Road Theatre to Open 2015-16 Season with World Premiere of HOMEFREE This Fall

The Road Theatre Company and Taylor Gilbert, Founder/Artistic Director together with Sam Anderson, Artistic Director, are thrilled to announce the first show of its 2015-2016 - 25th Anniversary Season, the World Premiere of HOMEFREE, written by Lisa Loomer and directed by Ovation Award-winner Michael Matthews. HOMEFREE will open on Friday, September 18 at 8pm and run through Sunday, November 8th at the Road Theatre Company's second home, the Road on Magnolia, located in The NoHo Senior Arts Colony, 10747 Magnolia Blvd. in North Hollywood.

HOMEFREE is a dark urban fairy tale about three cast out teens and the flip side of the American dream. Franklin, Breezy, JJ. Kicked out for being gay, for being pretty, for being nuts. Their journey is crazy, funny and frightening, beginning in a conservative city in Oregon - where grandma's house is a meth house, where bed's an underpass, and the safest place you can wander is the mall. When tragedy hits, they travel to another America. An idyllic liberal town, right smack in the forest. But is there shelter here? Or is home each other? And, when push comes to shove, as it always does... is each other enough?

ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM AND CAST:

LISA LOOMER (Playwright) Her most recent play, Distracted, had its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum, went on to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and will open at the Roundabout Theater in New York in 2009. Living Out had its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum and was produced at Second Stage in New York in 2003, directed by Jo Bonney. It has subsequently been produced across America at such theaters as Seattle Repertory, Missouri Repertory, Mixed Blood, Borderlands and Theater Works, as well as abroad, in both English and bilingual productions. Loomer is perhaps best known for The Waiting Room which went from the Williamstown Theater Festival to the Mark Taper Forum to highly successful productions at Arena Stage and Trinity Repertory Company and then on to the Vineyard Theatre in New York. It has subsequently been produced at theaters throughout the United States, in Europe and in Egypt. Loomer's first work for theater was a collaboration entitled A Crowd of Two at the American Place Theatre. This was followed by a one-woman show All By Herselves at the Westside Arts. She began writing plays at the Intar playwrights lab, under the direction of Maria Irene Fornes. Her first play, Birds, was produced by South Coast Repertory. Subsequent works include Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria!; Accelerando; Looking for Angels; Cuts and Chain of Life, which have been produced at such theaters as the Public Theatre, Intar, the Los Angeles Theatre Center, Mixed Blood, the Open Eye and the Odyssey. Expecting Isabel had its world premiere at Arena Stage and its West Coast premiere at the Taper. Bocon!, a political fable for young audiences, began at the Taper and has been seen throughout the country from the Kennedy Center to Seattle's Group Theater, Stage Left in Chicago, the La Jolla Playhouse, as well as in Germany, Alaska and Mexico. For the Cornerstone Theatre Company, she wrote Broken Hearts, produced at the Los Angeles Theater Center. The "B.H. Mystery" brought together actors and community people from four "BH" neighborhoods in L.A.: Boyle Heights, Broadway Hill (or Chinatown), Baldwin Hills and Beverly Hills. Loomer is an alumna of New Dramatists and the recipient of two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Awards include the Jane Chambers Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, a Garland Award and the American Theatre Critics Association Award (twice). She also received an Imagen Award for positive portrayals of Latinos in all media. Her plays appear in The Best Plays of 1998-1999, The Best Plays of 1994-1995 and The Best Plays of 2003-4 and are published by Dramatists Play Service, TCG (Theatre Communications Group), Dramatic Publishing and Arte Publico Press.The Waiting Room and Living Out are taught in university drama programs, Women's Studies programs and Latino Studies programs. Loomer is also a screenwriter. Her first film, Looking For Angels, was chosen by Sundance for its first co-lab with the Latin American Film Institute in Cuba where she had the opportunity to work with Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Other film credits includeGirl, Interrupted and Nappily Ever After for Halle Berry, soon to be in production.

MICHAEL MATTHEWS (Director) Los Angeles: Sons of the Prophet (LA Premiere), Psyche; a Modern Rock Opera (World Premiere), Rabbit Hole (La Mirada), Funny Girl (3D Theatricals, Ovation Nomination Best Director), Peter Pan; The Boy Who Hated Mothers (LA Weekly Nominations Best Director and Best Production, Play; LA Premiere),Wolves (LA Premiere), Justin Love(LADCC Award, Best Musical; World Premiere), All Your Hard Work (World Premiere), Very Still and Hard To See(LA Weekly Nominations Best Director and Best Production, Play; World Premiere), The Color Purple, The Musical (Ovation and LA Weekly Awards Best Director and Best Production, Musical), Nerve (LA Premiere), What's Wrong With Angry?(Ovation Nominations Best Director and Best Production,Play), Take Me Out! (Ovation Nomination Best Director, NAACP Award Best Director) The Women of Brewster Place, the Musical (Ovation Nomination Best Director, NAACP Award Best Director, Ovation Award Best Production ,Musical; West Coast Premiere), The Temperamentals (West Coast Premiere),Haram! Iran! (West Coast Premiere, GLAAD Nomination), Three Tall Women,The Santa Land Diaries (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012), The Jazz Age (West Coast Premiere), The Prodigal Father (World Premiere), Porcelain, Stupid Kids (LA Premiere), Beautiful Thing (Ovation Nominations, Best Director and Best Production, Play), The Bacchae (Ovation Nominations, Best Director and Best Production, Play), Four (West Coast Premiere); Dead End (Assistant Director) Ahmanson Theatre and The Cherry Orchard (Assistant Director) Mark Taper Forum. Broadway: Butley (Assistant Director). Chicago: What's Wrong With Angry? (Jeff Nominations, Best Director and Best Production), In The Blood (Jeff Nominations, Best Director and Best Production), Porcelain (Jeff Nomination, Best Director), The Judas Kiss (Chicago Premiere), Being 11 (World Premiere), and...for colored girls who have considered suicide.... International: The Bacchae (Edinburgh Theatre Festival, 2010) Michael is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago, National Shakespeare Conservatory, NY, and an alumnus of Director's Lab West 2008. Proud member SDC.

HOMEFREE will open on Friday, September 18 at 8pm and run through Sunday, November 8th at the Road Theatre Company's second home, the Road on Magnolia, located in The NoHo Senior Arts Colony, 10747 Magnolia Blvd. in North Hollywood.

Performances are Fridays & Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm. Ticket prices are $34; Students and Seniors are $17.50; Previews are $15.00. Special group rates available for parties of 8 or more. For tickets, call 818-761-8838 or visit www.RoadTheatre.org to purchase tickets online or to view complete schedule.

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