Reg Rogers to Star in South Coast Rep 'Injured Party'

Obie winner and Tony Award nominee Reg Rogers will star in The Injured Party, a new comedy by Tony Award-winning playwright Richard Greenberg.  Commissioned by SCR and directed by Trip Cullman, The Injured Party will receive its World Premiere at South Coast Repertory during the 11th annual Pacific Playwrights Festival.  The show will run from April 20 through May 11, 2008 on the Julianne Argyros Stage.  Low-priced previews are available from April 20 through April 24.  Opening night is April 25.  Press night is Saturday, April 26 at 7:45 p.m.  Tickets to The Injured Party may be purchased online at www.scr.org, by phone at (714) 708-5555 or in person at the SCR box office.

Reg Rogers has previously appeared in the New York productions of Greenberg's Hurrah at Last and The Dazzle (OBIE and Lucille Lortel Awards).  On Broadway, Rogers appeared in Proposals, Holiday (Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations) and The Moliere Comedies.  Recent stage credits include Richard III at California Shakespeare Theater and Uncle Vanya at Lake Lucille.

"The Injured Party is set in a specific New York City moment — 2005, when the art installation Cristo's The Gates captured the imagination of city dwellers with its 23 miles of billowing fabric in Central Park.  One of the viewers was Maxine, 94 years old and enormously rich.  Her grandson Seth, who studiously avoided The Gates, is not so rich, hopelessly stalled—and determined that 'redistribution must commence.'  A bevy of inimitable New Yorkers aid and/or hinder Seth in this ingenious new comedy about family, love, art, money and ambition," press notes state.

The cast of The Injured Party also includes:

T. Scott Cunningham (Lawrence) previously appeared at SCR in Dinner with Friends.  On Broadway he appeared in Love! Valour! Compassion! and Tartuffe.  Off-Broadway credits include As Bees in Honey Drown, Fit to Be Tied, New England, Pterodactyls, The Stand In, It Changes Every Year, Wally's Ghost and Don Juan in Chicago.  His regional theater credits include Love! Valour! Compassion at Geffen Playhouse; Mr. Melancholy and Coq Au Vin at New York Stage & Film; A Fair Country, Six Characters in Search of an Author and The Miser at Seattle Repertory Theatre; and Angels in America at ALLIANCE THEATRE.

Cynthia Harris (Maxene) is the Co-Artistic Director and a Founding Member of The Actors Company Theatre and has appeared in over 30 productions with the company, most recently Watch on the Rhine, Dear Liar and Home.  She has appeared on Broadway in Bad Habits, Company and Any Wednesday.

Marin Ireland (Becca) has appeared in Cyclone at Studio Dante,for which she won an OBIE Award.  Her other credits include The Ruby Sunrise at The Public Theater, Far Away and Nocturne at the New York Theatre Workshop and American Repertory Theatre; The Glass Menagerie at Foothills Theatre Company; Jambulu at InterAct Theatre Company; Lysistrata at TheatEclipse and A Midsummer Night's Dream at Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum.

Caroline Lagerfelt (Bettina) has appeared on Broadway in Small Family Business, Lend Me a Tenor, The Real Thing, Betrayal, Otherwise Engaged, The Jockey Club Stakes, Four on a Garden and The Philanthropist.  Off-Broadway appearances include The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at The New Group, Hamlet at Classic Stage Company, Guantanamo at Culture Club, Moonlight at Roundabout Theatre Company and Cloud 9 at Lucille Lortel Theatre. 

Lorenzo Pisoni (Hans) has appeared in Henry IV at Lincoln Center Theatre; Last Dance at Manhattan Theatre Club; As You Like It at The Public Theater; Election Day at Second Stage Theatre; A Midsummer Night's Dream at New York Philharmonic; Tuesdays With Morrie, The Great Gatsby and Clown, Clown, Clown… at Seattle Repertory Theatre; The Great Gatsby at The Guthrie; The Gamester at American Conservatory Theater; Pagliacci at San Francisco Opera and Shakespeare in the Park's Much Ado About Nothing at the Delacorte Theater.

