The UC San Diego Department Of Theatre And Dance Presents MONSTER

The UC San Diego Department of Theatre and Dance presents Monster, written by Ava Geyer and directed by Joseph Hendel, as part of the 2019 Wagner New Play Festival.

About the play: When TV self-help guru Drew Capuano's compulsive masturbation comes to light, he retains the services of the only person who will still represent him: his power hungry twenty-four year-old female assistant. Meanwhile, survivor Mona Giotti works to make sure she's put Drew away for good. Monster is a brutal and brutally funny odyssey through America's media machine that puts perpetrator and survivor on an inevitable collision course of reckoning.

The preview for Monster will be April 30 at 7:30 PM. Monster runs May 7, 11, 15, and 16 at 7:30pm. Performances are at the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre in the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theatre District on UC San Diego's campus: 2910 La Jolla Village Drive, La Jolla, CA. For information about parking, please see the website.

Tickets are $20 for regular performances. Subscriptions and group rates are available. Student tickets are $10 for regular performances. Faculty, staff, alumni and senior citizens discounts available as well. Tickets can be purchased online or by calling the box office at (858) 534-4574.

The cast features Michael Rishawn (Drew), Rebecca Futterman (Mona), Amara Granderson (Olivia), Emily Stout (Liesl), August Robinson (Man 1), Ryan Martinez (Man 2) Ally McGreevy (Woman 1), Farrah Dinga (Woman 2), and Serina Estrada (Woman 3).

The creative team includes Joseph Hendel (Director), Hsi-An Chen (Scenic Designer), Natalie Barshow (Costume Designer), Justin Beets (Lighting Designer), MaeAnn Ross (Sound Designer), Will Jones (Dramaturg), Chloe Miller (Asst. Stage Manager), and Nicole Kim (Production Assistant).

The 2019 Wagner New Play Festival at UC San Diego features world premiere productions written by our talented MFA playwrights, and directed, acted, stage-managed and designed by our nationally-acclaimed MFA companies. The plays produced in the Wagner New Plays Festival represent some of the most original and groundbreaking new voices in American theatre. The plays in this year's festival are Monster by Ava Geyer, The Gradient by Steph Del Rosso, The Jefferson Middle School Monthly by Mara Nelson-Greenberg, Shame Spiral by Ali Viterbi, Duchess! Duchess! Duchess! by Vivian Barnes, and a staged reading of Incendiary by Dave Harris.

About the playwright: Ava Geyer is a third-year MFA Playwriting candidate. Awards and commissions from Princeton University include the Francis LeMoyne Page Award, an Alex Adams commission and the Stanley J. Seeger Fellowship. Recent projects include Invisible Thread at Second Stage Theatre in New York (assistant to Matt Gould and Griffin Matthews). BA: Princeton University, 2015.

About the director: Joseph Hendel is a second-year MFA Directing student from New York. He is a writer, director, and composer whose plays include Katzelmacher, USA (inspired by Fassbinder's Katzelmacher, the cell), The Tasty Karp Hotel (Teatr Fredry in Gniezno, Poland), Playing with Masculinity (Have Art: Will Travel! Inc.), and Beware the Ides of Monday (the cell). Other directing credits: The Inner Circle (opera about Alfred Kinsey at the Brick Theater's F*ckfest), AVoid2Remember (Title:Point's?! Festival), Appendage (1st Irish Theater Fest) and works by Brecht, Ionesco, Pirandello, and Gilbert and Sullivan. He is a resident artist at the cell, a two-time member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and is trained in clown and Commedia by master clown teacher Christopher Bayes. He enjoys synthesizers, German-Jewish critical theory, and playing with his pet chihuahua, Molière. UC San Diego credits: Tambo and Bones for WNPF 2018, A Raisin in the Sun (AD).

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