Sound Theatre Company to Close 2017 Season with Victorian Poem-Inspired GOBLIN MARKET

Sound Theatre Company presents GOBLIN MARKET a musical based on the poem by Victorian era poet Christina Rossetti, by Polly Pen and Peggy Harmon.

This is the final show of Sound Theatre's 2017 Season: AMPLIFY! - Raising Women's Voices, devoted to women playwrights and directors, directed by Sound's Artistic Director, Teresa Thuman.

Based on the poem by Victorian Era poet Christina Rosetti, this musical blends music, poetry and spellbinding imagery to follow a dazzling journey through the psyches of two sisters. The siblings, Laura and Lizzie, return to their old nursery and unlock the women's shared past in a child's game of make-believe. The nursery magically becomes a woodland glen of menacing "goblin fruit merchant men" and one sister Laura, is enticed by the magical goblins and their luscious fruits and promises of unimagined ecstasies. The other sister, Lizzie, bargains anxiously with the goblins to save her sister from forever falling under their spell. This market of goblins forces the sisters to explore and question the present Victorian world they inhabit as women and reconcile that with the erotic yearnings of their adolescence.

Four accomplished actor-singers will perform as an ensemble and rotate in their featured roles as the sisters Lizzie and Laura, as well as creating a kaleidoscope of shadow and mirror characters. In this unique exploration, they will create four different potential cast combinations to reflect their complex emotional and psychological journey through the "Goblin Market."

Sound Theatre Company, coming off their second Gregory Award win for Outstanding Theatre Company of the Year and two successful productions of Nadeshiko and Hoodoo Love, is thrilled to continue its 11th season with a bold musical Goblin Market.

"While looking at potential musicals for this season, I was surprised to discover how few musicals have been written by women. There are many male/female writing teams, and this is already changing with the creation of current new musicals, but there are very few traditional musicals to consider under this criteria. Goblin Market, written and composed by women, based on source material by and about women, as well as a script and score I have been wanting to direct at Sound Theatre, is the perfect culmination of our season that seeks to amplify the voices of women on our stage." - Teresa Thuman, Artistic Director / Sound Theatre Company

IF YOU GO:

GOBLIN MARKET

August 10 - 27

Starring:
Miranda Troutt -LAURA
Kelly Mak- LAURA
Justine Yu-Ping Davis -LIZZIE
Claire Marx -LIZZIE

Artistic Team:
Director - Teresa Thuman
Fight Director - Lee Ann Hittenberger
Music Director - Nathan Young
Conductor - Aimee Hong
Scenic, Costume, Props Design - Montana Tippett
Lighting Design - Richard Schaefer
Sound Design - Lisa Finkral
Assistant Sound Designer / Engineer - Lukas Poischbeg
Dramaturg - Laura Owens
Assistant director - Shermona Mitchell
Stage Manager - Elizabeth Stasio
Asst. Stage Manager - Laura Steele

Tickets at www.soundtheatrecompany.org or www.bit.ly/Goblinmarket.

Find out more on Facebook, or visit www.soundtheatrecompany.org/2017-season/goblin-market.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Polly Pen writes book, music and lyrics. She received an Obie Award in 1996 for the score of Bed and Sofa, which also received seven Drama Desk nominations. Bed and Sofa premiered at the Vineyard Theatre and received its London premiere at the Finborough Theatre. Polly's first Off-Broadway production as both composer and co-author, Goblin Market, received five Drama Desk nominations and the BEST PLAYS Special Citation for Musical Composition and Adaptation in 1985. Other works include The Night Governess (McCarter Theatre), Her Lightness (Sarasota Opera), The Dumb Cake (a radio musical for NPR), Embarrassments (Wilma Theater) and Christina Alberta's Father (Vineyard Theatre), which received a Richard Rodgers Award, an Obie and a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Music. Polly is the recipient of several NEA grants, The Kitty Carlisle Hart Award and the Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Award for Musical Theatre. She has been honored by a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center and received the 2009 Flora Roberts Award for a distinguished body of work. She has been a National Theatre Artist-in-Residence at McCarter Theatre and is an adjunct professor at NYU's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. Polly has served on the Council of The Dramatists Guild, the nominating committee of the Tony Awards and currently serves on the Board of Dramatists Play Service. Polly's latest work, Arlington, premiered at The Magic Theatre in San Francisco and The Vineyard Theatre, NYC. In another life, Polly has worked extensively as an actor on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in repertory theatres throughout the U.S. Polly Pen's most recent work, Arlington - for which she composed the music- is a new musical for solo voice and piano currently playing at the Vineyard Theatre in New York, which charts the restless wandering of the an Army Wife's mind as she muses lightly on her past and more darkly on the war and its impact on her husband.

