/season1718/redspeedo.php   I was so inspired by The Wooster Group's The Town Hall Affair, which I saw in San Francisco in April, that I hopped a plane to join them for a month in upstate New York! I am apprenticing with The Wooster Group as they develop and premiere A Pink Chair (in Place of a Fake Antique), a play about the work of Polish director Tadeusz Kantor. Tickets for this Bard SummerScape production are available here if you find yourself in the Hudson Valley. Liz LeCompte directs.  This has been the best summer camp ever ... heady days in the rehearsal room with Liz, Jennifer Tipton, Kate Valk, and the rest of the brilliant Wooster Group, fancy-free evenings of BBQ and beer pong, and wild weekends at the famous Bard SPIEGELTENT, pictured here during a quieter moment . . .
My favorite quote from the rehearsal room was Liz declaring "This is my last show with human beings. From now on, robots." This woman is a goddess, for anyone who didn't know that already. Thank you, Woosters, for an amazing experience. I can't wait for the next chance to intern/intersect!  Smut, Word for Word Performing Arts Company's adaptation of Alan Bennett's novella, is running now through June 11 at ZBelow in San Francisco.
I am excited about this play because it upends outdated assumptions about female sexuality! Smut provides an all-too-rare acknowledgement that women and mothers above a certain age continue to feel sexual desire, and celebrates sex that eschews old-fashioned norms and models of monogamy. It also explores how a creative awakening can spark a sexual one -- and vice-versa. Rock on! Lily Janiak of the SF Chronicle writes that the play "titillates . . . with the inward war we must all wage for our right to be deviant, to find pleasure and joy . . ." Come see for yourself, Wednesdays through Sundays, through June 11. Tickets can be purchased here; 20%-off tickets are available with the code "StandardP" for anyone who has worked as a standardized patient.  peerless by Jiehae Park, directed by Margot Bordelon, is in its final week of performances at Marin Theatre Company! Join us Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m., plus Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. More information is available here.
Pictured: Dirty Girl (Rosie Hallett) and M (Tiffany Villarin) in the scene "Consultation." Advice/prophecies gladly given in exchange for cigs and sandwiches.  I'm so happy to be back at Marin Theatre Company this spring for another show in their 50th anniversary season. Here's the blurb for peerless, by Jiehae Park, directed by Margot Bordelon:
Twin sisters “M” and “L” care about two things in this world: academic ambition, and each other. But when M’s supposed shoo-in slot at a prestigious university is given to someone else, the sisters begin to strategize how to secure their success by any means necessary. Taking a page from a certain Scottish tragedy, the sisters' sinister scheming leads to bloody extracurricular activities that could take them to the top. Jiehae Park’s new dark comedy is a savage satire on academia, teenagers and race, and made The Kilroys’ 2015 List of the best new plays by female playwrights. The cast includes Tiffany Villarin as M, Rinabeth Apostol as L, Jeremy Kahn as D/D's Brother, Cameron Matthews as BF, and Rosie Hallett as Dirty Girl/Preppy Girl. Sean McStravick provides stage management. Previews begin March 9, with Opening Night March 14. We run Tuesdays through Sundays in Mill Valley -- tix and more info available here.  I am incredibly honored and grateful to be a part of Marin Theatre Company's Native Son, an adaptation of Richard Wright's novel by Nambi E. Kelley and directed by Seret Scott. Bigger Thomas dares to want more out of life. Things start looking up when he lands a plum job with the well-to-do Dalton family, but their daughter Mary proves to be as dangerous as she is alluring. A fateful decision sends Bigger down a violent and inescapable path. Misrepresented and underestimated by everyone around him, Bigger has no one to turn to except himself. Using W.E.B. DuBois' theory of double consciousness as a guiding principle, this fresh 90-minute adaptation of Native Son focuses on the landscape inside the mind of Bigger Thomas, bringing the power of Richard Wright’s novel to life for a whole new generation. MTC is proud to bring Ms. Kelley’s heart-stopping, urgent, and expressionistic adaptation of Wright’s groundbreaking novel to the West Coast, following its sold-out world premiere at Chicago’s Court Theatre in 2014. The ensemble is led by Jerod Haynes as Bigger, with Ryan Nicole Austin as Bessie/Vera, Rosie Hallett as Mary Dalton, William Hartfield as Black Rat, Patrick Kelly Jones as Britten, Adam Magill as Jan, Dane Troy as Buddy, Courtney Walsh as Mrs. Dalton, and C. Kelly Wright as Hannah. Sean McStravick provides stage management. Native Son will run Tuesdays through Sundays, January 19 through February 12, at Marin Theatre Company in Mill Valley, California. Tickets and further information available here. 
 Ho, ho, ho! Christmas is coming so let's put on a show! I may not know how to say "elf" in French, but that hasn't stopped me from laughing all the way through the rehearsal process of "And Who's Richie Now?" by former Ensemble Studio Theatre Youngblood Christopher Sullivan. Come join us to see if we can pull the mall's star Santa out of his holiday funk. Our merry band of mall employees includes Robert Hoehn as Santa, Darcy Ruscio as Connor, Guillaume Rumiel Braun as James, Ralph Bismargi as Dill, and Rosie Hallett as Casey. Jeremy Coffman directs.  "And Who's Richie Now?" is one of four pieces featured in Big Funk Company's American Sundays: Holiday Edition, happening on December 11 at 12h at the Petit Théâtre Du Gymnase, 38 Boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle, 75010 (Metro Bonne Nouvelle). For tickets (25 Euros for the show and brunch), email the [email protected].
'Tis the season to be jolly and what better way to celebrate than by being entertained by us, followed by devouring our sumptuous brunch. Presented in English, with French surtitles! Après un spectacle à guichets fermés, les AMERICAN SUNDAYS sont de retour pour vous faire entrer dans la plus festive des saisons. Rejoignez les célébrations et profitez de toutes les merveilles - et tout le stress - de cette période magique de l'année. En anglais, surtitré en français!  I'm so happy to be working for a second time with Dipika Guha, a genre-defying writer who has also penned the plays The Rules and Herculine and Lola. Her new play The Mechanics of Love is featured in the Shotgun Champagne Staged Reading series this month. Here's the blurb:
A man who forgets everything falls in love with a ballerina who forgets nothing--that is, until she falls in love with him. And his wife. And the mechanic. This madcap comedy explores how we love, how we choose, and the cost of making sense of it all. Beth Wilmurt directs; the cast includes Rosie Hallett, Chris Libby, Sarah Mitchell, and Aaron Murphy. The reading will be performed Monday, November 9 and Tuesday, November 10 at 7 p.m. at the Ashby Stage in Berkeley. Tickets are $15 in advance or $20 at the door. A talkback with the playwright follows Monday night's performance. |
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