New Rep Announces DOLLHOUSE 2/28-3/20

New Repertory Theatre, in residence at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, is pleased to announce DollHouse, a drama by playwright Theresa Rebeck, based on Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. Directed by Bridget Kathleen O'Leary. Featuring New Rep favorites Jennie Israel (Boston Marriage and Tartuffe) as Christine and Will Lyman (Exits and Entrances, The Clean House and The Ice Breaker) as Evan. Making her New Rep debut is Sarah Newhouse as Nora.

DollHouse opens for the press on Monday, February 28, 2011 at 7:30pm and plays through Sunday, March 20, 2011 at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in the Charles Mosesian Theater.

"New Rep has always been dedicated to reviving classic texts and revitalizing them for today's audiences, and I am excited to bring Theresa Rebeck's clever, modern adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House to New Rep's stage," says Kate Warner, New Rep's Artistic Director.

Warner continues, "By setting the play in contemporary Connecticut, Rebeck allows our audiences members to reengage with Ibsen's prominent work inviting them to relate more closely with the actions and decisions Nora makes."

"I feel very fortunate and privileged to be working with such an amazing cast and design team," said Bridget Kathleen O'Leary, the director of DollHouse. "Henrik Ibsen is such an important figure in the history of theatre, and Theresa Rebeck has such a powerful voice in contemporary theater. It is a unique opportunity to be able to blend both of these prolific playwrights' styles and works together in this compelling production."

Set in suburban Connecticut, this contemporary adaptation of Ibsen's classic follows the iconic Nora as she struggles to preserve her seemingly perfect life. Nora's "happy home" is compromised when a man from her past unexpectedly resurfaces and threatens to reveal her secret. In this play by critically-acclaimed playwright Theresa Rebeck, Nora must decide between her idyllic world and a life she can truly claim as her own.

DollHouse is Theresa Rebeck's contemporary adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's famous work in 1879.

New Repertory Theatre produces plays that speak powerfully to the essential ideas of our time. Through the passion and electricity of live theater performed to the highest standards of excellence, New Rep expands and challenges the human spirit of both artists and audience. New Rep presents world premieres, contemporary and classic works in several intimate settings. We are committed to education and outreach, including special dedication to the creation of innovative in-school programming and providing access to underserved audiences. New Rep is an active advocate for the arts and a major voice in the national dialogue defining the role of theater in our culture.

ARTISTS

Jennie Israel (Christine) is delighted to return to New Rep where her credits include Boston Marriage and Tartuffe. Other credits include: Actors' Shakespeare Project (founding member): A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Duchess of Malfi, King John, All's Well That Ends Well, King Lear, Julius Caesar, and Richard III; Gloucester Stage: Table Manners and upcoming Living Together, summer of 2011; the Huntington Theatre Company: Les Liasons Dangereuses; Súgán Theatre Company: Molly Maguire; Commonwealth Shakespeare Company: Macbeth and As You Like It; The Vineyard Playhouse: Living in Exile and The Heidi Chronicles. Regional credits include Yale Repertory Theatre: The Marriage of Figaro/Figaro Gets a Divorce, The Beaux Stratagem, and Pericles; Actors Theatre of Louisville: Guernica and King Lear; Greenwich Street Theatre: Antony and Cleopatra; Chautauqua Theatre Festival: Antigone; Shakespeare & Company: Undine's Valediction, The Scarlet Letter, Macbeth, and Summer; Theatre Chicago: Goose and TomTom; and Sun Valley Shakespeare Festival: A Midsummer Night's Dream. Film and television credits include: Rudy (TriStar Pictures), Guiding Light (CBS), and Coming to Litchfield, an independent film. Ms. Israel has taught voice, Shakespearean text, and acting at Bowdoin College, Harvard College, Concord Academy, Boston College, SUNY/Purchase, Emerson College, and The Boston Conservatory. She holds her MFA from the Yale School of Drama.
Will Lyman (Evan) is returning to the New Rep, where he has previously played in Exits and Entrances (Norton Award), The Clean House and The Ice Breaker. Other area credits include: Nicholas Nickleby at Lyric Stage, All My Sons at the Huntington Theatre Company, The Wrestling Patient with SpeakEasy, Boston Playwrights' Theatre (BPT), 40Magnolias, The Oil Thief (Elliot Norton Award), King of the Jews, and A Girl's War at BPT, To Kill a Mockingbird at Wheelock and Equus at The Nora. He is chairman of the Board of The Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, for whom he has previously worked in Hamlet, The Tempest, and Julius Caesar. Many years ago, he performed various roles at various times in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at the Charles Playhouse. Elsewhere, he has performed with the Denver Center Theatre Company, Hartford Stage, Pennsylvania Stage, American Place, George Street Playhouse, NJ Shakespeare Festival, Champlain Shakespeare Festival, Portsmouth Playhouse, and Off Broadway (The Novelist, Trinity, The Passion of Dracula, The Grinding Machine). He has narrated with the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center, the Cleveland Symphony and the Handel and Haydn Society. His voice is frequently heard selling cars and beer (separately) and he has been the narrator of the multi-award-winning PBS series Frontline since 1984. Films briefly include: Little Children, What Doesn't Kill You, Mystic River, The Siege, A Perfect Murder, and Welcome to the Dollhouse. Television series regular: William Tell in 72 episodes of Crossbow, the dying and deceased President Bridges in Commander in Chief, Colonel Atkins in Threat Matrix and John Deerborn in Hull High. Series Guest: Spenser: For Hire twice, Law and Order twice, Ed, Murder She Wrote. Movies for TV: Our Fathers, Meltdown, George Washington and Three Sovereigns for Sarah. Soaps: Another World, The Doctors, Loving, Ryan's Hope, All My Children.

