As our own ice and snow in Connecticut finally begin to break up and disappear, The Experimental Theatre Company of Westport Community Theatre offers our members and subscribers a staged reading of David Rambo's touching and engrossing play The Ice-Breaker, with WCT favorite Elise Bochinski and, in his WCT / ETC debut, Miles Everett. Friday, March 4 at 8:00 PM FREE to members and subscribers, $5 general public at the door
Come Friday and see global warming, global cooling, Antarctica, professional careerism, passion, and loss combine in an intellectual and emotional love song. Dramatists Play Service, the play's publisher, calls The Ice-Breaker "both a science thesis and a love story." Sonia Milan is writing her Ph.D. dissertation in paleogeology and climate studies - "Warming to a New Ice Age: Implications of Increasing Arctic Glacial Melt and the North Atlantic Current" - and, alarmed at where her conclusions seem to be tending, has tracked down Lawrence Blanchard, the scientist whose work first inspired her to go into that field, for guidance.
She finds him living in the southwestern desert, far from Antarctica, his only academic pursuit teaching pottery in a community college. He wants nothing more to do with the world he has left, and tries to refuse to read her dissertation; she refuses to leave his house until he does. Talking and drinking wine in front of the fire as an electrical storm lights up the night sky, Sonia makes unexpected discoveries, and Lawrence confronts his past. The world (both personal and global) is changing, and they have to decide what to do with that.
Elise Bochinski has appeared at WCT as Claire in Proof, Sybil in Separate Tables, and Laura in The Glass Menagerie. She has appeared in a number of staged readings for Bare Bones Theater at the Pequot Library: Murderers, "The Tinker's Wedding" (St. Pat's at the Abbey), and Dickens in December. Staged readings elsewhere include A View from
Joseph Stella's Brooklyn Bridge (Yale Art Gallery);
Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst (Fairfield University); and, most recently, Shakespeare In the Dark, a play-in-progress by Mary Jane Schaefer, with Theatre Artists Workshop. This past summer she played Minka Lupino in the Town Players of Newtown production of Murderers; other roles there include Ariel in The Tempest, Claire in Fuddy Meers, Helena in All's Well that Ends Well, Catherine in The Memory of Water, and one of the Dromio twins in The Comedy of Errors. Favorite roles at other local theatres include Lennie in Crimes of the Heart (Stamford's Curtain Call); Catherine in Proof (Ridgefield Theatre Barn); Guta in Behave Yourself Quietly (Little Theatre in New Haven); The Thunder of Tiny Feats (BAR in New Haven); and the Nurse in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet directed by guest artist Barbra Berlovitz of the Theatre de la Jeune Lune at the Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University. Elise studied at HB Studios, RADA, the
Michael Howard Studio, and the National Shakespeare Conservatory.
Miles Everett has performed in Connecticut with the Town Players of Newtown (The Tempest and The Turn of the Screw); Thomaston Opera House (It's a Wonderful Life); and New Britain Rep, Sherman Players,
Theatre Guild of Simsbury, and Theatre Artists Workshop in such plays as Dancing at Lughnasa, Private Lives, Who Am I This Time, and Outward Bound. Recently he played Astrov in a film version of Uncle Vanya. Other acting credits include The Heidi Chronicles, Sordid Lives-the Soap Opera, I Am My Own Wife, The Glass Menagerie, She Stoops to Conquer, The Boys in the Band, Romeo and Juliet, Doctor Faustus, The Lark, The Visit, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Among his film and video credits is The Tempest, in which he played Ariel. He studies acting in New York City with Marlene Wallace.
Ruth Anne Baumgartner has directed for Westport Community Theatre, Town Players of Newtown, Putney Players, Eastbound Theatre, the Rainbow Theatre, and Newtown High School. She teaches in the English departments of Fairfield and Central Connecticut State universities, and is also a volunteer with the Pequot Library Book Sale, editor
of the Connecticut AAUP's newsletter Vanguard, and artistic director of Bare Bones Theater at the Pequot Library. She serves on the Boards of Directors and is a past President of Westport Community Theatre and Town Players of Newtown. This evening's performance, which originated in a Bare Bones reading of the play two weeks ago, reunites
Miles Everett and Elise Bochinski, who first shared a stage as Caliban and Ariel in The Tempest at Town Players of Newtown, directed by Ruth Anne.
Playwright
David Rambo attributes his lifelong interest in literature and art to his grandmother and mother, both librarians. His theatrical career includes a long association with CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, both as writer and as supervising producer. In 2006 he wrote The Lady With All the Answers, about the life of Ann Landers. He wrote The Ice-Breaker shortly thereafter, on a commission from A.S.K. Theater Projects and the
Geffen Playhouse. In 2010 he was invited to help curate a concert by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, appropriately enough for a man who considers music an inspiration to his writing.
L.A. Drama Critics Circle said of The Ice-Breqker, "Rambo plucks the discussion of climate out of the forum of politics and careerism...and places it in a more humanistic context, one to which we can more readily relate." BackStage said "The production's metaphors are poetic-including the script's contrasts of heat and cold, younger and older, intellect and lust."
Westport Community Theatre is located in Westport at Westport Town Hall, 110 Myrtle Avenue; for directions, go to
www.westporttheatre.com or call the Box Office at (203) 226-1983.
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