The creative team for The Injured Party consists of David Korins (set design), Candice Cain (costume design), Ben Stanton (lighting design), John Gromada (sound design), John Glore (dramaturg) and Kathryn Davies (stage manager).

89.3 KPCC-FM and 944 Magazine are the media partners for The Injured Party.

Richard Greenberg received the Tony Award for his play Take Me Out.  South Coast Repertory commissioned and presented the World Premieres of Greenberg's A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, The Violet Hour, Everett Beekin, Hurrah at Last, Night and Her Stars, The Extra Man and Three Days of Rain, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and was recently revived on Broadway.  SCR has also produced his play The Dazzle.  Greenberg's other plays include Eastern Standard, Jenny Keeps Talking, The American Plan and The Maderati.  A staged reading of the SCR-commissioned Our Mother's Brief Affair was presented at the 2007 Pacific Playwrights Festival.

Director Trip Cullman's credits include Some Men (Second Stage), Dark Matters (Rattlestick Theater), Dog Sees God (Century Center), The Wooden Breeks (MCC), Manic Flight Reaction (Playwrights Horizons), Swimming in the Shallows (Second Stage Uptown), Roulette (John Houseman Theater), The Last Sunday in June (Century Center & Rattlestick Theater), Of a White Christmas (Clubbed Thumb), Sweetness and Sam and Lucy (Summer Play Festival '04), and The Wau Wau Sisters (Ars Nova).  For The Play Company, Cullman directed Robert Farquhar's Bad Jazz, Roland Schimmelpfennig's Arabian Night and Brooke Berman's Smashing.

The Injured Party is one of two World Premieres to be presented on SCR's main stages during the nationally renowned Pacific Playwrights Festival which will take place May 2 through May 4, 2008.  The World Premiere of Kate Robin's What They Have will be presented on the Segerstrom Stage from April 4 through May 4.  In addition to the two fully produced plays, the weekend festival showcases five new plays commissioned by South Coast Repertory in readings and workshops and attracts audiences and theater professionals from across the country.  This year's Festival features a workshop production of Sunlight by Sharr White and staged readings of By The Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage, Emilie – The Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life at the Petit Théâtre at Cirey, Tonight by Lauren Gunderson, Goldfish by John Kovenbach and You, Nero by Amy Freed.

Tickets to The Injured Party can be purchased online at www.scr.org, by phone at (714) 708-5555 or by visiting the box office at 655 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa.  Performances begin on April 20 and continue through May 11.  Ticket prices range from $20 to $62.  Low-priced preview performances are available from April 20-24.  Performance times:  Previews:  Sunday, April 20 at 2:00 p.m.; Tuesday, April 22, Wednesday, April 23 and Thursday, April 24 at 7:45 p.m.  Regular Performances:  Tuesday through Sunday evenings at 7:45 p.m., Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m.  Discounts are available for full-time students, patrons 25 years of age and under, educators, seniors and groups of 15 or more.  There will be a "Pay-What-You-Will" performance on Saturday, April 26 at 2:00 p.m. (Suggested Price:  $10; $7 minimum) and an ASL-interpreted performance on Saturday, May 10 at 2:00 p.m.

Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory, under the artistic direction of David Emmes and Martin Benson, is widely recognized as one of the leading professional theaters in the United States.  Founded in 1964, SCR is committed to theater that illuminates the compelling personal and social issues of our time, not only on its stages but through its education and outreach programs.  While its productions represent a balance of classic and modern theater, SCR is renowned for its extensive new play development program, including the Pacific Playwrights Festival.  Of SCR's more than 400 productions, 107 have been World Premieres with subsequent stagings achieving enormous success across America and around the world.  SCR-developed works have garnered eight Pulitzer Prize nominations with Margaret Edson's Wit winning the prize in 1999 and David Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole in 2007.  Located in Costa Mesa, California, in 2002 SCR opened the Folino Theater Center, an expanded three-theater complex that includes the 507-seat Segerstrom Stage, the 336-seat Julianne Argyros Stage and the 94-seat Nicholas Studio. 

Photo Credits Mark Avery

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