Aurora Theatre Company to Present THE HOW AND THE WHY, 3/18-5/8

Aurora Theatre Company presents the West Coast Premiere of Sarah Treem's (Netflix's House of Cards, HBO's In Treatment) thought-provoking THE HOW AND THE WHY. Acclaimed Bay Area actress and director Joy Carlin (Talley's Folly, After the Revolution, Body Awareness, Jack Goes Boating, Awake and Sing!) helms this intimate and keenly perceptive play, featuring Nancy Carlin (The Monster-Builder, Hysteria, Benefactors) and Martha Brigham (San Francisco Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse). The third fully staged production to be performed at the company's second stage performance space, Harry's UpStage, THE HOW AND THE WHY plays March 18 through May 8 at the Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley. For tickets ($35-45) and information the public can call (510) 843-4822 or visit auroratheatre.org.

More than science is at stake when two women of different generations clash over what it means to be female. On the eve of a prestigious conference, an up-and-coming evolutionary biologist wrestles for the truth with an established leader in the field. As the two women thrash out their views, they struggle to find the middle ground between research and relationships. Hailed "a smart, densely textured work about men and women, love and conflict, genes and destiny" by The New York Times when it premiered at the McCarter Theatre in 2011, THE HOW AND THE WHY explores evolution and emotion, and the difficult choices faced by women of every generation.

Sarah Treem is the Golden Globe-winning writer and producer of Showtime's The Affair. In addition to THE HOW AND THE WHY, which premiered at the McCarter Theatre starring Mercedes Ruehl, her full-length plays include Empty Sky, Against the Wall, Mirror, Mirror, A Feminine Ending, Human Voices, When We Were Young and Unafraid, and Vienna's Amazing. Treem has been in residence at The Sundance Institute and The Ojai Playwriting Conference, and has received commissions from South Coast Repertory, Manhattan Theatre Club, and Playwrights Horizons. In addition to her theater career, Sarah wrote and produced all three seasons of the acclaimed HBO series In Treatment, for which she won a Writers Guild of America award. She was also a writer and producer for Mark Wahlberg's HBO series How to Make It in America and the Netflix series House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey. Her latest television credit is The Affair, currently in production with Showtime. Treem is also adapting Tom Wolfe's novel I Am Charlotte Simmons for HBO. She graduated from Yale University and the Yale School of Drama.

About THE HOW AND THE WHY Sarah Treem said, "Literally, the play is inspired by a book called Woman by Natalie Angier, a science writer for The New York Times. It's an exhaustive exploration of female physiology. I tore through the book in my late twenties and stumbled upon these two theories, one was the grandmother hypothesis and the other was the menses as defense hypothesis. They're both real theories in evolutionary biology."

Continued Treem, "If you want to blow your mind, look up what happened to [evolutionary biologist] Margie Profet, who was my inspiration for the Rachel character...There's just so much you can extrapolate about the priorities and principles of a culture by examining its relationship to the body. And especially, women's bodies. Who controls them? Who makes the decisions over them?" said Treem."I'm attracted to work about women, obviously, about families, motherhood, gender relationships, small towns, science, generational divide, living and dying ... projects that speak to some deep fear of mine."

Aurora Theatre Company has assembled a superb duo for THE HOW AND THE WHY. Returning to the Aurora stage is Nancy Carlin as Zelda. Carlin most recently appeared in Aurora's Bay Area Premiere of Amy Freed's The Monster-Builder in addition to the company's productions of Hysteria, Benefactors, Nora, Rocket to the Moon, and Seascape. Other credits include roles at American Conservatory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, San Francisco Playhouse, TheatreWorks, Shotgun Players, California Shakespeare Theater, Marin Theatre Company, San Jose Repertory Theatre, A Traveling Jewish Theater, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival, among others.

Making her Aurora debut is Martha Brigham as Rachel. Credits include productions at San Francisco Playhouse (Stupid f-ing Bird), La Jolla Playhouse (The Tall Girls), Secret Rose Theatre (The Man In the Red Suit), and The Nauset Players (Othello, The Beggar's Opera), among others.

Margaret J. "Margie" Profet is an American evolutionary biologist with no formal biology training who created a decade-long controversy when she published her findings on the role of Darwinian evolution in menstruation, allergies, and morning sickness. She argued that these three processes had evolved to eliminate pathogens, carcinogens, and other toxins from the body. The daughter of two Berkeley-trained engineers, Profet has degrees in political philosophy and physics and also studied mathematics. She caused a stir in the scientific community when she published her findings in 1993. That year, she also received a MacArthur "Genius" Award, which drew attention to her theories and led to profiles in major science and news outlets, including The New York Times, where reporter Natalie Angier, who called Profet's theory a "radical new view." Scientific American, Time, Omni, and even People Magazine all followed with in-depth profiles of the 35-year-old "maverick" scientific prodigy.

Profet went on to publish two equally controversial bestselling books, 1995's Protecting Your Baby-To-Be: Preventing Birth Defects in the First Trimester and a 1997 follow up, Pregnancy Sickness: Using Your Body's Natural Defenses to Protect Your Baby-To-Be. Supporters, including U.C. Santa Barbara anthropologist Donald Symons and U.C. Berkeley toxicologist Bruce Ames, considered her work a pioneering analysis of evolutionary theory in a never-before-studied, everyday context.

Following the West Coast Premiere of Sarah Treem's THE HOW AND THE WHY, the season continues in April with the Bay Area Premiere of David Ives' THE HEIR APPARENT directed by Josh Costello. Timothy Near makes her Aurora directing debut with the company's season closer in June, Athol Fugard's modern classic "MASTER HAROLD"... and the boys.

Voted Best Theater Company in 2012 by SF Weekly, Aurora Theatre Company continues to offer challenging, literate, intelligent stage works to the Bay Area, each year increasing its reputation for top-notch theater. Located in the heart of the Downtown Berkeley Arts District, Aurora Theatre Company, declared "one of the best regional theaters around" by 7x7 magazine, has been called "one of the most important regional theaters in the area" and "a must-see midsize company" by the San Francisco Chronicle, while The Wall Street Journal has "nothing but praise for the Aurora." The Contra Costa Times stated "perfection is probably an unattainable ideal in a medium as fluid as live performance, but the Aurora Theatre comes luminously close," while the San Jose Mercury News affirmed Aurora Theatre Company is "arguably the finest small theater in the Bay Area," and the Oakland Tribune stated "it's all about choices, and if you value good theater, choose the Aurora."

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