Yale Repertory Theatre Presents the World Premiere Of FIELD GUIDE Created By Rude Mechs

Yale Repertory Theatre presents the world premiere of FIELD GUIDE created by Rude Mechs, inspired by the novel The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, January 26-February 17, at Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street). Opening Night is Thursday, February 1.

FIELD GUIDE features text by Hannah Kenah, direction by Shawn Sides, scenic design by Eric Dyer, costumes by Sarah Woodham, lighting by Brian H Scott, original music by Graham Reynolds, sound design by Robert S. Fisher, dramaturgy by Amy Boratko, technical direction by Steph Wasser, fight direction by Rick Sordelet, and stage management by Bianca Hooi.

The performing company is Mari Akita (Alyosha), Lowell Bartholomee (Fyodor), Robert S. Fisher (Smerdyakov), Thomas Graves (Ivan), Hannah Kenah (Grushenka, Katya, Grigory), and Lana Lesley (Dmitri).

Strap on your snow shoes and join Rude Mechs on a surreal hike through one of the greatest-and longest!-novels ever written: The Brothers Karamazov. A physical meditation on Dostoevsky's masterpiece, FIELD GUIDE enlists stand-up comedy, a dancing monk, and some old-school magic to explore faith, meaning, and morality.

Rude Mechs is an Austin, Texas, based theatre collective that has created a genre-averse slate of about 30 new plays since 1996. What these works hold in common are the use of play to make performance, the use of theatres as meeting places for audiences and artists, and the use of humor as a tool for intellectual investigation. They tour their original work nationally and abroad whenever they can; maintain Rude Studios, a suite of studios in Austin for use by arts groups of every discipline; manage a scenic lending library; and run a year-round arts education program for teens. Thrilled to be back in New Haven for their third production at Yale Rep, the Rudes touring productions include The Method Gun, I've Never Been So Happy, Get Your War On, How Late It Was, How Late, Cherrywood, Lipstick Traces, Match-Play, Now Now Oh Now, and Stop Hitting Yourself.

Rude Mechs creates new works collaboratively and relies on every artist in the room contributing to everything from design and direction to text and performance. FIELD GUIDE was created by Mari Akita, Lowell Bartholomee, Kenny Chilton, Madge Darlington, Eric Dyer, Robert Fisher, Aaron Flynn, Thomas Graves, Kevin Jacaman, Hannah Kenah, Lana Lesley, Kirk Lynn, Graham Reynolds, Brian H Scott, Shawn Sides, and Dallas Tate.

FIELD GUIDE was commissioned by Yale Repertory Theatre. Development and production support are provided by Yale's Binger Center for New Theatre.

Tickets for FIELD GUIDE range from $12-99 and are available online at yalerep.org, by phone at (203) 432-1234, and in person at the Yale Rep Box Office (1120 Chapel Street). Student, senior, and group rates are also available.

BIOGRAPHIES

MARI AKITA (Alyosha) is a dancer and performance artist based in Austin, Texas. In addition to creating and performing her own original dance performance works, Mari has performed in Phil Soltanoff's i/o, L.A. Party, and An Evening with William Shatner Asterisk; LOLA's Chamber Opera We Might Be Struck by Lighting; and The Neal Medlyn Experience, Linda Mary Montano as Mother Teresa. She has collaborated with Lauren K. Tietz for her video projects and choreographed for Monkey Town 6 and the band Foot Patrol. Mari has performed in Fusebox, Coil, PuSh, Mass Live Arts, and LAX Festival.

Lowell Bartholomee (Fyodor) is a Rude Mechs company member and has appeared in company productions of 300 Plays About Vladimir Putin, Decameron: Day 7: Revenge, Pale Idiot (2005), Get Your War On! (European Tour), The Method Gun (workshop), I've Never Been So Happy, Fixing King John, and Fixing Timon of Athens and has served as their stage manager for the touring productions of The Method Gun and Now Now Oh Now. He has numerous credits and local awards as an actor, video and sound designer, producer, and director for various theatre companies in Austin, Texas. His film and TV credits include American Crime (ABC), The Leftovers (HBO), and several independent films including Holy Hell, which he co-wrote, produced, and premiered at the Austin Film Festival in 2009.

