Sound Theatre Company Opens BLOOD RELATIONS Tonight

Sound Theatre Company completes its eighth season with the Seattle professional premiere of Blood Relations by Sharon Pollock, in partnership with GianT Projects. Blood Relations is a tense thriller based on the historical facts and speculation surrounding Lizzie Borden, who was charged with the 1892 murders of her father and stepmother. Ten years after her acquittal, Lizzie is pressed by her lover to reveal what happened. Lizzie has her re-enact the events in her place, facing the same choices with startling results.

This gripping drama goes beyond the sensationally gruesome events to consider what might have driven them. It examines from a woman's view the limitations of conventional expectations, and how they are ultimately enforced by violence.

Blood Relations is the third production in Sound Theatre Company's 2014 season, a collection of three Seattle premieres that examine The Language of Love and Hate. Each play explores how we express, fail to express, or inhibit expression of these most fundamental human emotions, and the consequences of each.

The production features the return of several Sound Theatre Company members, featuring Peggy Gannon in the role of The Actress and Caitlin Frances as Miss Lizzie. Ms. Gannon's distinguished professional career includes Sound Theatre's inaugural lakefront production of The Tempest as well as roles at Seattle Repertory Theatre and ACT, and she is currently the Producing Director of MAP Theatre. Ms. Frances's many credits include Balagan Theatre's award-winning production of August, Osage County and Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth with Sound Theatre Company. Also returning to Sound Theatre areAlyssa Keene (The Wild Party), Jody McCoy (The Foreigner), and Bill Higham (Pygmalion). New to Sound Theatre, but not to Seattle audiences, are Joseph P. McCarthy (The Pitmen Painters at ACT) and John Murray (The Language Archive, Mauritius at Seattle Public Theater).

Blood Relations opens tonight, September 12 for a limited run at Center Theatre at the Cornish Playhouse Studio, 305 Harrison St. with a preview performance on September 11. (Please note that this is the studio performance space behind the larger Cornish Playhouse.) Tickets are $25, $15 for students, and pay-what-you-can performances on September 11 and 22.

Sharon Pollock is Canada's best known woman playwright. Blood Relations is one of Pollock's most well known and influential plays, which premiered at Theatre Three in Edmonton in March 1980 and received the Governor General's Literary Award for Drama in 1981. She again received it in 1985 for Doc and was short listed for the same award in 1986 for Whiskey Six Cadenza. Other plays include Fair Liberty's Call (1993), and End Dream (2000). Pollock is currently writing for the Atlantic Ballet Company and in March 2011 made her musical theatre debut with Calgary's Verb Theatre and their production of Ron Chamber's acclaimed play "Marg Szkaluba (Pissy's Wife). Her stage plays have been produced by major and alternative theatres in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, India, Japan, Belgium, Greece, and throughout Canada.

Blood Relations is presented by special arrangement with the playwright.

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