Theatre NOVA Kicks Off 2024 With FORTUNE By Deborah Zoe Laufer

Theatre NOVA, Ann Arbor's resident nonprofit professional theatre, has announced the Michigan Premiere of "Fortune" by Deborah Zoe Laufer. 

Madame Rosa is looking for a new job. Typist? Astronaut? Anything would be better than being a storefront psychic who can actually see the future. And Jeremy is desperate. A nebbishy accountant looking for love, he stumbles into Madame Rosa's to find answers once and for all. Directed by Carla Milarch, Fortune features Russ Schwartz and Josie Herman. The production team includes Paul Taylor (scenic), Jeff Alder (lighting), Genevieve Compton (costume), Briana O'Neal (sound/props), and Amanda Buchalter (stage manager).

Proud to produce the hottest new plays at affordable prices, Theatre NOVA offers a subscription program as the best way to see quality programs at a discounted price. Subscribers save on single ticket prices and guarantee their seats for the remaining four plays of the 2023-24 Season and admission to the Michigan Playwrights Festival. Subscribers get easy exchanges, no per-ticket fees, a pass to our Michigan Playwright's Festival, and our eNewsletter, keeping them up to date on future events at the theatre. If patrons prefer to pick and choose which productions they'd like to see and when they would like to see them, our popular Flex Pass offers six tickets to use for any show and any date.

All Thursday performances will be mask-required to provide a safe space for our immunocompromised patrons and those who want a higher level of risk mitigation. This policy is subject to change, following fluctuating local, state, and federal guidelines. Please check our current COVID-19 policy before your scheduled performance date.

Theatre NOVA is located at 410 W Huron St, Ann Arbor, MI 48103. Performances are on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. General admission tickets for plays are $28. Theatre NOVA continues to make theatre accessible by offering pay-what-you-can tickets for those who need them. The general public may purchase tickets, memberships, flex passes, and subscriptions online at www.TheatreNOVA.org. Tickets may also be purchased in person one hour before each performance. Seating in the theatre will begin 30 minutes before each performance. 

There is ample free parking and quick access to the city's restaurants, bars, bakeries, and coffee shops. New patrons can find Theatre NOVA across Huron Street from Ann Arbor's YMCA through a parking lot entrance on the north side of the street. For more information, visit www.TheatreNOVA.org. 

Theatre NOVA's mission is to raise awareness of the value and excitement of new plays and playwrights and to provide resources for playwrights to develop their craft by importing, exporting, and developing new work. 

Deborah Zoe Laufer (Playwright)- Deb's plays have been produced at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Cleveland Playhouse, Geva, The Humana Festival, Everyman, Primary Stages, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and hundreds of other theaters around the world. Plays include Be Here Now, End Days, Rooted, Informed Consent (NYTimes critic's pick), Leveling Up, Out of Sterno, The Last Schwartz, Sirens, Meta, The Three Sisters of Weehawken, Fortune, dozens of short plays, and the musicals, Window Treatment, and By Any Other Name, written with composer, Daniel Green. Deb is a recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, the Lilly Award, The ATCA Steinberg citation, and grants and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Edgerton Foundation, The National New Play Network, and the Lincoln Center Foundation. Her work has been developed by The Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference, Theatre Lab, PlayPenn, The Cherry Lane Alternative, The Missoula Colony, LOCAL Theatre, Asolo Rep, The Baltic Playwrights Conference, and more. Her plays are published or recorded by Concord/Samuel French, Smith and Kraus, Playscripts, LA Theatreworks, and Premieres. She is a graduate of Juilliard, an alumna of the BMI Lehman Engel Advanced Musical Theatre Workshop, a member of Honor Roll, and a Dramatists Guild Council member. DEBORAHZOELAUFER.com

Carla Milarch (Director) is a former artistic director of Performance Network Theatre, whose passion for new plays led her to co-found Theatre NOVA. As a dramaturg and director, she has helped bring 25 brand new plays to fully-staged productions, as well as hundreds of plays to staged readings, including those at the Michigan Playwrights Festival, the Fireside New Play Festival, the NNPN National Showcase of New Plays (board member), and the Kennedy Center's MFA playwrights' workshop. She served as board president of the Michigan Equity Theatre Alliance. Some awards include "Best Overall Season/Artistic Direction" from the Oakland Press, "Outstanding Contributions to an Ensemble" from The Detroit Free Press, "Most Valuable Performer" from the Oakland Press, and the Between the Lines "Angel" award for outstanding contributions to the LGBT community. Carla's love and experience for both sides of the stage have taken her from producing theatre at The Barn Theatre in Port Sanilac, Michigan, to co-founding a theatre in Amarillo, TX, with her Purchase classmates, to producing theatre in a barn again—this time in the middle of a world-class city.

CAST BIOS:

Josie Herman (Maude) This is Josie's first time "officially" cast in a Theatre NOVA show, although she has cameoed as a food-stealing rat in DJ Whittington's Kool Kat Christmas Panto, in between her job of feverishly quick-changing actors backstage. Josie has performed on-stage with The Michigan Shakespeare Tour (Lady Macbeth), The Penny Seats Theatre Company, and The Ghostlight Theatre, among others, and has studied theatre arts at Eastern Michigan University. She also acts and directs for theatre, film, and audio fiction podcasts, most notably her first feature film, House of Ka, and the Webby-honored 3 season science-fiction podcast The Call of the Void, both of which she co-wrote and produced with her incredible husband. Thanks for all the love, Michael!

Russ Schwartz (Jeremy) is proud to make his Theatre Nova debut with Fortune! Russ has been an actor in Southeast Michigan since 2007; recent projects include Livonia Shakespeare in the Park's Henry V, VRTC's Macbeth, and PTD's The Mousetrap, which marked his return to in-person theatre after a three-year pandemic hiatus. He also appears as tech-head astronaut Baskin in Secondhand Rose Players' streaming space opera Eyes to the Stars. Many thanks to Josie, Carla, Briana, and the entire Theatre NOVA team for their hard work, dedication, and trust.


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