Actors and Directors Announced for SCR's 12th Annual Pacific Playwrights Festival 5/1 - 5/3

South Coast Repertory has announced the lineup of actors and directors who will participate in the 12th annual Pacific Playwrights Festival (PPF).  Since its creation in 1998, PPF has grown into one of the most important festivals of new scripts in the United States.  This year’s Festival will take place during the May 1 through May 3 weekend and will feature five staged readings and two fully-produced World Premieres on South Coast Repertory’s Segerstrom and Julianne Argryos Stages.  Tickets to PPF may be purchased online at www.scr.org, by phone at (714) 708-5555 or in person at the SCR box office.

This year’s Pacific Playwrights Festival presents fully-produced stagings of new plays by Richard Greenberg and Lauren Gunderson, and staged readings of plays by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Bill Cain, Julia Cho, Howard Korder and David Wiener.

David Warren will direct In a Garden by Howard Korder (Friday, May 1 at 1:00pm) featuring Greg Germann, Mark Harelik and Bernard White.

Bart DeLorenzo will direct Doctor Cerberus by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Friday, May 1 at 3:30pm) featuring Steven Culp, Nike Doukas and Matt McGrath.

Art Manke will direct Extraordinary Chambers by David Weiner (Friday, May 1 at 7:45pm and Saturday, May 2 at 7:45pm) featuring Andrew Borba, Kimiko Gelman, Darrell Kunitomi, Kirsten Potter and Greg Watanabe.

Michael John Garcés will direct 9 Circles by Bill Cain (Saturday, May 2 at 10:30am).  Casting is currently in progress.

Mark Brokaw will direct The Language Archive by Julia Cho (Sunday, May 3 at 10:30am) featuring Tony Amendola, Matt Letscher and Maria Thayer.

Anchoring the 12th annual Pacific Playwrights Festival are the fully-produced World Premieres of Our Mother’s Brief Affair, a new comedy by Richard Greenberg about two adult siblings who reunite to tend to their elderly mother and are astonished to learn about her long-ago love affair, and Lauren Gunderson’s Emilie – La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life at the Petit Théâtre at Cirey Tonight , the story of an 18th century Parisian noblewoman and her lifelong affair with the Enlightenment superstar Voltaire.

SCR’s 11 previous festivals have introduced 78 new plays to the national stage including Amy Freed’s The Beard of Avon, Donald Margulies’ Shipwrecked! An Entertainment, Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel, Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics, Rolin Jones’ The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow and David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Hole.

The Honorary Producers of the Pacific Playwrights Festival are Sophie & Larry Cripe, John & Sue Murphy and Tod & Linda White.  Special thanks to The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust for supporting the Pacific Playwrights Festival and to The Shubert Foundation, whose generous grant supports all of SCR’s play development efforts.  The Honorary Producers of Our Mother’s Brief Affair is The Playwrights Circle.  The Honorary Producers of Emile are Bette and Wylie Aitken.  Special thanks also to the Elizabeth George Foundation for funding SCR’s commission to Lauren Gunderson.

Coast Magazine is the Media Partner and The Wyndham Orange County Hotel is the Official Hotel of the Pacific Playwrights Festival.

Ticket prices for the 12th Pacific Playwrights Festival are $12 per individual reading, and $31-$64 for Our Mother’s Brief Affair and Emilie.  The Festival runs from May 1 through May 3.  Tickets can be purchased online at www.scr.org, by phone at (714) 708-5555 or in person at the SCR box office. 

South Coast Repertory is located at 655 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa, at the Bristol Street/Avenue of the Arts exit off the San Diego (405) Freeway in the Folino Theatre Center, part of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.  Parking is available off Anton Blvd. on Park Center Drive.

Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory, under the artistic direction of David Emmes and Martin Benson, is widely recognized as one of the leading professional theaters in the United States.  Founded in 1964, SCR is committed to theater that illuminates the compelling personal and social issues of our time, not only on its stages but through its education and outreach programs.  While its productions represent a balance of classic and modern theater, SCR is renowned for its extensive new play development program, including the Pacific Playwrights Festival.  Of SCR’s more than 400 productions, over 100 have been world premieres with subsequent stagings achieving enormous success across America and around the world.  SCR-developed works have garnered eight Pulitzer Prize nominations with Margaret Edson’s Wit winning the prize in 1999 and David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole winning in 2007.  Located in Costa Mesa, California, in 2002 SCR opened the Folino Theater Center, an expanded three-theater complex that includes the 507-seat Segerstrom Stage, the 336-seat Julianne Argyros Stage and the 94-seat Nicholas Studio.

12TH annual Pacific Playwrights Festival lineup:

Fully-Produced World Premieres

Our Mother's Brief Affair

by Richard Greenberg

directed by Pam MacKinnon

(Previews April 3 – April 9; Runs April 10 - May 3)

PPF Schedule:

Friday, May 1 at 8pm; Saturday, May 2 at 2:30 & 8pm; Sunday, May 3 at 2:30 & 7:30pm

Adult siblings Seth and Abby have reunited to tend to their elderly mother, Anna, who has the habit of playing out periodic deathbed scenes for her children.  But this time something is different.  This time Anna has a story to tell, about long-ago Saturday afternoons, about escorting young Seth to his viola lessons at Juilliard despite his constant protestations . . . and about what she did while he played scales.  A love affair made out of weekly matinees at a small hotel, with a man whose name is synonymous with betrayal. 

Richard Greenberg received the Tony Award for his play, Take Me Out.  South Coast Repertory commissioned and presented the World Premieres of Greenberg’s A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, The Violet Hour, Everett Beekin, Hurrah at Last, Night and Her Stars, The Extra Man and Three Days of Rain, a Pulitzer Prize finalist which was recently revived on Broadway.  SCR has also produced his play The Dazzle.  He is currently represented on Broadway by the The American Plan, and earlier this season by the revival of Pal Joey, for which he wrote the book.  Richard Greenberg’s other plays include Eastern Standard, Jenny Keeps Talking and The Maderati.  A staged reading of the SCR-commissioned Our Mother’s Brief Affair was presented at the 2007 Pacific Playwrights Festival.

Emilie – La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life at the Petit Théâtre at Cirey Tonight

by Lauren Gunderson

directed by David Emmes

(Previews April 19 – 23; Runs April 24 – May 10)

PPF Schedule:

Friday, May 1 at 7:45pm; Saturday, May 2 at 2pm & 7:45pm; Sunday, May 3 at 2pm & 7:45pm

Emilie – La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life at the Petit Théâtre at Cirey Tonight is the true story of an 18th century Parisian noblewoman and her lifelong affair with the Enlightenment superstar Voltaire.  In this highly theatrical rediscovery of one of history's great thinkers, Emilie must defend her life by tallying her achievements in love and philosophy—and searching for a formula that will convince the world of her worth.

Lauren Gunderson is a New York City (by way of Atlanta) playwright, screenwriter and short story author.  She is currently finishing her MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and is a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship.  Her work has received national praise and awards including the Berrilla Kerr Award for American Theatre, Young Playwright’s Award, Eric Bentley New Play Award, Essential Theatre Prize, Virtual Theatre Prizes and many others.  She has been produced Off Broadway (Parts They Call Deep), Off Off Broadway (Sus Manos) and recently had many new plays produced in Atlanta (including The Van Gogh Café, Leap and Background), as well as regionally (A Short History of Nearly Everything).  She has worked on commissions for the ALLIANCE THEATRE’s Collision Project, Actors Express Theatre, City University of New York and Synchronicity Performance Group.  Leap was published with Theatre Emory’s Playwriting Center, and her first collection of plays, Deepen The Mystery: Science and the South Onstage, was published with iUniverse.  Lauren Gunderson has developed plays with Actors Express, Magic Theatre, Kitchen Dog Theater, Horizon Theatre Company, JAW/West, WORDBridge, Brave New Works and others.  She has spoken nationally and internationally on the intersection of science and theatre, and arts activism.  A staged reading of the SCR-commissioned Emilie – La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life at the Petit Théâtre at Cirey Tonight was presented at the 2008 Pacific Playwrights Festival.

