Joanna Garner's Country Musical 100 HEARTBREAKS Kicks Off 10th OTR Series At Chance Theater

Chance Theater, Anaheim's official resident theater company, presents a staged reading of our 2018 Resident Playwright Joanna Garner's new musical, 100 HEARTBREAKS.

Directed by Lola Kelly, 100 HEARTBREAKS is a one-night-only special performance, presented as part of Chance Theater's 10th OTR New Works Series. The staged reading will be on Wednesday, March 4th at 7:30 p.m. on the Cripe Stage at the Bette Aitken theater arts Center.

Sidle up to the bar at the Horseshoe Tavern for Joanna Garner's original country musical, 100 HEARTBREAKS. Tonight, big-haired, sweet-voiced country darling Charlane Tucker is booked to play a set of barroom classics. She's not shy about the motor behind her cross-country tour: get her heart broken enough times to be sad enough to write the perfect country song. But her live show-with the Horseshoe's stellar house band-veers wildly off course when a past fling unexpectedly turns up. You have a front-row seat for a night of whiskey-fueled drama. A story about not giving up, despite the odds, 100 HEARTBREAKS is a raucous send-up of - and love song to - the good ole' days of country music.

Recommended for ages 13 and up. This reading will contain adult language and themes.

100 HEARTBREAKS was workshopped in Seattle Rep's New Play Program, with the Northwest Playwrights Alliance, and was presented at the country's largest arts and culture festival, Bumbershoot. It premiered at the Sahara Lounge in Austin where it was nominated for an Austin Critics' Table Award for Outstanding Musical.

Since 2011, our On The Radar (OTR) New Works Series has simultaneously provided a safe, collaborative environment for emerging playwrights and an opportunity for our patrons to "peek behind the curtain" and engage in brand new works-in-progress. Expanding into the OTR LAB Series in 2015, this workshop program takes a new play or musical into the next stage of development. The cast and director have a longer rehearsal period, additional workshop performances and the opportunity to continue rehearsals and make changes between each performance. Many plays and musicals from this series have gone on to receive world premieres all over the country, including Lincoln Center, Manhattan Theatre Club and the Chance.

Joanna Garner (Playwright) is a playwright and musician based in Santa Fe, NM, where she is the Director of Narrative for Meow Wolf. Her work has been developed nationally and internationally, including at the Banff Playwrights Colony, Tofte Lake Center, Seattle Repertory Theatre, On the Boards, ZACH Theatre, Kitchen Dog Theater, Great Plains Theatre Conference, groundswell playwrights conference, National Winter Playwrights Retreat, Annex Theatre, Live Girls! Theater, 14/48: The World's Quickest Theater Festival, the NEWvember New Plays Festival, Theatricum Botanicum, with Austin's acclaimed Rude Mechs, and at the New York and Hollywood fringe festivals. Her political drama about Iran, The Orange Garden, was a winner of the 2016 Keene Prize for Literature and included on the 2016 Kilroys List. Last summer, her immersive exploration of food and sex, Please Open Your Mouth, premiered at Café Nordo in Seattle. In addition to being Chance Theater's 2018 Resident Playwright, she is currently under commission by Seattle Repertory Theatre. She has an MFA in Playwriting from The University of Texas at Austin.

Lola Kelly (Director) has a BA in Theatre from LMU and an MA in Performance Studies from RADA. Recent Theatre credits include: Virgil in Hall & Mirrors immersive play for one audience per night YOU, Mary Swanson in the SoCal premiere of Middletown at the Chance, Ophelia in ACTC's Hamlet, the Countess Bathory in the Araca Project's off Broadway new work Lady, Miss Julie at South Coast Rep, ensemble drama Life Without Parole at the Edgemar, ensemble comedy Saint Mel at the Hollywood Fringe, and originating a role in Circle Jerk at REDCAT. Lola has starred in three feature films in the past two years, played a series regular on the sketch show Enchufe, recurred on The Fosters, appeared on Fox's The Grinder, Amazon's The Next Steps, Lifetime's My Haunted House and recently played a recurring role on The Fosters on Freeform. lolajameskelly.com

Joining director Kelly on the production team are music director Bill Strongin, dramaturg Jocelyn L. Buckner, and stage manager Jordan Jones.

The cast for 100 HEARTBREAKS includes Chance Theater Resident Artist James McHale (Middletown), as well as returning Chance artists Katie Canavan (The Eight: Reindeer Monologues) and Bill Strongin (Anne of Green Gables). Making his Chance debut with this reading is John Bobeck.

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