La Jolla Playhouse Opens TRIBES Tonight

La Jolla Playhouse presents Tribes (tonight, June 25 - July 21 in the Mandell Weiss Forum), Sideways (July 16 - August 18 in the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre) and Neva (June 26 - 30 in the Theodore and Adele Shank Theatre).

Tribes, by Nina Raine and directed by David Cromer, features an amazing group of actors, all of whom appeared in the award-winning Off-Broadway production, including Thomas DellaMonica as "Daniel," Russell Harvard as "Billy," Meghan O'Neill as "Sylvia," Lee Roy Rogers as "Beth," Jeff Still as "Christopher" and DIna Thomas as "Ruth."

The Tribes creative team includes Scott Pask, Scenic Designer; Tristan Raines, Costume Designer; Keith Parham, Lighting Designer;Daniel Kluger, Sound Designer; and Jeff Sugg, Projection & Video Designer.

The cast of Sideways, by UC San Diego alumnus Rex Pickett and directed by Des McAnuff, features UC San Diego M.F.A. graduate and Playhouse veteran Zöe Chao (Surf Report) in the role of "Terra," Playhouse veterans Nadia Bowers (The Farnsworth Invention, Tartuffe) as "Maya," Jeff Marlow (Glengarry Glen Ross) as "Roman/Jared" and local actor Mike Sears (His Girl Friday, Bonnie & Clyde) as "Chris," as well as acclaimed actors Patrick Breen (Broadway's The Normal Heart, Next Fall) as "Miles," Sean Allan Krill (Off-Broadway's Hit the Wall; national tour of Thoroughly Modern Millie) as "Jack," Cynthia Mace (Lynn Redgrave's The Mandrake Root) as "Phyllis," Allison Spratt Pearce (Broadway's Curtains) as "Victoria" and Jorge Rodriguez (Public Theatre's Love's Labour's Lost) as "Charlie." The production also features current UC San Diego M.F.A. students Vi Flaten as "Evelyn/Babs," Tom Patterson as "Brad" and Jasmine St. Clair as "Waitress."

The creative team for Sideways includes 2013/14 Playhouse Artist-in-Residence Robert Brill, Scenic Designer; Paul Tazewell, Costume Designer; Michael Walton, Lighting Designer; Cricket S. Myers, Sound Designer; Sean Nieuwenhuis, Video and Projection Designer;Michael Roth, Composer; Lisa Shriver, Choreographer and Shirley Fishman, Dramaturg.

The cast of Neva, written and directed by Guillermo Calderón, translation by Andrea Thome, in a co-production with Center Theatre Group and South Coast Repertory, includes Sue Cremin as "Olga," Ramón De Ocampo as "Aleko" and Ruth Livier as "Masha."

Nominated for the 2010 Olivier Award for Best Play and winner of the 2012 Drama Desk and New York Critics Circle Awards, Tribes offers a biting, yet comic look at family dynamics. At its center is Billy, the deaf son of a raucous family of intellectuals obsessed with self-expression. As his parents and siblings verbally spar and compete for attention, Billy catches what he can by lip-reading. When he finds a new family in the deaf community, a new world opens up to him and tensions reach an all-time high in this new play about membership in your tribe - and hearing what isn't said. The New York Times called it "a smart, lively, new play that asks us to hear how we hear, in silence as well as in speech."

Sideways follows two friends - Miles, a frustrated novelist; and Jack, a no-name TV actor and director - and their journey across the Santa Ynez Valley wine country. During one last blowout road trip before Jack is to be married, the two men run tangle-footed into their midlife crises, all the while exploring this once little-known central California wine region. This new play, directed by Playhouse Director Emeritus Des McAnuff (Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Jersey Boys) and adapted by UC San Diego graduate Rex Pickett from his own novel,takes audiences on what the Los Angeles Times called a hilarious "oenophilial odyssey."

Neva tells the story of Anton Chekhov's widow, the actress Olga Knipper, who arrives in a dimly lit rehearsal room in St. Petersburg in the winter of 1905. As Olga and two other actors await the rest of the cast, they huddle together, act out scenes from their lives and muse on their art form and love - while unseen striking workers are being gunned down in the streets by the Tsarist regime. Calderón savagely examines the relationship between theater and historical context in this tightly crafted piece that allows a palpable terror to creep through the theatre walls.

Tickets to Tribes, Sideways and Neva are available by calling The Playhouse Patron Services Office at (858) 550-1010 or online at LaJollaPlayhouse.org.

The nationally-acclaimed, Tony Award-winning La Jolla Playhouse is known for its tradition of creating the most exciting and adventurous new work in regional theatre. The Playhouse was founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire and Mel Ferrer, and is considered one of the most well-respected not-for-profit theatres in the country. Numerous Playhouse productions have moved to Broadway, including the currently running hits Jersey Boys, Chaplin and Peter and the Starcatcher, as well as Big River, The Who's Tommy, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, A Walk in the Woods, Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays, the Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife, Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Farnsworth Invention, 33 Variations, Bonnie & Clyde, Chaplin and Hands on a Hardbody. Located on the UC San Diego campus, La Jolla Playhouse is made up of three primary performance spaces: the Mandell Weiss Theatre, the Mandell Weiss Forum Theatre and the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for La Jolla Playhouse, a state-of-the-Art Theatre complex which features the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre. La Jolla Playhouse is led by Artistic Director Christopher Ashley and Managing Director Michael S. Rosenberg.

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