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Baker, Hecht Star in Williamstown Top Girls, July 20-31

By: Jul. 11, 2005
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Caryl Churchill's groundbreaking play Top Girls will be performed by a starry ensemble of top actresses from the worlds of theatre, film and television when it opens at the Williamstown Theatre Festival's Main Stage on Wednesday, July 20th for a run through Sunday, July 31st.

The all-female cast will include Reiko Aylesworth ("24"), Becky Ann Baker (Assassins), Brienin Bryant ("Law and Order"), Jessica Hecht ("Seinfeld," Julius Caesar), Laura Heisler (Off B'way's Taming of the Shrew and Hair), Ellen McLaughlin (the original Angel of Angels in America) and Elizabeth Reaser (London's Blackbird and "The Sopranos"). The show will be helmed by Jo Bonney (On the Mountain at Playwrights Horizon, Fat Pig at MTC, Living Out at Second Stage, many more).

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Top Girls won an Obie Award in 1983, was runner-up for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and "is considered by many to be one of the top twenty plays of the 20th century," according to production notes. The play was first staged at London's Royal Court in 1982, before transferring to Joseph Papp's Public Theatre in New York later that year. "What kind of a victory is women's progress in the workplace? Or is it a victory at all? At a dinner party celebrating Marlene's promotion, five women, superstars of the golden ages of history, literature and art, weigh in on the personal sacrifices a woman makes to achieve success."

Top Girls' design team includes David Zinn (sets), Ilona Somogyi (costumes), Frances Aronson (lights) and Jill BC DuBoff (sound).

Churchill is one of Britain's top feminist and ground-breaking writers. Downstairs, her first play, written while she was still at university, was first staged in 1958 and won an award at the Sunday Times National Union of Students-Drama Festival. Owners, her first professional stage production, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in the same year. She was Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court (1974-1975) and spent much of the 1970s and 1980s working with the theatre groups Joint Stock and Monstrous Regiment. Her work during this period includes Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976), Cloud Nine (1979), Fen (1983) and A Mouthful of Birds (1986), written with David Lan.  Serious Money appeared at the Royal Court in 1987 and won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year and the Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play. Far Away premiered at the Royal Court in 2000, directed by Stephen Daldry. She has also published a new translation of Seneca's Thyestes (2001) and wrote A Number (2002), which addresses the subject of human cloning. Her latest play is a new version of August Strindberg's A Dream Play, which premiered at The National Theatre in 2005.

Top Girls will be performed in the 512-seat auditorium in the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance, Williams College, Route 2, Williamstown, MA. Ticket prices range from $20 to $52, depending on the performance date, time and seating location, with performance times on Tuesday through Friday evenings at 8 p.m., Saturday evenings at 8:30 p.m. Matinees are Thursdays at 3 p.m., Saturdays at 4 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. The Main Stage is handicapped accessible, and is equipped with assistive listening devices for the hard of hearing.

Tickets are on sale online at the Festival's official website (www.WTFestival.org) and at the Box Office for in-person sales as well as by calling 413-597-3400.





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