Lynn Nottage's BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK Set for DMT, Now thru 9/20

The Douglas Morrisson Theatre 2015-2016 Revelations Season kicks off with the regional premiere of Lynn Nottage's biting satire about racial stereotyping in Hollywood: BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK. By The Way, Meet Vera Stark will have 15 performances, including one preview, tonight, August 27, through September 20, 2015, 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 By The Way, Meet Vera Stark is directed by Dawn Monique Williams and features an outstanding ensemble of Bay Area actors: Kelly Strickland as Vera Stark, Alicia von Kugelgen as Gloria, Shani Harris-Bagwell as Lottie, Jia Taylor as Anna Mae, Khary Moye as Leroy, Evan Sokol as Slasvick, and Gene Mocsy as Maxmillian.

Riffing off 1930s screwball comedy films, Pulitzer Prize-winning (Ruined) playwright Lynn Nottage tackles and skewers the all-too-topical theme of racial stereotyping in Hollywood. By The Way, Meet Vera Starktakes the audience on a seventy-year journey through the life of Vera Stark. It's 1933 and Vera, a budding African-American actress is working as a lady's maid for a white Hollywood self-dramatizing starlet known as "America's little sweetie pie." When they're both cast in the same Southern epic, ("The Belle of New Orleans"), Vera's career is launched and we become witness to her controversial legacy in front of and behind the cameras.

Playwright Nottage has said that By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is inspired by the life and career of Theresa Harris, a pioneering African-American film star. "I was interested in seeing the full journey of Vera Stark across time, and I was interested in seeing how she was treated in various media," says Nottage, who has also created a website for Vera (www.meetverastark.com) that treats the fictional actress as real. "The first time I saw Theresa Harris, I immediately began asking questions," Nottage says. "Who was she? What was her life like? Where did she come from? What were her dreams, what were her desires? When I sat down to write the play, it was to answer all those questions I had, not just about Theresa Harris but about a whole generation of African-American actresses like her."

Artistic Director Susan E. Evans says, "I am tremendously excited to open our DMT 2016-2016 Season with By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, a very funny, very clever and very timely comedy. The fictional Vera is one of those talented actresses we've all seen in 1930s movies relegated almost entirely to playing the roles of maids, cooks or slaves. This play examines with humor and poignancy the choices she makes over many decades as she navigates the world of Hollywood."

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark was originally produced by Second Stage Theatre Off Broadway in May 2011, directed by Jo Bonney; it received its West Coast premiere at the Geffen Playhouse in September 2012, also directed by Ms. Bonney.

The Douglas Morrisson Theatre creative team for By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is comprised of designers with credits from numerous Bay Area theatres and beyond including Andrea Bechert (scenic designer), Cliff Caruthers (sound designer), Mike Oesch (lighting designer) and Courtney Flores (costume designer).

Lynn Nottage is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and a screenwriter. Widely produced in the United States and throughout the world, her plays include the recently opened Sweat at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, By The Way, Meet Vera Stark (Drama Desk Nomination), Ruined (Pulitzer Prize, OBIE, Lucille Lortel, New York Drama Critics' Circle, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award), Intimate Apparel (American Theatre Critics and New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards for Best Play), Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine (OBIE Award), Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Las Meninas, Mud, River, Stone, Por'knockers and POOF!. Nottage is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship; her numerous other awards and honors include the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, the inaugural Horton Foote Prize, Helen Hayes Award, the National Black Theatre Fest's August Wilson Playwriting Award, a Guggenheim Grant and PEN/Laura Pels Award. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama, where she has been a faculty member since 2001. She is also an Associate Professor in the Theatre Department at Columbia School of the Arts.

Director Dawn Monique Williams is Artistic Associate at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival where she was the 2013 Phil Killian Directing Fellow. Plays directed include the recent English language premiere of Gracia Morales' NN12, Othello, As You Like It, Winter's Tale, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, In the Blood, Steel Magnolias, Children of Eden, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Little Shop of Horrors, Burial at Thebes, Medea, Trojan Women, and La Ronde. International directing credits include Edinburgh Festival Fringe productions of Scapin the Cheat, Anna Bella Eema, and The Tempest. Dawn has worked at Impact Theatre (Berkeley, CA), Hartford Stage (Hartford, CT), TheatreWorks (Palo Alto, CA), California Shakespeare Theatre (Berkeley, CA), Marin Shakespeare Company (Marin, CA), African American Shakespeare Company (San Francisco, CA), and Shakespeare & Co (Lenox, MA). Most recently Dawn was Associate Director on Antony and Cleopatra and Pericles at OSF and will oversee the Pericles transfer to The Folger Theatre (Washington, D.C.) this fall. Dawn is a proud member of the Shakespeare Theatre Association and the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

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: Jia Taylor as Anna Mae and Kelly Strickland as Vera Stark. Photo by Terry Sullivan.

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