Holland Productions Presents HIDEOUS PROGENY At Boston Playwrights 7/9

Currently celebrating its 5th season, Holland Productions proudly presents the regional premiere of HIDEOUS PROGENY, a witty and salacious story of Mary Shelley and her peers, by playwright Emily Dendinger, July 9 - July 23 at The Boston Playwrights' Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston. Press Night is Saturday, July 9th 8 p.m. (Press tickets will be available for any night during the run).

For tickets or more information, visit www.hollandproductions.org.

"How I, then a young girl, came to think of and dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?"
-- Mary Shelley, preface to Frankenstein, 1831

It was a dreary night outside the Villa Diadoti on Lake Geneva in 1816, The Year Without a Summer. Inside, an 18-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin longs for home, domestic stability, and peace of mind. As the storm rages on, Mary is haunted by her history and tormented by those around her. Amidst the chaos on both sides of the villa's doors Lord Byron issues his infamous challenge to write a ghost story that is both frightening and original. Navigating through sex and science, family and phantasms, Mary births her own hideous progeny and secures her name in ink and immortality.

"The 'why' for Frankenstein is often viewed as a response to the upheaval of the early 1800s and as a warning against the rapid transformation of a soon-to-be industrialized world," says director, Krista D'Agostino. "What we often forget, and what Dendinger's play skillfully illuminates, is the inner chaos brewing within Mary Shelley; the void of being raised without a mother, devastation of losing a child, and the pain of being inextricably bound to an impetuous and radical lover. It's through this comingling of loss and life, depression and obsession, that Mary was able to truly create the horror of Frankenstein."

MEDIA ONLY: Press Night for this production is Saturday, July 9th, at 8 p.m. Please contact us at 617.285.6880 or HollandProductions@gmail.com for more information on complimentary tickets and to RSVP. Arrangements can be made for alternative nights for press viewing. Both director Krista D'Agostino and dramaturge Lydia Anderson are available to discuss Hideous Progeny. Please email to set up an interview.

THE CAST & CREATIVE TEAM

Emily Dendinger (Playwright) is the playwright in residence for Holland Productions, and has had plays produced around the country including her native Virginia. Hideous Progeny premiered last summer in Chicago (LiveWire Theatre) and will receive another reading this fall with the Carlsbad Players. Recently, she wrote the book for the musical The Virginia, which was a semi-finalist at the Eugene O'Neill. Holland Production's inaugural show was Emily's Swimming After Dark, which won the 2005 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Region I's 1X2 One Act Playwriting Competition and 2008 Women Playwrights' Initiative's Playwriting Competition. Her ten minute play Zoology was part of the 2007 Boston Ten Minute Play Marathon and 2009 Snapshot Festival by 20% Theater. Emily's one-act play Family Tree was named the Senior Theatre League of America's Best Play 2004 and is currently published by Dramatic Publishing. Emily received her undergraduate degree from Boston College and will be pursuing her MFA at the University of Iowa starting this fall.
"Emily Dendinger's entertaining new play... a seamless blend of fact and fantasy, PROGENY accomplishes for the Romantics what Tom Stoppard did for Elizabethans in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE." - Time Out Chicago

"Dendinger's dialogue is inventive and Stoppard-esque in her vivid, updated reimagining." - Flavorpill, Chicago

Krista D'Agostino (Director) cofounded Holland Productions in 2006. Since then she has directed numerous productions for the company including Elizabeth Meriwether's The Mistakes Madeline Made, Paula Vogel's The Baltimore Waltz, Naomi Iizuka's Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls, and JorDan Harrison's KID SIMPLE: A Radio Play in the Flesh. She has served as producer on all HP productions including the Boston premiere of Sarah Ruhl's Melancholy Play. She has also directed for The Williamstown Theatre Festival Workshop, Harvard University, Boston Actors Theater, and The Boston Theatre Marathon. Krista is a proud graduate of Boston College.

"In the smart and sensitive directorial hands of Krista D'Agostino...the youthful Holland Productions delivers an energetic, bare-bones version of Paula Vogel's witty elegy." - EDGE Boston (The Baltimore Waltz).

"Director Krista D'Agostino puts characters and performance space together flawlessly." - EDGE Boston (The Mistakes Madeline Made)

"Under Krista D'Agostino's direction, this group of strangers... or at any rate, strange individuals... gels into one of the best ensembles to hit the stage this season." - EDGE Boston (Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls).

The cast of Hideous Progeny includes Lydia Barnett-Mulligan (Her Red Umbrella, 11:11 Theater Company) as Elise; Maggie Erwin as Claire Clairmont (On the Verge, Boston University); Nate Gundy (The Europeans, Whistler in the Dark) as Percy Shelley; Alex Simoes (Aunt Dan and Lemon, Whistler in the Dark) as Dr. Polidori; Julia Specht (Where Moments Hung Before, Boston Actors Theater) as Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; and IRNE award winning Victor Shopov (Enron and Farragut North, Zeitgeist Stage) as Lord Byron.

Scenic design by Sean Cote (The Overwhelming and After the Quake, Company One); costumes by Jackie Dalley (Boston College); properties by Amanda Sheehan; lights by Michael Underhill (Crazy Locomotive, Imaginary Beasts); dramaturgy by Lydia Anderson (The Mistakes Madeline Made, Holland Productions), stage management by Deirdre Benson (At Home at the Zoo, Zeitgeist Stage) and dialect work by Danny Bryck (Aunt Dan and Lemon, Whistler in the Dark).

DATES/TICKET INFORMATION

Hideous Progeny will run July 9th-July 23rd at The Boston Playwrights' Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215.

The performance schedule is Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m, Sundays at 3 pm.

A paid preview performance will take place, Friday, July 8th at 8 p.m.

Thursdays are Pay What You Can performances ($5 minimum).

Tickets are $15 general admission, $10 students/seniors and can be purchased online at hollandproductions.org or by calling 1-866-811-4111. Cash only at the door.

PRESS PHOTOS
Photos will be available upon request

ABOUT HOLLAND PRODUCTIONS
Holland Productions was founded in 2006 by three Boston College graduates looking to empower imagination and promote the female voice at its most dynamic. The company opened at The Factory Theatre with co-founding member Emily Dendinger's Swimming After Dark. Since then, Holland Productions has continued to produce contemporary plays by both female and male playwrights which feature substantial and challenging roles for women that embrace the complexity of reality.

"Our mission is twofold: to both portray the intricacies of the female voice and to create work where everyone, from actor to audience, can bring individual experiences to explore," says Producing Artistic Director Krista D'Agostino. This idea is supported by one of the most defining aspects of Holland Productions - its selection of quirky, whimsical, mind-warping plays. "We're drawn to scripts that reignite that childlike sense of discovery," says D'Agostino. "Specifically, those that position the audience somewhere between entertained viewer and active participant."

Most notably, the company has produced Paula Vogel's The Baltimore Waltz, Elizabeth Meriwether's The Mistakes Madeline Made, Naomi Iizuka's Aloha Say The Pretty Girls, JorDan Harrison's KID SIMPLE: A Radio Play in the Flesh (co-produced with The Factory Theatre), and in early 2010, the Boston professional premiere of Sarah Ruhl's Melancholy Play (Directed by Eliot Norton nominated M. Bevin O'Gara).

Hideous Progeny concludes Holland's 5th season. This witty and salacious portrayal of Mary Shelley and her peers marks Holland's debut at The Boston Playwrights' Theatre.

For more information please visit: www.hollandproductions.org or www.bu.edu/bpt.

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