Staged Readings

(schedule subject to change)

In a Garden

by Howard Korder

directed by David Warren

Friday, May 1 at 1:00pm

A lovely gazebo will adorn the garden of Culture Minister Fawaz Othman al-Ulmati.  Someday.  It will be designed by the American architect Andrew Hackett.  But first Hackett must pass muster.  No easy task; it takes years, and in that time the two men play a fascinating game of cat and mouse.  Hackett is teased, amused—and tricked—as Othman reviews countless renderings (and his favorite Hollywood movies).  Around them, the world teeters on the brink of disaster, and the two men, like their countries, change loyalties as they find themselves caught up in history.

Howard Korder’s first play, Night Maneuver, was produced in 1982 by the Floating Rep in New York City.  The Manhattan Punch Line produced Life on Earth in its 1985 One-Act Festival, and Lip Service the following year.  Fun, directed by Jon Jory, premiered at The Actors Theatre of Louisville’s 1987 Humana Festival and received the Heidemann Award for Best One-Act Play.  Its companion piece, Nobody, was selected for the 1987 O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference, where it won the HBO Writer’s Award.  His Boys’ Life was produced by Lincoln Center in 1988, directed by William. H. Macy, and received a Pulitzer Prize nomination.  The same year HBO broadcast Korder’s television adaptation of Lip Service.  Other work for television includes The Passion of Ayn Rand and Stealing Sinatra; for film, Hollywoodland and Lakeview Terrace.  Search and Destroy was commissioned by South Coast Repertory, premiering in 1990 under the direction of David Chambers.  It received the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New Play and the Joseph Kesselring Prize from the National Arts Club.  The play opened on Broadway at Circle in the Square in 1992 and subsequently played at The Royal Court Theatre in London, where it was directed by Stephen Daldry.  The Lights premiered at Lincoln Center Theater in November 1993, directed by MarK Wing-Davey, receiving seven Drama Desk nominations and an OBIE Award. In 1999 South Coast Repertory premiered The Hollow Lands, another commissioned work.  Sea of Tranquility premiered Off Broadway at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2004.   Korder received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996.  He is currently a writer and producer on the upcoming HBO series “Boardwalk Empire.”

Doctor Cerberus

by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

directed by Bart DeLorenzo

Friday, May 1 at 3:30pm

In the suburbs of Washington, D.C., in the mid-1980s, 13-year-old Franklin Robertson is trying to survive. His parents don’t understand him.  His older brother torments him non-stop.  He’d rather write stories than go on dates.  His great comfort comes from the horror movies he watches every Saturday night at midnight, on a black-and-white TV set in his basement, introduced by the enigmatic Dr. Cerberus. In fact, Franklin feels certain that Dr. Cerberus can save his misfit life—if only Franklin could get on his show.  A coming-of-age comedy with a twist of terror, Doctor Cerberus is the latest from this “intelligent, compassionate writer” (Variety). 

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama and has written many plays, including King of Shadows (The Working Theater in New York), Good Boys and True (Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, 2econd Stage Theatre in NYC), Based on a Totally True Story (Manhattan Theatre Club), The Mystery Plays (2econd Stage, Yale Repertory Theatre), The Velvet Sky (Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington D.C.), The Muckle Man (City Theatre in Pittsburgh), Dark Matters (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in NYC), Rough Magic (Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, New York) and The Weird (an evening of short pulpy plays at Dad’s Garage Theatre in Atlanta).  His comedies Golden Age and Say You Love Satan were both nominated for GLAAD Media Awards and have been produced around the country.  Next fall, the Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Maryland, will premiere his new adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray.  For Dallas Theater Center, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is writing a new book to the classic Charles Strouse/Lee Adams musical It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s SUPERMAN!  Currently, he is working on commissions for Arena Stage, 2econd Stage, and Mark Taper Forum (a musical in collaboration with Los Lobos).  For Marvel Comics, he is the Harvey Award-winning author of The Stand.  In addition to his playwriting, Aguirre-Sacasa also writes for television and film, including the acclaimed HBO series “Big Love.”

