Pioneer Theatre Company Presents Staged Reading of A REQIUEM FOR AUGUST MOON

Pioneer Theatre Company presents the first new play in the Play-by-Playnew play reading series A Requiem for August Moon Friday, November 11 and Saturday, November 12.

Simon is a Ph.D candidate who has created a mathematical algorithm for predicting a hit song. However, he's been unable to finish his dissertation, because he is obsessed with finding a mathematically perfect song. When he buys a box of tapes from the collection of an eccentric man named Charlie, he discovers the lost tapes of August Moon, a former Indie Rock icon. On it is a song that Simon determines to be mathematically perfect. Before he can use the song, however, he must convince Charlie to tell him where he got the tapes. Charlie is skeptical of Simon's insistence that math can create the perfect song, arguing that art is organic. In the end, Simon is left to decide if it's worth sacrificing your art for the sake of science. A Requiem for August Moon is a humorous look at the complicated relationship between art and science, success and failure, and the people we love.

ELYZABETH WILDER's (Playwright) plays include Gee's Bend, Fresh Kills, Provenance, The Flagmaker of Market Street, The Furniture of Home, White Lightning and Everything That's Beautiful. Her plays have been produced at the Royal Court (London), Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Denver Center, Cleveland Play House, KC Rep, Northlight, the Arden, B Street Theatre, and Hartford Stage, among others. She was the recipient of the Osborn Award given by the American Theatre Critics Association. She recently completed a short play commission from Baltimore Center Stage as part of their acclaimed My America, Too project. Her play, Everything That's Beautiful will premiere at the New Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco in the spring of 2017. She is a proud alumnus of Youngblood at the Ensemble Studio Theatre and a graduate of New York University. Most recently Elyzabeth was the Tennessee Williams Playwright-in-Residence at Sewanee: The University of the South.

Guest artist Julie Kramer directs. Kramer directed last season's Outside Mullingar as well as two previous Play-by-Play readings: True Art (2014) and Slow Food (2015). In New York, she directed her adaptation of Rona Jaffe's bestseller The Best of Everything (New York Times and Time Out Critics' Pick, published by Dramatists Play Service). Additional credits include Mother Load (Off-Broadway and national tour), Pearl's Gone Blue (Best Musical FringeNYC), Hillary: A Modern Greek Tragedy With a (Somewhat) Happy Ending (New Georges), None of the Above (Theatre Row), Baby Love (Mesto Zensk in Ljubljana, Slovenia; The Uno Festival in Victoria, Canada) and three shows for the HBO Comedy Festival in Aspen, CO. She has directed and developed new work at The Public Theater, New Dramatists, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The New York Musical Festival, The New Group, The Directors Company, Juilliard, The Dorset Theatre Festival and The O'Neill Center. She's a writer and director with New York Madness, and teaches Advanced Directing at The Tepper Semester/Syracuse University.

Cast includes New York-based PTC alums Joe Tapper and Howard Kaye.

TAPPER reads the role of Simon, the Ph.D candidate who sets out to find a mathmatically perfect song. TAPPER returns to PTC after playing Lt. Caffee in 2014's A Few Good Men and George in the 2012 production of Of Mice and Men. He debuted on Broadway in 2014's You Can't Take It With You.

KAYE reads the role of Charlie. Kaye has appeared on Broadway in Miss Saigon and was last at PTC in It Happened One Christmas. He had previous PTC roles in The Music Man and Peter and the Starcatcher.

ANNE LOUISE BRINGS, a graduate from Westminister College, and ASHLEY MARIAN RAMOS, a junior in the University of Utah's Actor Training Program, read the roles of Nora and Max, respectively.

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