Lanford Wilson's Powerful BOOK OF DAYS to Close DMT's 2015-16 Season

The Douglas Morrisson Theatre is excited to announce the final show in our Revelations Season: BOOK OF DAYS, a gripping study of a small town murder mystery by Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright Lanford Wilson.

BOOK OF DAYS will have 15 performances, including one preview, May 19 through June 12, 2016, at the Douglas Morrisson Theatre, 22311 N. Third St. in Hayward, CA. Tickets are $10-$29, and are available through the Box Office at (510) 881-6777 or online at www.dmtonline.org.

DMT's production of BOOK OF DAYS is directed by Dale Albright and features a large and impressive ensemble of local performers: Laura Espino, Matt Gunnison, Tim Holt Jones, Mylissa Malley,Nick Mandracchia, Adam Niemann, Caitlin Papp, Paul Stout, Eve McElheney Tieck, Kendall Tieck, Dan Wilson and Marianna Wolff.

Welcome to Dublin, Missouri, a (fictional) small town in the American Heartland, dominated by a Cheese Plant, a fundamentalist church, and a Community Theater. When the violent death of the head of the cheese factory shocks the town, Ruth Hoch goes on a one-woman crusade to root out the truth -- amidst a flurry of petty jealousies, hypocrisies, greed and lies. With echoes of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, the characters in BOOK OF DAYS are forced to reexamine the world and values they thought they knew and embraced. Lanford Wilson's mesmerizing play perceptively dissects human nature, and unfolds like a page-turning mystery.

BOOK OF DAYS was commissioned, developed and produced by Jeff Daniels' Purple Rose Theater in Chelsea, Michigan, and won the American Theater Critics Assn.'s 1998 best play award. The play was subsequently co-produced in collaboration by The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and Hartford Stage. Signature Theater Company produced Book of Days in a Broadway revival in 2002 as part of their season-long celebration of Mr. Wilson's work.

The creative team for BOOK OF DAYS is comprised of designers with credits from numerous Bay Area theatres and beyond, including American Conservatory Theater, Marin Theatre Company, Cutting Ball, San Francisco Playhouse, Aurora Theatre Co. and Shotgun Players: Liliana Duque Piñeiro (scenic designer), Allen Willner (lighting designer), Teddy Hulsker (sound designer) and Maggie Whitaker (costume designer).

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT Lanford Wilson (1937 - 2011) was one of the most distinguished American playwrights of the late 20th century who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement with his earliest plays, first produced in New York at the Caffe Cino. His plays moved from Off-Off-Broadway, to Off-Broadway, then to Broadway, and beyond. The New York Times said Wilson's work was " ... earthy, realist, greatly admired, widely performed - centered on the sheer ordinariness of marginality." His plays include Balm In Gilead, The Rimers Of Eldritch, The Gingham Dog, Lemon Sky, Serenading Louie, The Hot L Baltimore, The Mound Builders, Angels Fall, Burn This, Redwood Curtain, 5th Of July, Talley & Son, Talley's Folly, and Book Of Days, and numerous one act plays. Mr. Wilson also wrote for television and opera and a new translation of Chekov's Three Sisters. He co-founded the Circle Repertory Company in New York City where he was a resident playwright from 1969-1995. In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Talley's Folly, Wilson's awards include The Institute of Arts and Letters Award, The Edward Albee Last Frontier Award, The John Steinbeck Award, The Drama-Logue Award (Los Angeles), two New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards for Best Play, two Obie Awards for Best Play, and an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR Dale Albright directed last season's Wonder of the World at DMT, and the first Bare Bones staged reading, Drunken City. Other directing credits include The Pain and the Itch at Custom Made (TBA Award Nomination for Outstanding Direction), Lanford Wilson's Burn This for Dragon Productions, After Ashley, The Little Dog Laughed, Sideman, As Bees in Honey Drown (Dragon), Tuna Christmas (Bus Barn), My Strange Nation, The Sum of Us, Torch Song Trilogy (theatre Q) among others. As an actor, Dale most recently appeared as Mr. Antrobus in Skin of Our Teeth at DMT and as Mason in Dragon Productions Take Me Out (TBA Award, Outstanding Actor). Other acting credits include roles at Berkeley Repertory Theatre (u/s Vanya in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike), Pear, Dragon, Douglas Morrisson (Dividing the Estate), City Lights and theatre Q.

ABOUT THE DOUGLAS MORRISSON THEATRE The Douglas Morrisson Theatre is owned and operated by the Hayward Area Recreation and Park District. The DMT is located at 22311 N. Third St. in Hayward, next to the Senior Center and the Japanese Gardens. The Box Office is open Tuesday through Friday, 12:30 to 5:30 and can be reached at (510) 881-6777. Information is also available at www.dmtonline.org.

Pictured: The ensemble cast of BOOK OF DAYS. Photo by Terry Sullivan.

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