Pulitzer Prize Winner THE FLICK Begins Tonight at Gloucester Stage

Gloucester Stage presents Annie Baker's The Flick from tonight, August 20 through September 12 at 267 East Main Street, Gloucester, MA. Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, The Flick, follows three underpaid employees of a run-down movie theater in central Massachusetts as they mop the floors and attend to one of the last 35-millimeter film projectors in the state while also revealing touching and funny truths about their search for identity. Their tiny battles and not-so-tiny heartbreaks play out in the empty aisles of the movie theater, becoming more compelling than the lackluster, second-run movies on screen. In The Flick playwright Annie Baker uses keen insight and a finely-tuned comic eye to create a funny and heartfelt cry for authenticity in a fast-changing world. In addition to winning a Pulitzer Prize for The Flick, Ms. Baker also received the Susan Smith Blackburn Award and an Obie Award for Playwriting.

The Flick director, Bridget Kathleen O'Leary, and cast: Nael Nacer, Melissa Jesser, Marc Pierre and James Wechsler all make their Gloucester Stage debut in Annie Baker's award-winning work. Bridget Kathleen O'Leary is excited to direct an Annie Baker play, "I have been a fan of her works for several years. Few contemporary playwrights have been able to capture what it is to be an outsider with the same sense of empathy and humanity that she has. She brilliantly infuses her plays with a mixture of melancholy and humor while tackling themes that are uniquely relevant to Massachusetts."

Playwright Annie Baker grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her other full-length plays include, Circle Mirror Transformation at Playwrights Horizons which won the Obie Award for Best New American Play and earned a Drama Desk nomination for Best New American Play, The Aliens at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre which won an Obie Award for Best New American Play, Body Awareness with Atlantic Theatre Company which garnered Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play/Emerging Playwright, and an adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya at Soho Rep that earned a Drama Desk nomination for Best Revival, for which Ms. Baker designed the costumes as well. Her plays have been produced at over 150 theaters throughout the U.S., and have been produced internationally in over a dozen countries. Other recent honors for Ms. Baker include a Guggenheim Fellowship, New York Drama Critics Circle Award, Lilly Award, and Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship. An anthology of her work, The Vermont Plays, was recently published.

The Flick director Bridget Kathleen O'Leary is the Associate Artistic Director at New Repertory Theatre where she has directed productions of Scenes from an Adultery, Muckrakers, Pattern of Life, Lungs, Fully Committed, Collected Stories, DollHouse, boom, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and Fool for Love. Other directing credits include: The Other Place for The Nora Theatre Company and Underground Railway Theater; Recent Tragic Events and Aunt Dan and Lemon for Whistler in the Dark Theatre; Reconsidering Hanna(h) and The Devil's Teacup at Boston Playwrights' Theatre. 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, Ms. O'Leary worked in Washington, D.C. Since 2012, Bridget has curated the Next Voices Reading Series, a program she established for New Repertory Theatre. She serves as the Chair of the Literary Committee for the National New Play Network and is a member of The New England New Play Alliance. Ms. O'Leary received her MFA in directing at Boston University.

Nael Nacer has appeared regionally in Come Back, Little Sheba, Awake and Sing!, The Seagull, and Our Town for which he won an IRNE Award for Best Supporting Actor, Intimate Apparel, The Temperamentals, and Animal Crackers at Lyric Stage Company of Boston; A Future Perfect and Tribes with SpeakEasy Stage Company; Pattern of Life, Lungs, and The Kite Runner at New Repertory Theatre; Windowmen, The Farm, and Gary at Boston Playwrights' Theatre; Sila and Distracted with Underground Railway Theater, Shear Madness at the Charles Playhouse; Love Person, 1001, The Aliens, and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot with Company One, The Flu Season at Whistler in the Dark Theatre; and Waters Rising and Shouting Theatre in a Crowded Fire with the National Theatre of Allston. Mr. Nacer's New York credits include The Hiding Place with 59E59 Theaters and Lemonade in the New York International Fringe Festival.

Melissa Jesser's previous credits include: Mr g with Underground Railway Theater, The Seagull with the Huntington Theatre Company which earned an Elliot Norton Award Best Ensemble, Chosen Child at Boston Playwrights' Theatre, and The Hobbit with Wheelock Family Theatre. Additionally, Ms. Jesser has appeared with the Science Fiction Theatre Company, Shakespeare Now! and the Footlight Club. Ms. Jesser received a BFA from Emerson College and studied at Interlochen Arts Academy.

Marc Pierre's Boston credits include Macbeth with Brown Box Theatre Project, I Am a Camera at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, A Soldier's Play with Roxbury Repertory Theater; We Are Proud to Present a Presentation . . . with Company One/ArtsEmerson; Great Expectations and A Midsummer Night's Dream at New Repertory Theatre; and A Raisin in the Sun at ENC Theater. Mr. Pierre's New York credits include Flirt, and Sister Gladys Needs Help with Love Creek Productions and The Imaginary Life of Millo St. Jean with Snapdragon Theatre Works. Mr. Pierre received his BFA in acting at Emerson College.

James Wechsler is finishing a B.F.A. degree in theatre performance at Salem State University. Past roles at Salem State include Franz Kafka in Salem State theatre's original production, Kafka in Tel Aviv, for which he received an award for Outstanding Performance at the National Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival; Prince Hal in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2; and most recently, James in his school's Student Theatre Ensemble production of Circle Mirror Transformation. Mr. Wechsler was the winner of KCACTF Region 1 Irene Ryan Fellowship competition this past year, and this summer he returned to Washington, D.C., to work as an actor for the MFA Playwrights Workshop at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

NeverDark events scheduled for the run of The Flick include two films, talk backs and a play reading. NeverDark is a series of second-stage events that include lectures, talk backs, film screenings, play readings, and other events designed to enhance your knowledge and enjoyment of all Mainstage productions. All NeverDark events are Pay-What-You-Wish. The NeverDark events set for the run of The Flick are a film screening of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction on August 17 at 7:30 pm at the Cape Ann Community Cinema; a reading directed by Artistic Director of Cape Ann Shakespeare Troupe (CAST) Joseph Stiliano of Samuel D. Hunter's A Bright New Boise, a dark comedy about the lives of the minimum-wage working class set in the break room of a Hobby Lobby store in Idaho, on August 25 at 7:30 pm at Gloucester Stage; a film screening of the documentary Side by Side which investigates the history, process and workflow of both digital and photochemical film creation on August 31 at 7:30 pm at the Cape Ann Community Cinema, plus three talkbacks following the 2 pm performances on Sunday, August 23, August 30 and September 6. These post show discussions feature artists from The Flick. .

Annie Baker's The Flick runs August 20 through September 12 at Gloucester Stage. Performances are Wednesday through Saturday at 7:30 pm and Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 pm. Following the 2 pm performances on Sunday August 23, August 30 and September 6 audiences are invited to free post show discussions with the artists from The Flick. Ticket prices are $28 for all performances. Tickets are $1 for ages 25 years and under for all performances. The $1 tickets are cash only and available at the door on day of performance only. Pay What You Wish tickets are available for the Saturday, August 29 matinee at 2 pm. Pay What You Wish tickets can only be purchased day of show at the door. All performances are held at 267 East Main Street, Gloucester, MA. For more information and to purchase tickets, call the Gloucester Stage Box Office at 978-281-4433 or visit www.gloucesterstage.com.

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