Sarah Newhouse (Nora) is delighted to be making her New Rep debut with this production. Boston area credits include: Six Characters in Search of an Author, The King Stag, Macbeth, Picasso at the Lapin Agile (American Repertory Theater); Much Ado About Nothing, As you Like It (The Publick Theatre); Desdemona-a play about a handkerchief (Boston Center for the Arts); La Vita Claire (Centastage); Legacy of Light, Red Herring, Lost in Yonkers, The Miracle Worker (Lyric Stage Company of Boston); Imperialists at the Club Cave Canem, The Square, Root of Minus One (The Market Theater) and Shear Madness (Charles Playhouse). Regionally, venues include The Rose Tattoo (Berkshire Theatre Festival), Arcadia (The Firehouse Theatre at Newburyport), and Of Mice and Men (American Stage Festival). Off & Off-Broadway: Playwrights' Horizons, Kraine Theatre, Manhattan Punch Line. Sarah appeared in Gloucester Stage Company's acclaimed production of Table Manners by Alan Ayckbourn last June, and will be doing the 2nd part of The Norman Conquests trilogy this June. Ms. Newhouse is also a founding company member of the Actors' Shakespeare Project (ASP), with whom she has performed 10 roles in 6 years, most recently as Lady Percy in Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2. Local film credits include 'Feathers', 'The Legend of Lucy Keyes', 'Dischord', and 'Beneath Contempt', which just screened at this year's Slamdance Festival. TV: As The World Turns, Another World, MTV, Saturday Night Live. Sarah is a graduate of Hampshire College and the ART Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University. She is currently serves on the boards of both StageSource, and Actors' Shakespeare Project.

Theresa Rebeck (playwright) is a widely produced playwright throughout the United States and abroad. Past New York productions of her work include Mauritius at the Biltmore Theatre in a Manhattan Theater Club Production; The Scene, The Water's Edge, Loose Knit, The Family of Mann and Spike Heels at Second Stage; Bad Dates, The Butterfly Collection and Our House at Playwrights Horizons; and View of the Dome at New York Theatre Workshop. Omnium Gatherum (co-written, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2003) was featured at the Humana Festival, and had a commercial run at the Variety Arts Theatre. Her newest work, The Understudy, premiered at the 2008 Williamstown Theatre Festival and ran in New York at the Laura Pels Theater in a Roundabout Theatre Company production as part of their 2009 - 2010 season. Ms. Rebeck's first novel, Three Girls and Their Brother, was published by Random House/Shaye Areheart Books in April 2008. Her second novel, Twelve Rooms With A View, was published by Random House/Shaye Areheart Books in May of 2010. In television, Ms. Rebeck has written for Dream On, Brooklyn Bridge, L.A. Law, American Dreamer, Maximum Bob, First Wave, and Third Watch. She has been a writer/producer for Canterbury's Law, Smith, Law and Order: Criminal Intent and NYPD Blue. Her produced feature films include Harriet the Spy, Gossip, and the independent features Sunday on the Rocks and Seducing Charlie Barker, an adaptation of her play, The Scene. Awards include the Mystery Writer's of America's Edgar Award, the Writer's Guild of America award for Episodic Drama, the Hispanic Images Imagen Award, and the Peabody, all for her work on NYPD Blue. She has won the National Theatre Conference Award (for The Family of Mann), and was awarded the William Inge New Voices Playwriting Award in 2003 for The Bells. Mauritius was originally produced at Boston's Huntington Theatre, where it received the 2007 IRNE Award for Best New Play as well as the Eliot Norton Award. Ms. Rebeck is originally from Cincinnati and holds an MFA in Playwrighting and a PhD. in Victorian Melodrama, both from Brandeis University. She is a proud board member of the Dramatists Guild, a Contributing Editor to the Harvard Review, an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre Company, and has taught at Brandeis University and Columbia University. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

