Boston Court and Rattlestick's EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH Begins Performances Tonight

The Theatre @ Boston Court and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater present Everything You Touch, by Shelia Callaghan, directed by Jessica Kubzansky. Opening night is Saturday, April 12, 2014 on the Main Stage at Boston Court Performing Arts Center, 70 North Mentor Avenue.

Victor is a ruthless fashion designer in the 1970s at the top of his game. Esme, his glamorous protégé and muse, is pushed aside when an ordinary Midwestern woman inspires Victor to make his artistry accessible to the masses. A generation later, a woman grappling with a healthy dose of self-loathing must wrestle her own family demons to find her way through the world of fashion that won't give a woman her size a second look. Skipping back and forth in time, Everything You Touch is a viciously funny look at the struggle to find an identity that's more than skin deep.

Featuring: Allegra Rose Edwards, Amy French, Chelsea Fryer, Arthur Keng, Candice Lam, Kate Maher, Tyler Pierce, and Kirsten Vangsness.

Understudies: Jennifer Christopher, Julia Davis, Leela Loisel, Matthew Grondin, Jennifer Christopher, Karen Jean Olds, Teya Patt, and Christian Prentice.

Production Staff: Julia Flores, Casting Director; Francois-Pierre Couture, Set Designer; John Burton, Properties Designer; Jenny Foldenauer, Costume Designer; Jeremy Pivnick, Lighting Designer; Adam Flemming, Video Projection Designer; John Zalewski, Sound Designer; Jenny Smith, Production Stage Manager.

Sheila Callaghan's plays have been produced and developed with Soho Rep, Playwright's Horizons, South Coast Repertory, Clubbed Thumb, The LARK, Actor's Theatre of Louisville, New Georges, Woolly Mammoth, and Rattlestick Playwright's Theatre, among others. Sheila is the recipient of the Princess Grace Award for emerging artists, a Jerome Fellowship from the Playwright's Center in Minneapolis, a MacDowell Residency, a Cherry Lane Mentorship Fellowship, the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, and the prestigious Whiting Award. Her plays have been produced internationally in New Zealand, Australia, Norway, Germany, Portugal, and the Czech Republic. These include Scab, Crawl Fade to White, Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake), We Are Not These Hands, Dead City, Lasivious Something, Kate Crackernuts, That Pretty Pretty; Or, The Rape Play. Fever/Dream, Roadkill Confidential, and Women Laughing Alone With Salad. She is published with Playscripts and Samuel French, and several of her collected works are published with Counterpoint Press. She has taught playwriting at Columbia University, The University of Rochester, The College of New Jersey, Florida State University, and Spalding University. Sheila is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb and a member of the Obie winning playwright's organization 13P. Sheila is also a resident of New Dramatists. In 2010, Callaghan was profiled by Marie Claire as one of "18 Successful Women Who Are Changing the World." She was also named one of Variety magazine's "10 Screenwriters to Watch" of 2010.

Jessica Kubzansky is the Co-Artistic Director for The Theatre @ Boston Court. Directed at Boston Court: World Premieres of her own adaptation of Shakespeare's Richard II, titled R II, Michael Elyanow's The Children, Jordan Harrison's Futura, Laura Schellhardt's Courting Vampires, Nick Salamone & Maury Mcintyre's Gulls, Mickey Birnbaum's Bleed Rail, Carlos Murillo's Unfinished American Highwayscape #9 & 32, Jean-Claude Van Itallie's Light, Cody Henderson's Cold/Tender, plus Camino Real and Mother Courage. Also an award-winning director working nationally: South Coast Rep, Pasadena Playhouse, The Geffen Playhouse, Portland Center Stage, Illinois Shakes, The Aurora, Silk Road, etc. Recently elsewhere: James Still's I Love to Eat (Portland Center Stage), Macbeth (Antaeus), The 39 Steps (La Mirada), Jen Haley's Breadcrumbs, Hamlet, Winter's Tale (Theater 150, Ojai), Mauritius (Pasadena Playhouse). She is a recipient of the LADCC Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatre.

Everything You Touch is supported in part by the Edgerton Foundation, City of Pasadena, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, The Shubert Foundation, The American Theatre Wing, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, Founding Director Z. Clark Branson, and the generous contributions of The Theatre @ Boston Court supporters and contributors.

The Los Angeles-based Edgerton Foundation and Occidental College have partnered with The Theatre @ Boston Court and A Noise Within to create the Edgerton Foundation Theater Program. The centerpiece of the four-year program will be extended joint residencies for directors and playwrights at Occidental and the two Pasadena theaters, both long-time partners of the College. The program also will offer an internship and fellowship program for current Occidental students and recent graduates.

The Theatre @ Boston Court is the award-winning resident theatre company at Boston Court Performing Arts Center in Pasadena, CA. Michael Seel, Executive Director; Jessica Kubzansky and Michael Michetti, Co-Artistic Directors; Hillary Metcalf, Managing Director.

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is a multiaward-winning company which has produced over sixty world premieres in the past eighteen seasons and was the recipient of the 2007 Ross Wetzsteon Memorial OBIE Award for developing new and innovative work. Previous plays include Two Boys in a Bed, Message to Michael, Carpool, Volunteer Man, A Trip to the Beach, Ascendancy, Stuck, Vick's Boy, The Messenger, Saved or Destroyed, Neil's Garden, My Special Friend, Faster, Bliss, St. Crispin's Day, Where We're Born, Five Flights, Boise, Finer Noble Gases, That Pretty Pretty; or, The RapePlay, God Hates The Irish: The Ballad of Armless Johnny, Miss Julie, Acts of Mercy: passion-play, Cagelove, It Goes Without Saying, Dark Matters, Stay, American Sligo, Rag and Bone, War, Geometry of Fire, The Amish Project, Killers and Other Family, Post No Bills, Blind, Little Doc, underneathmybed, There Are No More Big Secrets, The Hallway Trilogy, Carson McCullers Talks About Love, The Wood, Asuncion, Horsedreams, Yosemite, Massacre (Sing to Your Children), 3C, Through the Yellow Hour, A Summer Day, The Revisionist starring Vanessa Redgrave and Jesse Eisenberg, Buyer & Cellar (2013 Drama Desk and Outer Critic Circle Awards for Outstanding Solo Performance), Basilica, Charles Ives Take Me Home, The Hilltown Plays, One Night..., How to Make Friends and then Kill Them, the Off-Broadway GLAAD Award-nominated hit The Last Sunday in June, Craig Wright's The Pavilion (Drama Desk nominee-Outstanding Play of 2005) and Lady (Drama Desk nominee-Outstanding Play of 2008), as well as The Aliens by Annie Baker (2010 Obie Award winner for Best New American Play). www.rattlestick.org.

Everything You Touch previews for six performances beginning tonight, April 3, opening April 12 and runs Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through May 11 with an added performance on Wednesday, May 7. Preview tickets are priced at $17 and regular performances at $34. Senior, student and group discounts are also available. Visit BostonCourt.org for special events related to Everything You Touch. Tickets can be purchased online at BostonCourt.org or by calling (626) 683-6883.

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