AMY BORATKO (Production Dramaturg) is the Literary Manager at Yale Rep and has previously served as dramaturg on the Yale Rep productions of Mary Jane, Imogen Says Nothing, peerless, Indecent, War, The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, Dear Elizabeth, The Realistic Joneses, Good Goods, Belleville, Autumn Sonata, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Battle of Black and Dogs, Compulsion, Notes from Underground, A Woman of No Importance, Eurydice, and The Cherry Orchard. Other dramaturgy credits include The Time of Your Life, The Summer People, Romeo and Juliet, The War Is Over (Yale School of Drama), as well as Voice and Vision's ENVISION Retreat at Bard College. She has been a teaching fellow at Yale College and Yale School of Drama and was a managing editor of Theater magazine. A graduate of Rice University, she received her MFA in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism from Yale School of Drama.

ROBERT S. FISHER (Sound Designer; Smerdyakov) is a Rude Mechs Company Member and Creative Director of Audio Art & Science. As a Sound Designer, musician, and performer with Rude Mechs, Robert has co-created, designed and/or performed in Rude productions since 2000, including most recently Requiem for Tesla, Fixing Timon of Athens, Match-Play, and Now Now Oh Now. Also a member of Hyde Park Theatre, Robert recently designed the southwestern premieres of The Wolves, The Moors, and John.

Thomas Graves (Ivan) is a Co-Producing Artistic Director for Rude Mechs in Austin, Texas. As such he has developed, performed in, and produced The Method Gun, I've Never Been So Happy, Now Now Oh Now, and Stop Hitting Yourself. He is currently directing and designing one of Rude Mechs's next projects, Not Every Mountain, which will appear at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in the summer of 2018. Along with Philadelphia-based artist Jennifer Kidwell, Graves is building a new performance piece entitled Table. Thomas was a co-creator and performer of Dayna Hanson's The Clay Duke and has performed across North America and Europe as a dancer and choreographer for the queer performance group Christeene. Thomas holds an MFA in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas at Austin.

BIANCA A. HOOI (Stage Manager) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka, The Three Sisters, and Our Lady of 121st Street, and she was the assistant stage manager for The Oresteia and New Domestic Architecture. Her other credits include assistant stage manager for Seven Guitars and production assistant for the world premiere of Indecent, both at Yale Rep.

Hannah Kenah (Text; Grushenka, Katya, Grigory) is a performer, writer, and company member with Rude Mechs and has been developing work with the company since 2008, including national tours of The Method Gun and Stop Hitting Yourself. She served as the writer for Rude Mechs's Now Now Oh Now. With Salvage Vanguard Theater, Hannah wrote and performed in Guest by Courtesy which was selected for Fusebox Festival 2013, then traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria, and was produced by Brooklyn Yard. SVT produced her play, With Great Difficulty Alice Sits, in Fall 2016. Her play Everything Is Established received an honorable mention on the 2015 Kilroys List and was produced by Harbor Stage Company in the summer of 2017. Hannah received her BA from Dartmouth College, attended Dell'Arte International, and is currently studying playwriting as a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin.

Lana Lesley (Dmitri) A Co-Founder and Co-Producing Artistic Director for Rude Mechs, Lana has created, produced, and/or performed in over thirty original Rude Mechs productions, including Stop Hitting Yourself, Now Now Oh Now, I've Never Been So Happy (co-director), and The Method Gun. Lana has performed in select festivals and venues including Brisbane's WTF, BITE, Culturgest, The Arches, Kiasma Festival, Szene Salzburg, Philadelphia Live Arts, UCLA Live!, Walker Art Center, Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Lana's work as a voice-over artist includes Hawk Girl, Lady Blackhawk, and Giganta for DC Universe Online, Ibuki (feature role) in the Dai Guard series, and Saki (starring role) in the live-action film Gun Crazy: A Woman from Nowhere. Lana is currently co-creating a new play with Peter Stopschinski and Paul Soileau, Design for Everyone, and working on a graphic novel version of Rude Mechs' adaptation of Greil Marcus's book Lipstick Traces.

