The Gamm to Stage GRIZZLY MAMA

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) opens the new year with the New England premiere of Grizzly Mama by award-winning playwright George Brant (Grounded, Gamm 2014). With biting humor and shocking twists, Brant's timely play explores political extremism from both sides of the aisle. Rachel Walshe (Marie Antoinette) directs Gamm Resident Actor Casey Seymour Kim as Deb Marshall, a newly feminist homemaker with a death wish for her neighbor, an ultra-conservative political candidate; with Amanda Ruggiero as Deb's apathetic teenager, Hannah, and Betsy Rinaldi as her adversary's celebrity daughter, Laurel.

Grizzly Mama runs from January 7 through February 7 at The Gamm Theatre, 172 Exchange St., Pawtucket, RI. Tickets are $41 and $49; preview performances (January 7-10) just $30. Call 401-723-4266 or order online at gammtheatre.org.

"We opened last season with George's astonishing one-woman tornado of a play, Grounded. It knocked audiences out here in Rhode Island, as it has around the planet," said Gamm Artistic Director Tony Estrella. "Like Grounded, Grizzly Mama looks at that inextricable link between the personal and the political. That it does so with intense and shocking psychological acuity and a biting laugh-out-loud sense of humor makes for a singularly powerful and delightfully painful play for today."

Deb is a divorced suburban mom who reimagines herself as a righteous, liberal avenger following the death of her activist mother. Her daughter, Hannah, is a typical texting teenager...at least until she discovers the real reason Mom moved them next door to a certain Alaskan presidential candidate. From George Brant, author of the one-woman tour-de-force, Grounded (Season 2014-2015), Grizzly Mama is a pitch-black comedy about motherhood, feminism and the shallowness of sound-bite politics, eliciting shocks and laughs in equal measure.