Boston Playwrights' Theatre Continues 2016-17 Season of New Plays with THE ATHEIST by Ronan Noone

Boston Playwrights' Theatre (BPT) continues its 2016-17 season with The Atheist by Ronan Noone. Running from January 19-February 5, this comedy is directed by the playwright.

The Atheist is a solo piece centering on crooked tabloid journalist Augustine Early. Originally created for a male actor, Noone readdresses the piece here with a female protagonist played by Georgia Lyman.

"I wondered what difference, if any, would there be for an audience when a woman played the part." Noone says. "Would she be seen as more scrupulous than a man? Would she be judged differently from a man? . . . Do we measure our news by an alternative standard when a woman reports it to us? Casting Augustine Early as a woman immediately updated the play for me."

The playwright also predicts that The Atheist-and what the satirical comedy has to say about the role of media in our culture-will resonate in today's political environment.

"At present, we are beginning to suspect that the former trust we had in our newspapers is breaking and that, in fact, it may have been broken for a long time," Noone says. "And now this nation, where 60 million citizens voted directly opposite to its other 60 million citizens, is divided not by ideas, but by anger.

BPT Artistic Director Kate Snodgrass agrees.

"Ronan's brainstorm to change the gender of his protagonist is right on the money," Snodgrass says. "In fact, in this race of social media, I think it actually makes the play even more relevant to all our lives."

A post-show conversation with Noone will follow the Jan. 21 performance.

The Atheist enjoyed an off-Broadway run (with Chris Pine in the titular role) in 2006. The play was also produced by the Huntington Theatre Company in 2007 and at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2008; both productions starred Campbell Scott. The play has also been produced in the U.K. (London and Edinburgh), Spain, Canada, the Philippines and Ireland.

A graduate of-and now adjunct assistant professor in-Boston University's M.F.A. Playwriting Program, Noone's award-winning plays including Brendan, Scenes From an Adultery, The Baile Trilogy (The Lepers of Baile Baiste, The Blowin' of Baile Gall, The Gigolo of Baile Breag), The Compass Rose and Little Black Dress have been seen in theatres throughout the country and around the world including the Huntington Theatre Company, New Repertory Theatre, the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Vineyard Playhouse, and many others.

BPT's season continues in February with The Honey Trap by Leo McGann, a co-production with the Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Theatre; Franklin by Samantha Noble (March); and Every Piece of Me (April), also produced with the Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Theatre, by Mary Conroy.

ABOUT BOSTON PLAYWRIGHTS' THEATRE

Founded in 1981 at Boston University by Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, Boston Playwrights' Theatre (BPT) is an award-winning professional theatre dedicated to new works. At the heart of BPT's mission is the production of new plays by alumni of its M.F.A. Playwriting Program, the latter in collaboration with Boston University's renowned School of Theatre. The program's award-winning alumni have been produced in regional and New York houses, as well as in London's West End. BPT's productions have been honored with numerous regional and Boston awards, including 12 IRNE Awards for Best New Script and six Boston Critics' Association Elliot Norton Awards.

INSTITUTIONAL BIOGRAPHY

Founded in 1839, Boston University is an internationally recognized private research university with more than 30,000 students participating in undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs. BU consists of 17 colleges and schools along with a number of multi-disciplinary centers and institutes which are central to the school's research and teaching mission. Established in 1954, Boston University College of Fine Arts is a top-tier fine arts institution. Comprised of the School of Music, School of Theatre, and School of Visual Arts, CFA offers professional training in the arts in conservatory-style environments for undergraduate and graduate students, complemented by a liberal arts curriculum for undergraduate students.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT/DIRECTOR

Ronan Noone's The Second Girl is the winner of the inaugural Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Excellence in Playwriting Award, 2015. Additional plays include: The Athiest, Brendan, Scenes From an Adultery, The Baile Trilogy (The Lepers of Baile Baiste, The Blowin' of Baile Gall, The Gigolo of Baile Breag), The Compass Rose, Little Black Dress, and A Small Death. The themes that run through Ronan's work are immigration, dispossession, misanthropy, issues of social conscience, and the ability of a character to survive difficult and fascinating circumstances. He believes in playing with ways to tell a good story, a necessary story that tells us who we are, where we've been and where we are going. He believes in stories that resonate beyond the theatre's door and that add ideas to the national conversation. He believes in the playwright as thinker.

His play The Atheist played at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston and at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. It was also co-produced by The Culture Project and TEd Mann's Circle in the Square productions in New York and received both Drama Desk and Drama League Acting nominations. Other recent international productions have taken place in the U.K. (London and Edinburgh), Spain, Canada, the Philippines, and Ireland. His full-length and one-act plays are published by Samuel French, Smith and Kraus, Baker Plays, and Dramatists Play Service. Awards include: Jeff recommendations in Chicago; Ovation recommendations in Los Angeles; Critics Award in Austin, Texas; American Critics Steinberg New Play Award nomination; nomination for best play at 1st Irish Festival New York; three Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) Awards for Best New Play; the Boston Theatre Critics Association's Elliot Norton Outstanding New Script Award; a Kennedy Center National Playwriting Award; and a 2014 Edgerton New American Play Award. His essay on theatre, "Being Afraid to Breathe," is published by the Princeton University Library Chronicle LXVIII, and his plays have been featured in books on Irish Studies, such as Anail an Bheil Bheo: Orality and Modern Irish Culture and Sinead Moynihan's Other People's Diasporas. He has attended the Sundance Theatre Workshop and developed work at New York Stage and Film, The Orchard Project, The Lark Theatre and Theresa Rebeck's Vermont Writer's Retreat, American Conservatory Theatre (ACT) in San Francisco, and The Hermitage Artist Retreat in Florida.

He is Artistic Associate at the Vineyard Playhouse on Martha's Vineyard. Noone has also developed work for television with Pretty Matches Productions and the reality TV-based Production Company High Noon Entertainment. His 2014 Live Action Short The Accident (based on his short play I Glue You) has played the Boston International Film Festival and the Montclair Film Festival.

After studying politics and mathematics at University in Galway (NUIG), Ireland, Ronan began his writing career with a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism. He wrote for various newspapers in Ireland with a small stint in Prague. After an editor told him his writing was de-constructive and did not meet the formula for a newspaper, he wrote his first play. Later, he immigrated to America and submitted that play to Boston Playwrights' Theatre where he studied with Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott. There he understood that deconstruction wasn't a bad word, and for a play to develop you needed the support, belief, and resources of a theatre community behind you. As a teacher, Ronan guides student writers to search for the beating heart in their work, to critique with care, to rewrite using the pen as a scalpel, and to read and reread all the plays they can get their hands on. RonanNoone.com.

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