Wilma Theater to Open 2014-15 Season with RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN, 10/8-11/2

After the highly acclaimed production of Becky Shaw in the 2009/10 season The Wilma Theater is thrilled to be producing its second Gina Gionfriddo play-Rapture, Blister, Burn directed by UArts Ira Brind School of Theater Director Joanna Settle. When celebrity professor Catherine reunites with her best friends from graduate school, now a married couple with kids living in a New England college town, she begins to rethink the choices she's made over the past twenty years. As these three friends navigate their new relationships with each other, feelings of regret begin to arise. Catherine's homecoming leads to shifting dynamics and a larger look at how much (or little) the lives of women have evolved over the past century, while examining subjects ranging from pornography to Betty Friedan to slasher films. Susan Smith Blackburn Prize-winner Gina Gionfriddo offers a fresh take on timeless questions by wittily juxtaposing feminist theories with messy human desires.

Rapture, Blister, Burn begins on Wednesday, October 8, 2014; opens on Wednesday, October 15, 2014; and closes on Sunday, November 2, 2014.

Critics and members of the press are invited to attend Press Night on Wednesday, October 15, at 7:30pm. For ticket arrangements, contact Sara Madden at smadden@wilmatheater.org or 215.893.9456 x102.

When asked about returning to the Wilma stage, playwright Gina Gionfriddo stated, "The Wilma gave me a beautiful production of my play Becky Shaw, and I am thrilled to be back with my newest work." Director Joanna Settle comments on her first experience with the Wilma and the opportunity of working with an all-local cast, saying "I've long wanted to work at the Wilma and am thrilled to have the chance. It's seemed to me for years that Blanka Zizka and her company of passionate colleagues held the ethical center of theater making in America. It's an honor to be here with them and to lend myself to the adventure of Gina Gionfriddo's Rapture, Blister, Burn. It's such a thrill to find myself only a few months into my Philadelphia life with the opportunity to work with some of the city's finest performers. While art making doesn't really obey the boundaries of geographical borders, I intentionally sought an all-Philly cast for this production, and am champing at the bit to get started. These people knocked me out in their auditions with their vitality, curiosity, and raw talent. Blanka Zizka, the Wilma, and this cast are the best welcome I could possibly hope for in my new artistic home."
Gina Gionfriddo was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Becky Shaw, which was produced to critical acclaim at the Wilma in the 2009/10 season. Other plays include After Ashley (Humana Festival 2004, The Vineyard Theatre in New York, regional theatres throughout the country, and abroad in Poland), U.S. Drag (Off-Broadway by the stageFARM, Clubbed Thumb at HERE, and many regional productions), Guinevere (O'Neill Playwrights' Conference), and the one-acts Safe, Squalor, and America's Got Tragedy (commissioned and presented by the stageFARM). Gina has received an Obie Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, an American Theatre Critics Association/Steinberg citation, and a Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship. She has written for the television programs "House of Cards," "Law & Order," "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," "Cold Case," and "The Borgias." She has contributed essays on rock music to the literary journal The Believer and short fiction to Canteen. A graduate of the MFA Playwriting Program at Brown University, she has taught writing at Brown, Providence College, and Rhode Island College.