Photo Flash: First Look at The Theatre Group at SBCC's PROOF

The Theatre Group at SBCC will present David Auburn's Tony Award-winning play, PROOF, directed by R. Michael Gros, as the final production of its 70th Anniversary Season, April 13-30, 2016 in the Jurkowitz Theatre.

On the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday, Catherine, a troubled young woman, has spent years caring for her brilliant but unstable father, a famous mathematician. Now, following his death, she must deal with her own volatile emotions; the arrival of her estranged sister, Claire; and the attentions of Hal, a former student of her father's who hopes to find valuable work in the 103 notebooks that her father left behind. Over the long weekend that follows, a burgeoning romance and the discovery of a mysterious notebook draw Catherine into the most difficult problem of all: How much of her father's madness-or genius-will she inherit?

Proof by David Auburn premiered on Broadway in October 2000. It received national attention, earning the Drama Desk Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Tony Award for Best Play. The NY Daily News says Proof "...combines elements of mystery and surprise with old-fashioned storytelling to provide a compelling evening of theatre...[PROOF is a] smart and compassionate play of ideas."

David Auburn was born in Chicago in 1969. Raised in Ohio and Arkansas, he attended the University of Chicago where he studied political philosophy. At the time, Auburn did not know he wanted to be a writer, but he joined a student group that performed comedy sketches. Auburn started writing some of the sketches and found he had a talent for it. He then started to write longer pieces. After Auburn graduated in 1991, he won a writing fellowship offered by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Productions, and he moved to Los Angeles to learn the craft of screenwriting. When the fellowship ended, Auburn moved to New York where he wrote plays and had some of them performed in tiny theaters. During the day, Auburn worked as a copywriter for a chemical company. In 1994, Auburn was accepted into the playwriting program at Juilliard, where he also studied acting. Auburn soon gave up acting to concentrate on playwriting. His work at Juilliard led to his first major play, Skyscraper (1997). In this play, the lives of a group of people are changed as they discover their connections with each other during the demolition of a crumbling skyscraper in Chicago. Proof, Auburn's most successful play, premiered at the Manhattan Theatre Club in May 2000 and opened at Broadway's Walter Kerr Theatre on October 24, 2000. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2001, the Joseph Kesselring Prize, the Drama Desk Award, and the Tony Award for Best Play of 2001. Auburn has written a screenplay based on the play, and the film was produced in 2005 with Gwyneth Paltrow, Jake Gyllenhaal and Anthony Hopkins.

Proof will feature Katherine Bottoms, Paul Canter, Alex Coleman and Amanda Gustafsson.

Photo credit: Ben Crop

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