THE KENTUCKY CYCLE Playwright Schenkkan Speaks At Whidbey Island PAC 4/18

Whidbey Island Center for the Arts, under the leadership of Executive Director Stacie Burgua, is proud welcome Robert Schenkkan to Whidbey Island Apr 18, 2010 at 11.00am.

Mr. Schenkkan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of The Kentucky Cycle, will be speaking about the creation of and themes in his masterwork, the journey of an American playwright, and the next "dialogue" he plans to have with audiences.

"Stories are good and they're bad. Stories are poisonous and they're also balm. They can kill and devastate down through the generations. Or they can heal. We have to be very careful with the stories that we tell. I'm very interested in that process of storytelling, and the process by which an ‘event' is altered in the retelling, whether consciously or unconsciously." - Robert Schenkkan

Admission is free for "The Kentucky Cycle" ticket-holders.

For more information, please visit www.WICAonline.com or call 360.221.8268 - 800/638.7631.

Robert Schenkkan (playwright) was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina but grew up in Austin, Texas. As a Plan II Honors student, he received a BA in Drama from the University of Texas at Austin (Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude, and Friars' Society) and an MFA in Theatre Arts (Acting) from Cornell University.

Schenkkan is the author of ten full-length plays. The Kentucky Cycle was the result of several years of development, starting in NYC at New Dramatists and the Ensemble Studio Theatre. The two-part epic was later work shopped at the Mark Taper Forum, EST-LA, the Long Wharf Theatre, and The Sundance Institute. The complete "cycle" was awarded the largest grant ever given by the Fund for New American Plays and had its world premier in 1991 at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle (Liz Huddle, producer) where it set box office records. In 1992, it was the centerpiece of the Mark Taper Forum's 25th Anniversary Season. There it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; the first time in the history of the award that a play was so honored which had not first been presented in NYC. It also won both the PEN Centre West and the LA Drama Critics Circle Awards for Best Play. In 1993, it appeared at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and opened on Broadway in November of that year where it was nominated for a Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle awards.

Lewis and Clark Reach the Euphrates had its world premier at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in December 2005. By the Rivers of Babylon first appeared at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in February 2005. The Marriage of Miss Hollywood and King Neptune had its world premier at the University of Texas at Austin in November 2005. Handler premiered at the Actors Express Theatre. Heaven on Earth premiered off-Broadway at the WPA Theatre and won the Julie Harris/Beverly Hills Theatre Guild Award, and was a participant in the Eugene O'Neill Playwright's Conference. Final Passages premiered at the Studio Arena Theatre. Tachinoki (Critic's Choice, LA Weekly) premiered at the Ensemble Studio Theatre in Los Angeles.

Schenkkan has written two plays for children, The Dream Thief and The Devil and Daniel Webster. The Dream Thief had its premiere at Milwaukee's First Stage and is published by Dramatic Publishing. The Devil and Daniel Webster premiered at the Seattle Children's Theatre in February 2006.

Schenkkan has written numerous one-acts that are collected together and published by Dramatists Play Service as Conversations with the Spanish Lady. Among them is The Survivalist which premiered at ATL's Humana festival, went on to the EST Marathon in NYC, Canada's DuMaurier Festival, and the Edinburgh Festival where it won the "Best of the Fringe" award.

Schenkkan's film work includes "The Quiet American" directed by Phillip Noyce. For television, he wrote the miniseries "Crazy Horse" (TNT), "Spartacus" (USA NETWORK) and "The Andromeda Strain". He has written films for Sidney Pollack, Oliver Stone, Denzel Washington, Ron Howard, and Kevin Costner among others. He is currently writing a film, "The Rules", for DreamWorks, and is a writer/ producer for Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks and HBO's epic miniseries, "The Pacific".

Schenkkan is the recipient of grants from New York State, the California Arts Council, and the Vogelstein and the Arthur foundations. He is a New Dramatists alumnus and a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre and the National Theatre Conference. He lives in Seattle with his wife, the author, Maria Dahvana Headley, and his two children, Sarah Victoria and Joshua McHenry.

Whidbey Island Center for the Arts, under the leadership of Executive Director Stacie Burgua, is proud to present The Kentucky Cycle: Part One and Part Two at WICA, 565 Camano Avenue, Apr 09 - 24, 2010.

This sweeping epic of three families in eastern Kentucky spans 200 years of American history from 1775 to 1975. Fast-paced and finely drawn, Robert Schenkkan's stunning six-hour, nine-play cycle (with 33 actors playing 80+ characters) examines the myths of the American past.

"As I played out the history of these families over this broad expanse of time, the play seemed to become less and less about the history of eastern Kentucky or even the history of Appalachia. It was about America. It had become an unintended exploration of the process of 'myth making': that alchemy of wish fulfillment and political expediency by which history is collected and altered and revised, by which events become stories, and stories become folklore, and folklore becomes myth. Ultimately, I realized that the play was about American mythology..." - Robert Schenkkan

Exploring violence as a part of American life -- whether that violence is racial, gender-based, or environmental -- and how each generation deals with and works through the American tendency to use force first and ask questions later.

"A cautionary parable about American character..." - Joe Adcock, Seattle P-I

"Thanks to some very fine staging by Barker, the rich language of Schenkkan's play, a simple and evocative set, and a cast with the ability to send this play home, "The Kentucky Cycle"... has all the ingredients for a tour de force." - Patricia Duff, South Whidbey Record

Tickets range in price from $12 to $28, with discounts available for seniors, military, youth and groups, and are available from www.WICAonline.com or 360.221.8268 - 800/638.7631.

Photo Credit: Robert Schenkkan

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