Chaflant To Star In Yale Rep's 'Passion Play'

Yale Rep has announced the full cast for their upcoming production of PASSION PLAY by Sarah Ruhl, directed by MarK Wing-Davey at the University Theatre (222 York Street). The show will run from September 19-October 11, 2008. Opening night will be September 25. 

The cast will include Brendan Averett, Kathleen Chalfant, Austin Durant, Laura Esposito, DieteRich Gray, Brian Hastert, Slate Holmgren, Polly Noonan, Barret O'Brien, Susan Pourfar, Keith Reddin, Luke Robertson, Thomas Jay Ryan, Felix Solis, Joaquín Torres, and Nicole Wiesner.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Sarah Ruhl, author of The Clean House and Eurydice, returns to Yale Rep with Passion Play: an epic trilogy of plays performed in one evening, hailed by the Chicago Sun-Times as "wondrous, transfixing, operatic, and monumental." Local communities and amateur actors have come together for centuries to perform Passion plays, theatrical celebrations of the life and death of Christ. Inspired by this tradition, Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play transports audiences first to 16th-century England, where the Protestant Queen Elizabeth threatens to shut down a small town's production; then to 20th-century Germany, where Adolf Hitler seizes an opportunity to use the famous Oberammergau Passion Play to promote the Nazi agenda; and finally to Spearfish, South Dakota in 1984, as a local production becomes a campaign stop for a famous actor turned- President running for re-election.

Poetic, poignant, and uniquely theatrical, Passion Play reveals the power of performance to transform ordinary sinners into saints and world leaders into theatrical icons. Please note: All evening performances of Passion Play will begin at 7:30PM.

Photo Credit Walter McBride/Retna