La Jolla Playhouse Announces POP TOUR 2009 MISS ELECTRICITY

La Jolla Playhouse is pleased to announce the Performance Outreach Program (POP) Tour 2009, Miss Electricity, written by Kathryn Walat and directed by Melissa Kievman. Set to tour schools and community centers January 28 through March 13, 2009, the POP Tour brings innovative and meaningful stories with professional theatrical performances each winter to children throughout San Diego County. Public performances of Miss Electricity are scheduled to take place March 14 and 15, 2009 at La Jolla Playhouse.

Kathryn Walat's most recent plays, Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen and Bleeding Kansas re ceived their West Coast premieres at Moxie Theatre in San Diego. Walat's La Jolla Playhouse commissioned play Miss Electricity is centered around a ten-year-old girl named Violet.

Tired of being picked on by the cool kids at school, Violet longs for respect. With the help of her best friend Freddy, Violet sets out to break a world record-any world record-so she can prove to her classmates how extraordinary she is. And, just when things seem hopeless, something electric happens that changes Violet's and Freddy's lives and friendship forever.

"Walat is an exciting artist who is known for creating quirky and original plays with a stylish young voice," says La Jolla Playhouse Director of Education and Outreach Stephen McCormick. "Her message about self discovery and self growth in Miss Electricity is sure to resonate with children in San Diego."

This 50-minute play travels to schools, community centers and libraries across the county and will be seen by over 14,000 children by the end of the tour. Prior to the performance, a Playhouse teaching artist visits each school to engage students in an interactive workshop which explores issues and themes at the core of the production. Schools are also provided with copies of a standards-based educator's guide that enables educators to integrate the play into their existing curriculum. After each performance, the cast and crew conduct a question and answer session with the audience.

For more information, or to inquire about bringing Miss Electricity to a school please, call Johanna Range at (858) 550-1070 x101. Public performance tickets for Miss Electricity will go on sale in January. For information: call (858) 550-1010 or go online to www.lajollaplayhouse.org.

Sponsors of this 2009 Performance Outreach Program (POP) Tour include: San Diego Scottish Rite Community Foundation, Bank of America, The Jack in the Box Foundation, QUALCOMM and ResMed Foundation.

The Performance Outreach Program (POP) Tour program was established in 1987 by world renowned theatre director and Tony Award-winner Des McAnuff. The former La Jolla Playhouse Artistic Director created this program for children in San Diego who may not have had the opportunity to see a live theatrical performance. Each year a new play is commissioned that conveys a message of meaning and leaves children with real life lessons that address real issues.

Projects over the past few years have included Juan Felipe Herrera's ¡Salsalandia!, Will Power's Honey Bo and the Gold Mine, Sunil Kuruvilla's West of the 5, Julia Cho's Bay and the Spectacles of Doom, Julia Jordan's Guitar, Hilly Hicks, Jr.'s The Breeze, The Gust, The Gale and the Wind and Luis Alfaro's Ladybird, the Life and Times of a Roller Derby Queen.

The nationally acclaimed, Tony Award-winning La Jolla Playhouse is known for its tradition of creating the most exciting and adventurous new work in regional theatre. The Playhouse was founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire and Mel Ferrer, and is considered one of the most well respected not-for-profit theatres in the country. Numerous Playhouse productions have moved to Broadway, including The Farnsworth Invention, Big River, The Who's Tommy, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, A Walk in the Woods, Dracula, Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays, the Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife, and the currently-running Jersey Boys.

KATHYRN WALAT Her most recent play, Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen premiered Off-Broadway at the Women's Project (New York) and received its West Coast premiere at Moxie Theatre (San Diego) last season; her play Bleeding Kansas was produced last summer at the Hangar Theatre (Ithaca, NY). Other plays include Connecticut, Greenspace, Know Dog, and her latest, Smile. Her work has been produced at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Salvage Vanguard Theater (Austin, TX), and Perishable Theatre (Providence, RI); and developed at Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, MCC, Ars Nova, Boston Theatre Works, Sundance Playwrights Retreat at Ucross, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Lark Play Development Center, and New Georges, where she is an affiliated playwright. Victoria Martin has been published by Samuel French and in New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2007 (Smith & Kraus). Kate received her BA from Brown University and her MFA from Yale Drama School. She is currently working on a commission for Yale Repertory Theatre, and teaches playwriting at Marymount Manhattan College.

MELISSA KIEVMAN is a New York-based theater director and recent recipient of the NEA/TCG fellowship for directors. Kievman has directed dozens of new plays including the world premiere of ANON at the Atlantic Theater by Kate Robin, WALK TWO MOONS by Julia Jordan at the Lucille Lortel and THE NECKLACE, a serial mystery, created with members of The Talking Band. Formerly Associate Artistic Director of New Dramatists, an urban writer's colony devoted to the support and development of new plays and playwrights, Melissa has developed new work by playwrights Brooke Berman, Melissa James Gibson, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Julia Jordan, Sarah Treem, David Zellnik, Kelly Stuart, Laura Eason, Kate Walat, Ann Marie Healy, Laura Schellhardt at Ars Nova, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Children's Theater Company of Minneapolis, Soho Rep, Portland Center Stage, Geva Theater, The O'Neill Theater Center, Tisch School of the Arts, Voice and Vision, Syracuse Stage, Yale, ACT Seattle, Playwrights Horizons, among others. Kievman is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, a Drama League of New York Directing Fellow, has performed with the Bread and Puppet Theater in NYC and abroad and is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and Northwestern. Each August, together with her husband director Brian Mertes, she co-directs Chekhov at Lake Lucille, an annual retreat and large-scale community performance event.

 

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