The Third Annual Icicle Creek Theatre Festival (ICTF), based in Leavenworth, will re-mount two new works exclusively for Seattle audiences. The Central Heating Lab at ACT is thrilled to host staged readings of HIM by Daisy Foote on August 17, 2009 at 7:30 p.m. and The Jewel in the Manuscript by Rosemary Zibart on August 18, 2009 at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $10 and available through ACT. Following each presentation, audiences are encouraged to join in a discussion of the play with the playwright and cast.
HIM by Daisy Foote is a deftly woven tale in which three siblings struggle to keep the family business afloat in a rapidly changing world that threatens to leave them behind. It is a story of love and loss, and the power of nature to heal one disconnected soul and inspire another to tragic consequences.
Foote's play Bhutan (directed by award winning director Evan Yiounoulis) received its New York premiere at the Cherry Lane in the fall of 2006. The play was nominated for the 2007 Outer Critics Circle Award and published by Dramatists Play Service. Her other plays include When They Speak of Rita, produced by Primary Stages (New York) in an extended run, and directed by her father, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Horton Foote; The Hand of God (developed with a commission from Wind Dancer Productions and part of the 2000 O'Neill Theatre Center line-up); and God's Pictures (world premiere at Indiana Repertory Theatre). She was honored with the Roger L. Stevens Incentive Award in association with the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays. Her screenplay The Church of Dead Girls is being produced by This is That Films, and will be directed by Red Road director Andrea Arnold, winner of the 2006 Prix du Jury Prize.
The Jewel in the Manuscript by Rosemary Zibart will be directed by Kurt Beattie and star ICTF artistic director and founder Allen Fitzpatrick as author Fyodor Dostoevsky. Drowning in gambling debts and facing the necessity of completing a new novel inside of a month, the ill and despairing writer hires a young stenographer, Anna; as they work together, she not only brings sympathy and order into his life, but also becomes a guide out of desolation and madness.
Zibart's work encompasses journalism, screenplays, and books for children, though her current focus is writing for the theatre. Her articles have appeared in Time, Parade, and Christian Science Monitor. Two of her works were semi-finalists at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, and her play Babe, Inc. was produced in London, New York, and Santa Fe. She also recently co-produced Minds Interrupted: Stories of Lives Affected by Mental Illness, a series of personal monologues.
The Third Annual ICTF acting company includes: Marianne Owen, a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, a founding company member of A.R.T. in Cambridge, and a company member of Seattle Repertory Theatre; Renata Friedman, a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts who has appeared in many productions in New York City, Seattle, including ACT's Eurydice, and on tour; Eric Ray Anderson, a beloved Northwest actor who graced ICTF's inaugural season in 2007 (as the Father in Atomic Farm-girl) and who has appeared at most Puget Sound area theatres; Ian Bell, another acclaimed Seattle actor who has been featured at ACT, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Intiman, and many others; and Brandon Petty, an MFA graduate of the University of Washington who has appeared in numerous professional Seattle productions. Liza Comtois will serve as dramaturge on both plays.
Tickets are $10 per reading and are available through ACT Theatre's ticket office at 700 Union Street, Downtown Seattle, (206) 292-7676, or online at www.acttheatre.org. Both readings are in the Bullitt Cabaret. For more information about The Icicle Creek Theatre Festival, The Central Heating Lab, or ACT Theatre's mainstage productions, visit www.acttheatre.org.
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