UW School of Drama presents Lucy Thurber's MONSTROSITY

The University of Washington School of Drama will be the first on the West Coast to present New York playwright Lucy Thurber's girl hero epic, Monstrosity.

Monstrosity premiered in 2013 at New York's Connelly Theater, produced by 13P and directed by Lear deBessonet.

13P (Thirteen Playwrights, Inc.) was formed in 2003 by 13 midcareer playwrights concerned about how the system of play development was impacting the texture of new American plays. Their motto was, "We don't develop plays. We do them." Together, they produced one play by each playwright over the course of nine years, and then immediately ceased to exist as a company. Other 13P playwrights include Anne Washburn (Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play), Young Jean Lee (Straight White Men), and Sarah Ruhl (In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play). The 13P plays were marked by their ambition and scale-these were plays that might be considered otherwise "unproduceable"-and Thurber's Monstrosity, might be the most vivid example of that spirit.

The play is set in a fascist training camp for teenagers, where siblings Tierney and Patrick's have been conscripted following the deaths of their resistance-leading parents. The camp's leader would like nothing better than to prove the virtue of his worldview by grooming the uniquely gifted Tierney as his successor. His daughter Sarah, however, is bent on subverting his plan, trying instead to draw Tierney into her effort to construct a more peaceful, loving social order within their war-torn reality.

Thurber, a self-described "total fantasy novel geek," wrote the play as a response to her disappointment that none of the "real actual heroes" in the stories she loved were ever girls. Each of Monstrosity's three acts follows a different girl hero, and each of those girls follows a complicated path that leads to an unexpected-and not necessarily heroic-ending.

UW Drama's production of Monstrosity features a cast of 17 undergraduate actors and designs by MFA design students Lindsey Halfhill (costumes), Wenzheng Zhang (set), and undergraduate student Sam Jones (lights). Washington Ensemble Theatre Artistic Director Samie Spring Detzer will direct, along with Associate Director/Dramaturg Maggie Rogers and Choreographer Alyza DelPan-Monley, carrying forward a long tradition of collaboration between UW Drama and The Ensemble, which was founded by UW Drama graduates in 2004.

PERFORMANCES
Tuesday, November 28th at 7:30 PM (PREVIEW)
Thursday, November 28th at 7:30 PM (PREVIEW)
Friday, December 1st at 7:30 PM (OPENING NIGHT)
Saturday, December 2nd at 7:30 PM
Sunday, December 3rd at 2:00 PM (plus pre-show lobby talk at 1:00 PM)
Wednesday, December 6th at 7:30 PM (Pay-What-You-Can, day of show only)
Thursday, December 7th at 7:30 PM
Friday, December 8th at 7:30 PM
Saturday, December 9th at 7:30 PM
Sunday, December 10th at 2:00 PM

TICKETS
$20 Regular
$14 UW employee or retiree, senior (62+), UWAA member
$10 Student
$5 TeenTix
Pay-What-You-Can, day of show only, Wednesday December 6th at 7:30
Available at drama.uw.edu or by calling the ArtsUW ticket office at 206.543.4880

LOCATION
Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre
University of Washington, Northeast campus
Near entrance at NE 45th St. and 17th Ave NE, adjacent to N-5 parking lot
Google Map: https://goo.gl/maps/yUbevun1LKB2

A graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, and Artistic Director of Washington Ensemble Theatre, Samie was most recently seen in The Ensemble's The Things Are Against Us, The Hunchback of Seville (Footlight Award??) and in The Edge of Our Bodies, in Rikki Tikki Tavi at Seattle Children's Theatre and in Wayne Rawley's award-winning Live! From the Last Night of My Life. She has worked as an actor at Seattle Shakespeare Company, Book-It Rep, Taproot, The Solo Performance Festival, The Chicago Improv Festival, and 14/48. Samie is the co-creator of SIX PACK SERIES, and is the Literary and Executive Manager at ACT Theatre.

MORE ABOUT Lucy Thurber
Lucy Thurber is the author the plays Where We're Born, Ashville, Scarcity, Killers and Other Family, Stay, Bottom of The World, Monstrosity, Dillingham City, The Locus, Perry Street, and The Insurgents. The Insurgents has been produced at LAByrinth Theater Company and Contemporary American Theater Festival. Her five-play cycle, The Hill Town Plays, was produced Off Broadway by Rattlestick Playwright's Theater in conjunction with The Cherry Lane Theater, The Axis Theater and The New Ohio Theatre. The Atlantic Theater Company has produced her plays Bottom of The World and Scarcity. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater has produced three of her plays: Where We're Born, Killers and Other Family, and Stay. Lucy wrote the text for QUIXOTE, conceived and directed by Lear deBessonet, a site-specific performance with the Psalters made for and with The Broad Street Community in Philadelphia. She is published by Dramatists Play Service, and her play Scarcity was published in the December 2007 issue of American Theatre. Thurber is an alumna of New Dramatists, and a member of 13P, LAByrinth Theater Company, and Rising Phoenix Rep. She has been commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, The Contemporary American Theatre Festival, House on The Moon, WET, and Yale Rep. She is the recipient of Manhattan Theatre Club Playwriting fellowship, The 1st Gary Bonasorte Memorial Prize for Playwriting, a proud recipient of a Lilly Award and a 2014 OBIE Award for The Hill Town Plays. Lucy currently teaches at The New School.

ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF DRAMA
The UW School of Drama develops innovative and courageous artists and scholars poised to be the creative leaders of tomorrow.

For 76 years it has served as one of this country's leading training institutions for theatre artists and scholars. The School of Drama offers MFA degrees in acting, design, and directing, a four-year undergraduate liberal arts education in Drama, and a PhD in theatre history and criticism. Faculty and alumni have founded theatres such as ACT Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Empty Space Theatre, Jet City Improv, and more recently, the Washington Ensemble Theatre, Azeotrope, and The Horse in Motion. The School of Drama is a laboratory for leading-edge performance research, attracting internationally renowned guest artists like Anne Washburn, Daniel Alexander Jones, Erik Ehn, Meiyin Wang, Chay Yew, Whit MacLaughlin, and PearlDamour, offering students the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from masters in their field and forge critical connections to the world of professional theatre.

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