THE COUNTRY HOUSE Set for TheatreWorks This August

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley continues its 2015/2016 season with the Regional Premiere of The Country House. This recent Broadway hit is the latest from Donald Margulies, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Dinner with Friends. A revered stage and film star summons her show-biz family to her Berkshires home for a summer stock season soon overstocked with memories. In a Chekhovian blend of witty comedy and poignant drama, they grapple with fame, art, the promise of romance, and the frustration of faded dreams -- and as always, each other.

The Country House will be directed by Robert Kelley who has assembled a cast including Kimberly King, Gary S. Martinez, Marcia Pizzo, Stephen Muterspaugh, Rosie Hallett, and Jason Kuykendall, with performances August 26 - September 20 (press opening August 29) at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro Street (at Mercy), Mountain View. For tickets ($19-$80) and information the public may visit www.TheatreWorks.org or call (650) 463-1960.

The Country House received its World Premiere last summer at the Geffen Playhouse starring Blythe Danner, and transferred to Broadway on October 2, 2014, opening at Manhattan Theater Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theater. The show was hailed "A valentine to the artists of the stage" by The New York Times and "One of the most satisfying new American plays to reach Broadway in the past decade. Truly affecting," by The Wall Street Journal.

Donald Margulies' (playwright) hit plays include Time Stands Still, Brooklyn Boy, Dinner with Friends, Sight Unseen, Collected Stories, and Coney Island Christmas, among many others. He has won a Pulitzer Prize (Dinner with Friends), a Lucille Lortel Award, two American Theatre Critics New Play Citations, two Los Angeles Drama Critics Awards, and two Obie Awards, among many other nominations. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and is currently a professor of English and Theatre Studies at Yale University.

TheatreWorks has assembled a cast of Bay Area favorites for The Country House including Kimberly King who will portray the glamorous actress "Anna Patterson." King has been seen at TheatreWorks in Doubt, A Little Princess, and The Fourth Wall. She has also starred in many regional productions including in Houston with The Alley Theatre, New Jersey with the McCarter Theatre Company, Sarasota with Asolo Repertory Theatre, and in the Bay Area with Berkeley Rep and American Conservatory Theater.

Gary S. Martinez will return to TheatreWorks to portray Anna's ex-son-in-law "Walter Keegan." Martinez has appeared with San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Broadway By the Bay, Willows Theatre, Pacific Repertory Theatre, and California Shakespeare Festival. At TheatreWorks he has appeared in many productions including A Civil War Christmas, Into the Woods, Oliver!, Big River, and Of Mice and Men. Walter Keegan's gorgeous new girlfriend "Nell McNally" will be played by Marcia Pizzo, who returns to TheatreWorks where she was seen in the West Coast Premiere of The Pitmen Painters. Pizzo has also been seen with companies across the Bay Area including Magic Theatre, Aurora Theatre, American Conservatory Theater, California Shakespeare Theatre, Marin Shakespeare Company, Mountain Play Association, and Marin Theatre Company.

Stephen Muterspaugh plays Anna's son "Elliot Cooper" who still holds a torch for Nell. Muterspaugh has been seen on Bay Area stages with San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Marin Shakespeare Company, Jewel Theatre in Santa Cruz, and Livermore Shakespeare Festival. In the role of Anna's granddaughter "Susie Keegan," is Rosie Hallett who has been seen on Bay Area stages with many companies including Marin Theatre Company, Shotgun Players, CenterRep, Magic Theatre, Pear Avenue Theatre, and Custom Made Theatre among others.

Jason Kuykendall takes on the role of "Michael Astor," a theatre alumnus with a hit TV show who arrives in time to liven things up. Kuykendall has starred in many leading roles with regional theatres including The Hound of the Baskervilles at B Street Theatre (Sherlock), Of Mice and Men at Sacramento Theatre Company (Lenny), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at The Repertory Theatre of St Louis (Brick). TheatreWorks audiences will remember him from his role as Doctor Treves in The Elephant Man.

Robert Kelley (Director) is TheatreWorks' Founder and Artistic Director and has served as artistic head of the company since its inception in 1970. He has directed more than 170 TheatreWorks productions, including many world and regional premieres. In 2003 he was honored with the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Paine Knickerbocker Award for Lifetime Achievement. He received BATCC Awards for Outstanding Direction for his productions of Into the Woods, Pacific Overtures, Rags, Sweeney Todd, Another Midsummer Night, Sunday in the Park with George, Jane Eyre, and Caroline, or Change. He recently directed Sweeney Todd, Marry Me a Little, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and Once on This Island.

With some 100,000 patrons per year, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley has captured a national reputation for artistic innovation and integrity, often presenting Bay Area theatregoers with their first look at acclaimed musicals, comedies, and dramas, directed by award-winning local and guest directors, and performed by professional actors cast locally and from across the country. A home for artists developing new works, it was at TheatreWorks that Memphis, the 2010 Tony Award-winning musical that played on Broadway for three years before embarking on a 19 month national tour, was first workshopped and received its world premiere. It is currently enjoying an extended run on London's West End, where it recently captured two Olivier Awards.

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