SCR to Present REST as Part of Pacific Playwrights Festival, 3/28-4/27

What happens when an elderly patient with dementia goes missing in a northern Idaho blizzard, leaving his wife and others behind to face the unknown? The story is Rest, a heartbreakingly funny and tender play commissioned by South Coast Repertory from Samuel D. Hunter. SCR Founding Artistic Director Martin Benson directs the world premiere of Rest, March 28-April 27, on the Segerstrom Stage. The show is a cornerstone production of SCR's Pacific Playwrights Festival. Tickets are available online: www.scr.org.

Rest is set in northern Idaho, where an assisted living home is shutting down. Only three patients remain-and one of them is lost. Gerald, 91 and suffering from severe dementia, has disappeared, leaving his wife, Etta, and her friend, Tom, behind. The facility's remaining staff includes a new 20-year-old cook and two longtime nurses, women who suddenly face a crisis of their own. In the midst of a record-breaking blizzard, the search for Gerald takes an unexpected turn.

Hunter has blazed a trail across the theatrical world. Last season, SCR staged his Drama Desk Award-winning The Whale, which drew rave reviews. This season, several of his works are premiering along the West Coast, including Rest, which director Benson calls "fresh, vital and alive."

Among the accolades Hunter's works have earned: The Whale (2013 Drama Desk Award, 2013 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, 2013 GLAAD Media Award, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play), A Bright New Boise (2011 Obie Award for Playwriting, 2011 Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), and his newest plays, The Few, A Great Wilderness and Rest. He is the winner of a 2012 Whiting Writers Award, the 2013 Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, the 2011 Sky Cooper Prize, and the 2008-09 PONY Fellowship.

He is a member of New Dramatists, an Ensemble Playwright at Victory Gardens, a Core Member of The Playwrights' Center, a member of Partial Comfort Productions, and was a 2013 Resident Playwright at Arena Stage.

In addition to South Coast Repertory, his plays have been produced by theaters such as Playwrights Horizons, The Old Globe, Seattle Repertory, Victory Gardens Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Denver Center Theatre Company, Clubbed Thumb and Page 73 Productions. His work has been developed at The O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, Seven Devils and elsewhere.

A native of northern Idaho, Hunter lives in New York City and holds degrees in playwriting from New York University, The Iowa Playwrights Workshop and The Juilliard School.

As a part of the 50th anniversary season at SCR, Rest brings together different generations of artists-both onstage and off-"to share a 21st-century pan-American story that looks to the past and the future," said dramaturg John M. Baker.

The cast for Rest includes Sue Cremin, Wyatt Fenner, Richard Doyle, Hal Landon Jr., Lynn Milgrim, Rob Nagle and Libby West.

The design and creative team includes John Iacovelli, scenic design; Angela Balogh Calin, costume design; Donna Ruzika, lighting design; Michael Roth, original music/soundscape; John M. Baker, dramaturg; Jackie S. Hill, production manager; and Sue Karutz, stage manager.

Rest is generously supported by Honorary Producers Mary Beth Adderley, and Olivia and A. Andrew Johnson. Rest is the recipient of an Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award.

Tickets start at $22. Discounts are available for full-time students, patrons 25 years of age and under, fulltime educators, seniors and groups of 10 or more. For complete information, visit: www.scr.org.

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