Bridget Kathleen O'Leary (director) is in her third season at New Rep as Artistic Associate. Most recently, she directed New Rep's productions of boom, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and the critically acclaimed production of Fool for Love. Other directing credits include: The Boys of Winter (IRNE Nomination, Best New Play, 2008) for BKS productions; The Devil's Teacup (IRNE Nomination, Best New Play, 2007) at Boston Playwrights' Theatre; and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The American Clock, Much Ado About Nothing, Curse of the Starving Class, Dancing at Lughnasa, and Sarah Kane's Crave and 4.48 Psychosis, all at Boston University. In 2007, she assisted Artistic Director Wendy C. Goldberg at the National Playwrights' Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and worked as an assistant on new plays by Rebecca Gilman and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. Before moving to Boston, Bridget worked in Washington, D.C. with the Olney Theatre Center, Theater Alliance, Cherry Red Productions, Charter Theater, Studio Theatre Second Stage, and Phoenix Theatre DC, of which she was a founding member. Selected D.C. directing credits include: Independence, Parallel Lives, and the creations of Unwrapped and Lulu Fabulous by area playwrights. Bridget received her MFA in directing at Boston University. She lives in Watertown with her husband Chris.

FACTS AT A GLANCE

Company: New Repertory Theatre

Where: in residence at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, Charles Mosesian Theater,
321 Arsenal Street, Watertown, MA 02472

Production: DollHouse

Director: Bridget Kathleen O'Leary

Cast: Diego Arciniegas Damien Rank
Jennie Israel Christine
Gabriel Kuttner Neil Fitzpatrick
Will Lyman Evan
Sarah Newhouse Nora
Claudia Q. Nolan Emma
Julian Schepis Bob
Cheryl Singleton Julianna

Designers: Kathryn Kawecki Scenic Design
Rafael Jaen Costume Design
Chris Brusberg Lighting Design
Scott Nason Sound Design

Performing: First performance: Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 2:00pm
Press Opening: Monday, February 28, 2011 at 7:30pm

Runs through: Sunday, March 20, 2011 at 2:00pm

Performances: Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 2:00pm (Pay What You Can)
Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 7:30pm
Monday, February 28, 2011 at 7:30pm (Press Opening)
Thursday, February 3, 2011 at 2:00pm
Thursday, February 3, 2011 at 7:30pm
Friday, February 4, 2011 at 8:00pm
Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 8:00pm
Sunday, February 6, 2011 at 2:00pm (Talkback)
Wednesday, February 9, 2011 at 7:30pm
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 7:30pm
Friday, February 11, 2011 at 8:00pm
Saturday, February 12, 2011 at 3:00pm
Saturday, February 12, 2011 at 8:00pm
Sunday, February 13, 2011 at 2:00pm (Talkback)
Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 7:30pm
Friday, February 18, 2011 at 8:00pm
Saturday, February 19, 2011 at 3:00pm
Saturday, February 19, 2011 at 8:00pm
Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 2:00pm (Talkback)

Student matinees are available. Please contact Bridget Kathleen O'Leary, Artistic and Education Associate, at 617-923-7060 ext. 204 or e-mail education@newrep.org.

Tickets: Full Price $28-$58. Seniors $7 off full price. Student rush $14.
Call: 617-923-8487 or buy online at www.newrep.org.

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible
Assisted Listening System
Box office with TTY
For TTY only, dial 617.923.2067
Large-Print and Braille Programs available

Public
Transportation: #70 or #70A bus to the School Street stop.

Parking: Free, six-level parking garage across from the Arsenal Center for the Arts

 

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