The SF Playhouse Presents APOTHEOSIS OF PIG HUSBANDRY 5/19-6/12

The SF Playhouse (Bill English, Artistic Director; Susi Damilano, Producing Director) announces casting for the second show in their Sandbox Series; dedicated to presenting World Premieres in their Second Stage.

The cast includes: Keith Burkland*, Chad Deverman* and Madeline H.D. Brown (*appear courtesy of Actors' Equity) and will be directed by Bill English and runs May 19 through June 12.

In The Apotheosis of Pig Husbandry we find a woman in a slip handcuffed to a bed. A bar that only serves one drink. Windows duck-taped to keep out the smell. Welcome to the Lazy Eight Motel, where sex, revenge, social theory and pig farming mix in an explosive cocktail.

Philosopher and social theorist Asuncion "Assy" Boyle drifts into town, buys the derelict motel downwind of the biggest pig farm in the state, and seduces the pig farmer's wife Lola. His plan? To put Charles, The Farmer, out of business and clean up the pig shit that's destroying the community and polluting the groundwater. But since Assy blames Charles for his mother's death is this really social justice... or naked revenge? By the startling end of the play, Assy learns what happens when you take justice into your own hands.

The mission of The Sandbox series is to promote new works utilizing top-notch directors and actors. The presentations will have limited design elements and will be promoted primarily using online services, thus reducing the costs and risk of each production. By reducing risk, we hope to bridge the gap between "readings" and "main stage" productions and thus provide increased exposure to the new voices in American Theater.

William Bivins is an award-winning playwright, recovering screenwriter and library school drop-out. With six world premieres--four of them, including "The Apotheosis of Pig Husbandry," full-length plays--William Bivins is, by some counts, the most produced playwright of the 2009/2010 Bay Area season. He is the winner of Pacific Repertory's 2009/2010 Hyperion Project Original Play Competition (his two-act drama "Ransom, Texas" will go up at PacRep in November). William's Biblical comedy "Pulp Scripture," which he both wrote and produced, was nominated for two Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards: Best Original Script and Best Ensemble. "Pulp," which ran in the San Francisco Fringe Festival and Off-Market Theaters in 2009, also won 8 SF Fringe Awards, including Best New Comedy. His paranoid thriller "The Position," commissioned and produced by PianoFight after William won the company's play writing competition, enjoyed a critically-acclaimed run in February at Off-Market Theater. "The Afterlife of the Mind," a brain transplantation comedy, premiered in Berkeley in the fall of 2009 (Virago Theatre Co.) and ran in Anchorage in January (Out North Theatre). William was one of twelve Bay Area playwrights chosen in 2008 for Theatre Bay Area/TheatreWorks Playwrights Showcase and has been a finalist for the Heideman Award in the National Ten-minute Play Contest. His screenplays have been optioned more than half-a-dozen times, and "Rio Sangre," a horror-western he co-wrote with Ken Karn, is currently under option by ASL management. William has also won awards from the Nantucket Short Play Competition, the Rochester International Film Festival and the Palo Alto Film Festival. He is a member of the Monday Night Playwrights Group and the Dramatists Guild.

Jon Tracy is the Director of Artistic Development at The SF Playhouse where he directed Aaron Loeb's award winning First Person Shooter, Man of La Mancha, Bug, and the upcoming Slasher. He has also worked with such companies as Darkroom Productions (Founder/Former Artistic Director; directed and developed Some Devil Whisper (his adaptation of Titus Andronicus) and The Good News), Shotgun Players (The Farm, currently under commission to write The Salt Plays), Impact Theatre (writer/director of See How We Are), Aurora Theatre (developed Ron Campbell's Sinker), Marin Theatre Company (developed A. Zell Williams' Blood/Money), and Missouri St. Theatre (writer/director of Chatterbox: The Anne Frank Project). Jon is an Affiliate Artist with The Foothill Theatre Company, Marin Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Playhouse and Alter Theatre Ensemble, and a Company Member of PlayGround. A graduate of Solano College Theatre's Actor Training Program, he is the recipient of the Kennedy Center Meritorious Achievement Award, fifteen North Bay Arty Awards, a Sacramento Elly Award, Bay Area Critics Circle Award and grants from Theatre Bay Area and the National Endowment for the Arts.

DATES: Previews at 8pm on May 19, 20, 21; Open: May 22, 2010; Close: June 12, 2010

SHOWTIMES: Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m.

WHERE: The SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter Street (one block off Union Square, b/n Powell & Mason)

TICKETS: For tickets ($20-$30 ) or more information, call The SF Playhouse box office at 415-677-9596, or www.sfplayhouse.org.

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