Graham Reynolds (Original Music) Called "the quintessential modern composer" by the London Independent, Austin-based composer-bandleader-improviser Graham Reynolds creates, performs, and records music for film, theatre, dance, rock clubs, and concert halls. Heard throughout the world in films, TV, stage, and radio, he's worked with collaborators ranging from Richard Linklater and Jack Black to DJ Spooky and Ballet Austin. He is a company member with the internationally acclaimed Rude Mechs theatre collective, resident composer with Salvage Vanguard Theater and Forklift Danceworks, and Artistic Director of Golden Hornet, a commissioning and concert producing non-profit. He recently scored Linklater's Last Flag Flying, featuring Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, and Laurence Fishburne, for Amazon Studios.
His many accolades include a Creative Capital Award for Pancho Villa from a Safe Distance, a chamber opera created with librettists Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol (Mexico City) and director Shawn Sides, the final part of his decade long project, The Marfa Triptych. Find out more at grahamreynolds.com

Brian H Scott (Lighting Designer) is a theatrical designer working primarily in the medium of light. As a Siti Company member and resident Lighting Designer since 1997, he has had the good fortune to focus on the creation of new work and the re-investigation of classic texts through a contemporary, as well as, a physically and visually rigorous lens. His collaborations as a company member of Rude Mechs in Austin, Texas, have offered equally invigorating opportunities to create new work through contemporary eyes, in addition to sweeping adaptations of such literary works as Greil Marcus's look at the history of counter culture, Lipstick Traces, and James Kelman's book, How Late It Was How Late.

Shawn Sides (Director) is a Co-Founder and a Co-Producing Artistic Director of Rude Mechs in Austin, Texas, where she has co-conceived, co-adapted, and directed a new work every year, give or take, since 1996, including Off-Broadway and touring productions of Lipstick Traces, Stop Hitting Yourself, Get Your War On, The Method Gun, and Dionysus in 69 in '09. She most recently directed Pancho Villa from a Safe Distance, a chamber opera by Graham Reynolds, libretto by Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol. Shawn is a 2015 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award recipient.

Rick Sordelet (Fight Director) and his son, Christian Kelly-Sordelet, are the creators of Sordelet Inc., a stage combat company. Among their credits are 72 Broadway productions, including The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, and more than 60 first-class productions on five continents in hundreds of cities around the world. Rick and Christian have been fight directors for dozens of regional theatres around the U.S. Their shows range from Sam Shepard to William Shakespeare. They have four National Tours running across America and Beauty and the Beast internationally. Both Rick and Christian are stunt coordinators for television and film with over 1000 episodes of daytime television and numerous feature films. Rick teaches stage combat for Yale School of Drama and with Christian at HB Studio in NYC. sordeletink.com

STEPH WAASER (Technical Director) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama. Previous Yale Rep credits include An Enemy of the People (assistant technical director) and Assassins (technical director). Her professional production work includes Williamstown Theatre Festival, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Baltimore Center Stage, and Hudson Scenic Studios, among others. Steph earned her bachelor's degree at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

SARAH WOODHAM (Costume Designer) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include The Hour of Great Mercy, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, and Amy and the Orphans. Other credits include Styx Songs (Yale Cabaret); Phaedra's Love and Adam Geist (Yale Summer Cabaret). She holds a BFA in fashion and design from The University of Trinidad and Tobago (Caribbean Academy of Fashion and Design), where she designed An Echo in the Bone for The Trinidad Theatre Workshop. She is a winner of the Meiling Designer Critique Award, a freelance storyboard artist, graphic designer, and co-director of her own fashion print house, A Memory Emerging New (A.M.E.N.) Print House.

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Yale Repertory Theatre, the internationally celebrated professional theatre in residence at Yale School of Drama, has championed new work since 1966, producing well over 100 premieres-including two Pulitzer Prize winners and four other nominated finalists-by emerging and established playwrights. Seventeen Yale Rep productions have advanced to Broadway, garnering more than 40 Tony Award nominations and ten Tony Awards. Yale Rep is also the recipient of the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre.

Established in 2008, Yale's Binger Center for New Theatre has distinguished itself as one of the nation's most robust and innovative new play programs. To date, the Binger Center has supported the work of more than 50 commissioned artists and underwritten the world premieres and subsequent productions of 27 new American plays and musicals at Yale Rep and theatres across the country-including this season's Native Son by Nambi E. Kelley, Field Guide created by Rude Mechs, and Kiss by Guillermo Calderón.

The Tony Award-winning production of Indecent, created by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel and director Rebecca Taichman, which was commissioned by and premiered at Yale Rep in 2015, was recently broadcast on PBS's Great Performances series. Amy Herzog's play Mary Jane, commissioned and first produced at Yale Rep in April 2017, and subsequently produced Off-Broadway, was named the Best New Play of the Year by The Wall Street Journal.

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