Theatre Exile Stages RED SPEEDO, Opening Tonight

Theatre Exile begins its season examining the dark side of the American Dream with the Philadelphia Premiere of Lucas Hnath's Red Speedo. This taut, darkly comic new play runs now through November 23 at Theatre Exile's Studio X, 1340 S. 13th Street (13th and Reed Streets.) Opening Night is tonight, November 5 at 8 p.m. Tickets cost $25-$40 and are available online at www.theatreexile.org or by phone (215) 218-4022.

Steinberg Award winning playwright Lucas Hnath's new work dives off the starting block with the discovery of a cooler full of performance-enhancing drugs. Ray is on the eve of the Olympic trials. If he makes the team, he'll earn a deal with Speedo setting him up for a life of success as he fights to achieve his version of the American dream. However, when the drugs are found, Ray and all of those who circle around him are thrown into murky waters in this spare, pool-side drama that explores the battle between building a family and the business of winning at any cost.

Red Speedo is directed by Theatre Exile Producing Artistic Director Deborah Block. Brian Ratcliffe, who recently appeared in The Wilma Theater's Don Juan Comes Home from Iraq, plays Ray. Exile veteran Keith Conallen (Gruesome Playground Injuries and Lieutenant of Inishmore) plays Ray's hyper laywer/sports agent older brother. Celebrated Philadelphia actor Leonard C. Haas makes his Exile debut as Ray's coach. He was recently seen in Hotel Suite at Act II Playhouse. Jaylene Clark Owens, of Flashpoint Theatre Company's Barrymore-nominated ensemble from The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington, plays Ray's former girlfriend portrays the former girlfriend who Ray tries to win back at any cost.

"We have been interested in Lucas' work for a while and Red Speedo is a perfect Exile play. It is direct in its writing and intimate in how the audience experiences the world on stage," said Deborah Block. "Lucas captures the struggle of four characters as they try to navigate the grey morality of life at a time when all of their dreams are at stake. I find the play to be timely as we are seeing how morality, love and family are often at odds with the business of elite sports."

Colin McIlvaine (set) Drew Billau (lighting) and Christopher Colucci (sound) return to Theatre Exile after creating the world of last season's Cock. In this show, they will bring the audience into the locker room and creating the edge of an Olympic-sized pool, complete with water and the smell of chlorine. Rachel Coon joins the team and makes her costume design debut at Exile.

Red Speedo premiered last year at the Studio Theatre in Washington. Hnath has been a resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2011. His plays include The Christians (2014 Humana Festival), A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney (Soho Rep), nightnight (2013 Humana Festival), Isaac's Eye (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Death Tax (2012 Humana Festival, Royal Court Theatre), and The Courtship of Anna Nicole Smith (Actors Theatre of Louisville). He is a winner of the 2012 Whitfield Cook Award for Isaac's Eye, 2013 Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award Citation for Death Tax, and a two-time winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant for screenwriting. Hnath is also a recipient of commissions from the EST/Sloan Project, Actors Theatre of Louisville, South Coast Repertory, Playwrights Horizons, and New York University's Graduate Acting Program. He received both his BFA and MFA from NYU's Department of Dramatic Writing and is a lecturer in New York University's Expository Writing Program.

Theatre Exile's work is supported by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, William Penn Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Wyncote Foundation.

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