Aurora Theatre Company Opens its 32nd Season With BORN WITH TEETH

Aurora Theatre Company opens its 32nd season with Liz Duffy Adams’ Edgerton Award-winning play, BORN WITH TEETH. Aurora Artistic Director Josh Costello (Cyrano, This Much I Know, Eureka Day, The Importance of Being Earnest) directs Dean Linnard and Brady Morales-Woolery in this dangerous and sexy two-hander that pits young Will Shakespeare against the great Kit Marlowe.

BORN WITH TEETH will be presented in-person on Aurora’s mainstage from September 1 - October 1 (Opening Night: September 7). 

Aurora will also offer a week of streaming BORN WITH TEETH  performances for audiences to enjoy in their homes. Streaming performances will run concurrently with in-person performances from September 26-October 1.

In 2019, Aurora staged a reading of BORN WITH TEETH with Adams while the play was still in development. Now, Aurora has brought Liz back to Berkeley again for the full rehearsal process.

Said Artistic Director Josh Costello: “Liz writes with tremendous passion. Her take on Will Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe brings them to life with all the youthful, sexy, punkish energy these young men must have had. She’s taken new research which shows that Marlowe and Shakepseare collaborated, along with new research into Marlowe’s death, and made a story that – whether or not it actually happened – illuminates the danger of the times and the humanity of these great writers.”

SYNOPSIS: Will Shakespeare is an upstart crow looking to make his name. Kit Marlowe is the greatest poet of the age, and knows it. He's also a spy for the English crown. In the back room of a tavern, against the backdrop of a polarized and paranoid England where even the slightest misstep can lead to a death sentence, the two writers embark on a risky collaboration. Artistic partnership becomes a dangerous dance of inspiration, artistry, seduction, and possible betrayal. Experience the thrill of creative expression and the precariousness of living in a society where every move is scrutinized.

Post show discussions for BORN WITH TEETH will be led by Aurora staff or members of the Creative Team, and hosted after the show on the following days: Friday, September 8; Tuesday, September 12; Wednesday, September 20; Thursday, September 28.

BORN WITH TEETH Cast and Creative Team

Liz Duffy Adams (she/her) Adams’ play Born With Teeth, recipient of a 2021 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award and Best Play/Production, 2022 Houston Press Awards, had its world premiere at the Alley Theater in 2022, a production that moved to the Guthrie Theatre in March–April 2023.

Her play Or, premiered Off Broadway at WP Theater and has been produced more than 80 times since, including at the Magic Theater, Seattle Rep, and Roundhouse Theatre. She’s a New Dramatists alumna and has received a Women of Achievement Award, Lillian Hellman Award, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Weston Playhouse Music-Theater Award, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, and the Will Glickman Award for Best New Play (Dog Act). Her Artistic Stamp virtual play in letters, Wild Thyme, was nominated for a 2021 Drama League Award for Outstanding Interactive or Socially-Distanced Theater. 

Publications include Or, in Smith & Kraus’ “Best Plays Of 2010;” Dog Act in “Geek Theater,” Underwords Press 2014; Poodle With Guitar And Dark Glasses in Applause’s “Best American Short Plays 2000-2001;” and acting editions by TRW Plays, Playscripts, Inc. and Dramatists Play Service.  

Adams has an MFA from Yale School of Drama and a BFA from New York University’s Experimental Theater Wing. She has dual Irish and American citizenship, and lives in New York City on Lenape land, and in Western Massachusetts on unceded Pocumtuc and Nipmuc territory.

Josh Costello (he/him) is the Artistic Director of Aurora Theatre Company. Throughout his career, he has worked to make theatre more accessible for more people, sharing a passion for the visceral experience of live theatre with new audiences and underserved communities. He was the founding Artistic Director of Impact Theatre, which focused on audiences in their teens and twenties. As the Artistic Director of Expanded Programs at Marin Theatre Company, Josh created and administered several programs that built relationships with new audiences. At Aurora, Josh initiated student matinee and Community Partner programs and led a revision of Aurora’s mission to emphasize the theatre’s role as storyteller to the community.

Josh has directed Cyrano, This Much I Know, The Flats, Exit Strategy, The Importance of Being Earnest, Detroit, Wittenberg, and The Heir Apparent for Aurora, as well as the world premiere of Eureka Day, which won every Bay Area new play award. His world-premiere production of Aaron Loeb’s Ideation with SF Playhouse in both San Francisco and New York City won the Glickman Award for Best New Play in the Bay Area and the Theatre Bay Area Award for Outstanding Direction, and was named a New York Times Critic’s Pick.

Costello’s other directing work includes My Children! My Africa! at Marin Theatre Company, House of Lucky at Magic Theatre, and his adaptations of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother and Aphra Behn’s The Rover. He was the Education Director  at Marin Shakespeare Company, and a faculty member at Cal Shakes, ACT, SF Shakes, UC Riverside, Cal State Long Beach, South Coast Rep, and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Costello holds a BFA in Theatre from Boston University, and an MFA in Directing from the University of Washington, Seattle.

Dean Linnard (he/him) makes his Aurora debut. Bay Area credits include Dave Malloy’s Octet (Berkeley Rep); A Midsummer Night's Dream; The Good Person of Szechwan; The Winter’s Tale (Cal Shakes); Twelfth Night; The Three Musketeers; Love’s Labour’s Lost (Marin Shakespeare Company), and Indecent (SF Playhouse). Dean won Theatre Bay Area Awards for both Hand to God and Bad Jews at Left Edge Theatre, and a San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Groundhog Day: The Musical at SF Playhouse.

New York credits include Museum Hack (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Time Temple (Guggenheim Museum), and the world premiere of Dave Harris’ Tambo & Bones (Playwrights Horizons). Regional credits include shows with Asolo Rep, Portland Playhouse, the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Vermont Shakespeare Festival, and the National Tour of the musical The Lightning Thief. Linnard earned a BFA from NYU Tisch, and has trained with the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in Los Angeles and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

Brady Morales-Woolery (he/him) also makes his Aurora debut. He was most recently seen as Victor Prynne in Private Lives at Arizona Theatre Company. Select theatre credits include Clue (Center Rep), Romeo y Juliet (Cal Shakes), The Curious Case of the Watson Intelligence (Shotgun Players), Twelfth Night (Cal Shakes), Once (42nd Street Moon), Retablos (Word for Word), Bright Shining Sea (SF Playground), Barefoot in the Park (Willows Theatre Company) The Kentucky Cycle (Willows Theatre Company), and FSM (Stagebridge). Feature films include Quitters, Pushing Dead, The Internship, and the upcoming Avenue of the Giants. Morales-Woolery trained at the University of California at Berkeley.

The creative team for BORN WITH TEETH includes Scott Reardon (he/him)–Stage Manager; Taylor Wesley (she/her)–Assistant Stage Manager; Kate Boyd (she/her)–Scenic Designer; Jeff Rowlings (he/him) –Lighting Designer; Ulises Alcala (he/him)–Costume Designer; Cliff Caruthers–Sound Designer & Composer; Samantha Alexa (she/they)–Lead Props; Chelsea Pace (she/her)–Intimacy Director & Fight Director; Lisa Porter (she/her)–Dialect Coach.

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