Extraordinary Chambers

by David Wiener

directed by Art Manke

Friday, May 1 at 7:45pm and Saturday, May 2 at 7:45pm

Carter, an emissary for an American telecom company, arrives in Cambodia with his wife, Mara, to broker a business deal with the help of a “fixer” named Dr. Heng.  But just when it appears the deal will go through without a hitch, a cloud of suspicion descends on Dr. Heng.  Was he the notorious Khmer Rouge figure known as “The Doctor?”  How do Heng’s mysterious wife and his stone-faced assistant figure into his shady past?  Perhaps these questions will be answered when the UN convenes hearings in the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia – but for Carter and Mara, the biggest question involves a 24-month old Cambodian child with green eyes who may turn their lives upside down.

David Wiener was born and raised in Irvine, California.  His plays include System Wonderland, Guts, La Arana, Love Song (of the Apocalypse), Blood Orange, in vitro, Huera, Cassiopeia and Baltimore Star.  His work has appeared in the United States and the United Kingdom at theaters including Cherry Lane Theatre, Blue Heron Arts Center, Etcetera Theatre (UK), HB Studios, Atlantic Theater Company, Almeida Theatre (UK), The New Group, A Contemporary Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Hudson Stage and Soho Repertory.  David Wiener is a graduate of Duke University and Columbia University's MFA Playwriting Program.  He has received the The Reynolds Price Award for Drama, The Cherry Lane Fellowship, The Rossetti Fellowship, The Lark Theatre Fellowship, and commissions from Atlantic Theater Company, South Coast Repertory, Soho Repertory Theatre and Seattle's A Contemporary Theatre. His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service and Smith & Kraus.  David Wiener lives in New York City and is currently at work on a new play.

9 Circles

by Bill Cain

directed by Michael John Garcés

Saturday, May 2 at 10:30am

Private Daniel Reeves is in a world of hurt.  All he wants is to stay in Iraq alongside his military brothers until their mission is completed.  Reeves is brave, smart and wholly committed to realizing the purpose of Operation Iraqi Freedom, so he can’t understand why he’s being forced to accept an honorable discharge.  But that’s just the first and least of his problems—the first of his nine hellish circles—and by the time his story reaches its sobering conclusion, Private Reeves has felt the full brunt of military justice and the full insanity of a war whose purpose has grown more obscure with the passing of years and the accumulation of brutalities.

Bill Cain’s widely-produced play Stand-Up Tragedy earned six Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards, including an award for Distinguished Writing, in its premiere at the Mark Taper Forum, and later garnered four Helen Hayes Awards at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. and the Joe A. Calloway Playwriting Award for its Broadway engagement.  He wrote the television adaptation of the play for TNT, under the title “Thicker than Blood.”  He is the recipient of a George Foster Peabody Award for Outstanding Achievement in Television and a WGA Award for the series “Nothing Sacred,” which he co-created and wrote for ABC.  He has written numerous telefilms and Nightjohn, for Hallmark/Touchstone, was named best American film of the year by The New Yorker.  The Laying on of Hands and 9 Circles were developed by the Ojai Playwriting Conference.  His play, Equivocation, was developed at TheaterWorks in Palo Alto and at Ojai and is currently playing at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  Bill Cain is the founder of the Boston Shakespeare Company where he was artistic director for seven seasons.

The Language Archive

by Julia Cho

directed by Mark Brokaw

Sunday, May 3 at 10:30am

George is a linguist, determined to record endangered languages before they die out.  Mary is his wife, burdened by a sadness she can't explain.  When their marriage starts to unravel, they find that speaking a common tongue is far trickier than one might think.  A quirky comedy about love and miscommunication.

Julia Cho's plays – including The Piano Teacher, Durango, The Winchester House, BFE, The Architecture of Loss and 99 Histories – have been produced at South Coast Repertory, The Vineyard Theatre, The Public Theater, Long Wharf Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, East West Players and Theatre@Boston Court among others.  An alumna of the Juilliard School and NYU's Graduate Dramatic Writing Program, Julia Cho is a member of New Dramatists.  The Language Archive was commissioned by Roundabout Theatre Company.

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