Peggy Harmon, after receiving her BA in Theatre Arts from Brown University, Peggy spent 15 years as a theater professional. During those years, she worked at Boston's Charles Playhouse, Williamstown Theatre Festival, New York's Public Theatre and as an original cast member in the Broadway production of Big River. Peggy is also the co-author of the acclaimed musical Goblin Market, which ran Off-Broadway at Circle in the Square Downtown and received a special citation in Best Plays of 1985-1986. After over 20 years as a development professional in independent schools as Director of Development at Seabury Hall, Maui Preparatory Academy and Oak Mountain Academy in Carrollton, Georgia, Harmon is currently Director of Development at The Maui Academy of the Performing Arts in Hawaii.

Christina Rossetti was the youngest child in an extraordinarily gifted family. Her father, the Italian poet and political exile Gabriele Rossetti, immigrated to England in 1824 and established a career as a Dante scholar and teacher of Italian in London. He married the half-English, half-Italian Frances Polidori in 1826. By her sixteenth birthday Christina, who was regarded as the poet in the family, had written more than fifty poems that were transcribed into a notebook by her sister. In 1847 a collection of her poems, titled Verses, which was privately printed by her grandfather Polidori. "Goblin Market," with its theme of a fallen woman being saved by a "sister," can also be seen as informed by Rossetti's experiences at the St. Mary Magdalene Penitentiary. Her interest in this topic reflects the Victorian concern about prostitution as a social evil. Rossetti is best known for her ballads and her mystic religious lyrics. Her poetry is marked by symbolism and intense feeling and Goblin Market and Other Poems, published in 1862 is Rossetti's best-known work. The collection established Rossetti as a significant voice in Victorian poetry.

TERESA THUMAN (STC Founder/Producing Artistic Director) Teresa founded Sound Theatre Company in 2006, for which she has directed productions of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Holiday of Errors, School for Lies, Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth, The Illusion, The Foreigner, Pygmalion, Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged), The Tempest, Troilus and Cressida, Top Girls, The Last Five Years, The Further Adventures of Anse and Bhule in No-Mans Land and The Belle of Amherst. Other local directing credits include Othello, Henry VIII, The Bacchae, As You Like It, King John (GreenStage); Opera Workshop, A Little Night Music, Big Fish, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Down In The Valley, Sweeney Todd, Dido And Aeneas, Working, She Loves Me, Into the Woods, The Impresario (Shoreline CC); The Underpants, The 39 Steps (Mount Baker Theatre), Pericles (Cornish College of the Arts); Fiddler on the Roof, Anything Goes, High Society, My Way (Seattle Civic Light Opera); HAIR, Picasso at the Lapine Agile, The Who's Tommy, Noises Off, Urinetown, Kiss Me Kate, The Producers, Secret Garden (Bainbridge Performing Arts); Miracle Worker, Tartuffe, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Oliver! (Driftwood Players); The Book of Nathan (Theater Schmeater) and numerous new-work projects and festivals. Teresa has taught at UW School of Drama PATP, UNC Chapel Hill, Shoreline Community College, Cornish College, George Fox University, Allan Hancock College, Freehold ETI and served eight years as an Artist-in-Residence at PCPA Theatrefest. She holds an MFA in Directing from University of Portland and a BFA in Acting from Webster University Conservatory of Theatre Arts.

Sound Theatre Company empowers artists to give voice to the dignity and diversity of the human experience - moving audiences toward a more just and compassionate world. Sound Theatre Company has been repeatedly praised and awarded for its high quality theatrical productions. Sound has won the Gregory Award for Outstanding Theatre of the Year twice in recent years including 2016. Sound's 2017 Season AMPLIFY! Raising Women's Voices is devoted entirely to women writers and directors. Amplification is a method used by female staffers in Obama's White House to ensure women's voices and ideas are heard and recognized. When a woman makes a key point, other women in the administration repeat it, giving credit to its author. Sound Theatre Company strives to use this method as an inspiration for its future seasons.

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