Lantern Theater Company Presents THE LAST MATCH By Anna Ziegler

Lantern Theater Company continues its 2019/20 season with the Philadelphia premiere of The Last Match, a funny and moving drama from award-winning playwright Anna Ziegler. Lantern resident director M. Craig Getting directs a cast that includes Joanna Liao, Scott Miller, Lee Minora, and Matteo Scammell. Theater critics and members of the press are invited to request press comps for opening night on Wednesday, November 13 at 7 p.m. by contacting Anne Shuff at ashuff@lanterntheater.org. The Last Match runs Thursday, November 7 through Sunday, December 15, 2019; a complete schedule of performances and audience enrichment events is included in the fact sheet below.

Set over the course of a key matchup in the U.S. Open Semifinals, The Last Match uses the tennis match as a springboard to reveal both the extraordinariness of elite athletes and their ordinariness as human beings. The conflict between the aging American champion and the young Russian challenger is both epic and personal, as are the obstacles they face building relationships with the women they love.

Playwright Anna Ziegler, who recently visited the Lantern and participated in The Last Match rehearsal process, says that her play explores "how we conquer our demons to fulfill our potential." In the play, one of the characters asks, "How do you get to the bottom of wanting?" In these questions, Lantern Artistic Director Charles McMahon sees the great panoply of human existence. "The characters in The Last Match are playing for very high stakes, and they are trying to transform their lives," according to McMahon. "But there is something in us that makes us pursue this transformation through struggle, through contest, danger, and enmity. In order for the new world we are trying to create for ourselves to have any real meaning, it must arrive after a harrowing journey. I believe that Anna Ziegler's brilliance in The Last Match lies in her ability to invest so much passion, so much of life's real meaning into a brief moment on an imaginary court."

Lantern Theater Company produced Ziegler's play Photograph 51 to great acclaim during the 2015/16 season, featuring Geneviève Perrier as groundbreaking British scientist Rosalind Franklin. The play went on to win London's 2016 WhatsOnStage Award for Best New Play and Best of the Year play by The Washington Post and The Telegraph. Ziegler's other recent plays include Actually (LA Ovation Award-winner for Playwriting of an Original Play), The Wanderers (2018 San Diego Critic's Circle Award for Outstanding New Play), and Boy (nominated for the 2016 John Gassner Award by the Outer Critics Circle). Her work has been produced on the West End and in the U.S. at Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, Geffen Playhouse, Roundabout Theatre Company, The Old Globe, Seattle Rep, South Coast Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Theater J, The Magic Theatre, and many others. She holds commissions from Roundabout, Manhattan Theatre Club, Geffen Playhouse, Second Stage Theater, and Grove/Whitman Productions. Oberon Books recently published a collection of her work entitled Anna Ziegler: Plays One.

Lantern Theater Company will delve into the themes of The Last Match on its Lantern Searchlight blog, available online at lanterntheater.org/searchlight. Published articles will explore the psychology of elite competitive athletes, the evolution of tennis superstars, American and Russian approaches to competitive sports training, fun quizzes, an interview with playwright Anna Ziegler, and much more.

Tickets for The Last Match start at $28 and are available online at lanterntheater.org or by calling the Lantern Box Office at (215) 829-0395. Discounts are available for students, seniors 65 and up, U.S. military personnel, and groups of 10 or more. All performances of The Last Match will take place at the Lantern's resident home at St. Stephen's Theater, 923 Ludlow St. in Center City Philadelphia.

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