Cleveland Play House Adds World Premiere To 2018-2019 Season

Cleveland Play House (CPH), in a Co-Production with Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, announces the addition of the World Premiere comedy Tiny Houses to its lineup for the 2018-2019 Season. Written by emerging playwright Chelsea Marcantel, Tiny Houses will first be featured as a CPH 2018 Roe Green Award winner at the New Ground Theatre Festival, with a reading on Saturday, May 19. CPH Artistic Director, Laura Kepley, will direct both presentations of the play.

Tiny homes are all the rage! Bohdi is a hypnotherapist. Jevne is a YouTube artist. Ollie sells haunted dolls online. Cath just left her job to move to Oregon with her new boyfriend. And they are all building a tiny house together in the back yard. As the dwelling comes together onstage, tensions swell, discoveries are made, and long-buried feelings rise to the surface. In a world where bigger is always better, can tiny really equal happy? Or is this a recipe for disaster? A comedy about what happens when the world shrinks.

Tiny Houses received its first public reading at the Chautauqua Theatre Company's New Play Workshop, July 14-16, 2016. Marcantel is receiving the 2018 Roe Green Award in recognition of her outstanding achievement in playwriting. Her growing repertoire, including Everything is Wonderful, Airness, Ladyish, and Devour has been produced around the United States and Canada. In addition to writing, Chelsea is an avid self-producer, a member of The Writers Guild of America and The Dramatists Guild, a recipient of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Fellowship at The Juilliard School, and teaches at Virginia Intermont College, Emory University and Henry College.

CPH Artistic Director, Laura Kepley stated, "Tiny Houses is a delightful new play that comically captures the universal longing for home and family. Playwright Chelsea Marcantel explores the Tiny House movement- homes that are 200 square feet or smaller!- and fills her story with idiosyncratic, lovable characters struggling to determine what they really need versus what the world tells them to want. Turns out that choosing a simpler life can get very complicated, which makes for a surprising, charming and very entertaining night of theatre."

Kepley continued, "The first thing that grabbed me about Chelsea's extraordinary script was the daring dramatic proposal that a tiny house gets constructed over the course of the play. What a thrilling invitation to the design team, the director and the actors! The play is literally a labor of love and we can't wait to begin construction!"

The CPH 2018-2019 Season Subscriber Series begins in September with the launch of the U.S. National Tour of London's long-running hit The Woman in Black, a mystery thriller based on the novel by Susan Hill. The 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Sweat will then heat up the Outcalt Theatre with a story of the working class struggling to make ends meet in the Rust Belt. An Iliad hits the stage in January, featuring two women in a modern, visceral telling of the ancient Greek story of war and vengeance. Next up is the return of CPH favorite Ken Ludwig and his rollicking new comedy, Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood. Next on the list is Tiny Houses, from 2018 Roe Green award winner Chelsea Marcantel. The Subscriber Season comes to a hilarious and poignant conclusion with a look over the fence -- the neighbor's fence -- in Native Gardens. From Cleveland favorites to new voices, every show features strong, determined characters staring down the obstacles for the greater good.

In addition to the six-play Subscriber Series, CPH is proud to announce two special attractions: the family holiday favorite A Christmas Story in November and December, 2018, and The Wolves, a full immersion into the world of teenage girls, which will be featured in the 2019 New Ground Theatre Festival.

Subscriptions to the 2018-19 Season at Cleveland Play House are on sale now. Subscribers save up to 25% off individual ticket prices and receive many great benefits throughout the season. Full and flexible season packages begin at just $262. To purchase subscriptions or to receive more information, call 216-400-7096 or visit clevelandplayhouse.com.

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