CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF Returns to Seacoast Repertory Theater Tonight

Theater audiences have an extra reason to see the Seacoast Repertory Theater's upcoming production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." They chose the play.

The Pulitzer-winning play by Tennessee Williams will be the first drama staged by the Seacoast Rep since 2013, and follows a string of popular musicals this year. It will star one of the leading interpreters of Williams' work - actor and playwright David Roby.

Audiences at the Seacoast Rep this year had a chance to select a short list of plays from 10 possibilities, and vote with their donations from among the final three. Competition included "Of Mice and Men," "Romeo and Juliet," "Tuesdays with Morrie" and Neil Simon's "Laughter on the 23rd Floor."

"We did the viewers' choice so we could get an idea of what people really wanted to see," said Miles Burns, the Seacoast Rep's interim artistic director. "It was cool see that everybody was involved in picking it."

"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" was a pretty clear winner. "The community here is open-minded to things that are a little bit provocative, the kind of art that makes people think," Burns said.

The Tennessee Williams play is the emotional drama of a Southern plantation family bound together by a web of lies. It portrays a birthday celebration for plantation owner Big Daddy Pollitt, whose terminal illness is known to his family but not to him, and the strained marriage of his hard-drinking son and his daughter-in-law Maggie.

"It is kind of like looking into the inner workings of a dysfunctional family, which speaks to a lot of people," said Meredith Freeman-Caple, the play's director. "It's the emotions between the characters that keep it fresh - it's very highly emotionally charged," she said.

Freeman-Caple has directed at The Players Ring in Portsmouth and is theater advisor at Oyster River High School in Durham. She is making her Seacoast Rep directorial debut with the play.

It was Freeman-Caple who brought Roby to the production. They met as students at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in the 1990s. "David played Brick back then, he was way too young for the role, but it was school," she said. Since then, Roby has served in academic fellowships funded by the Williams' estate and written a one-man play based on interviews he did with people who knew the playwright. She said she asked Roby about the possibility of giving a lecture about Tennessee Williams for the Seacoast Rep production. He instead offered to audition.

Roby said the chance to play Brick again is what lured him to Portsmouth. "I've always wanted to redo it when I was a little bit older with more experience. It's a deceptively difficult role. It's somebody who listens a lot, until Act Two. As an actor I have to listen, but as a character I'm detached. So it's an interesting combination that I find very challenging."

Asked how he sees the role differently across the years, Roby said, "I see more of a love that Brick actually does have for Maggie that I didn't necessarily play the first time. They've settled on an arrangement that's a temporary arrangement because of some things that happened in their past. I think I chose before just to tolerate Maggie. But now I think there is something much deeper. It's a stronger connection."

"It's like any kind of couple or any kind of marriage. They have to go through some kind of patches together. This is just patch that they are going through. But it's a big one. It's not a permanent problem, and I think I played the permanent problem the first time I played Brick."

"There's such complexity in William's work that it can't be black and white," he said.

Roby, who lives in Birmingham, Alabama, was the recipient of the 2009 Tennessee Williams Scholarship in Playwriting at the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and was the Tennessee Williams Fellow in Playwriting at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee from 2010 to 2012.

Roby also will be performing his one-man play, called "sometimes there's God so quickly" on October 7th and 14th at the Rep during the run of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

"Cat on A Hot Tin Roof" opened 60 years ago, and was revised by Williams in 1974. It offers on stage an immediacy and immersion unavailable amid the fleeting emotions of modern media, Freeman-Caple said. Williams has an enduring appeal to modern audiences. He was the second-most produced playwright for 2015-2016, after contemporary playwright Ayad Akhtar and not including Shakespeare, according to "American Theater" magazine.

Asked how the Seacoast Rep's audience would experience the play, Freeman-Caple said, "I think they are going to go through a gamut of emotions based on what the characters are experiencing. There will have a very interesting discussion on the car ride home, because it's left up to the audience to decide what happens at the end."

"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" runs October 2nd through 25th, with a special preview performance on October 1dt. Show times are Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m.Tickets are available through the Seacoast Rep Box Office at 603-433-4472, or online at www.seacoastrep.org. For student discounts or group rates, call the Box Office. "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" is sponsored by Liberty Mutual. The 2015 Seacoast Repertory Theatre's Season is sponsored in part by Bondgarden Farms, New Hampshire Public Television, and Portsmouth Public Media.

The Seacoast Repertory Theatre is a 501(c)3 non-profit theatre committed to providing a variety of programming for the community. The Rep presents professional programming through its Mainstage, alternative programming through its Red Light Series and also offers a variety of programs for youth and seniors. For more information, or to schedule an interview, please call Director of Marketing Brian Kelly at 603-785-2782 or at marketing@seacoastrep.org. For artistic questions please contact Interim Artistic Director Miles Burns at 603-498-8202 or at miles@seacoastrep.org.

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