Trustus Theatre Brings COLLECTED STORIES to Columbia Museum of Art, Now thru 5/19

Trustus Theatre concludes its 2013 Off-Off-Lady series next month when it presents Collected Stories, directed by Milena Herring, at the Columbia Museum of Art. Collected Stories opens tonight, May 15 and runs through May 19, 2013.

Collected Stories, by Donald Margulies, is a provocative and topical play which received its Broadway premiere in 2010. The Trustus production of Collected Stories runs May 15 - 19, and is set in a small Greenwich Village apartment over six years. The production, which stars acclaimed Trustus Company Members Elena Martinez-Vidal as Ruth and Elizabeth Gray Engle as Lisa, is directed by Herring, who has returned to her native Columbia after nearly 30 years in New York.

"While centered around the developing relationship between two women, the story is actually about who owns your memories," said Herring, who acted and directed in New York for more than 15 years. "The idea of intellectual property rights isn't necessarily provocative," Herring said. "But as the audience eavesdrops on the six-year evolving relationship between these women, I think viewers might change their minds."

The story features Ruth Steiner, a respected short-story writer and professor in her mid-fifties, who has carved out a comfortable life for herself in a Greenwich Village apartment she has occupied for decades. Lisa Morrison is a callow yet talented 26-year-old graduate student and aspiring writer, a child of suburban privilege, when she meets Ruth and offers to become her assistant. Over six years, as Ruth and Lisa's relationship evolves from mentor/protégé to loving friends to adversaries -- and ultimately disintegrates --the story touches on issues of age, artistic license, and betrayal with humor and pathos.

Herring previously was the artistic director of Leap Productions in New York. Among the Off-Broadway shows she directed there were Eleemosynary by Lee Blessing, Sight Unseen by Donald Margulies, A Cowboy's Dream by John Foley, Painting Churches by Tina Howe, Oil City Symphony by Mike Craver and Mark Hardwick, and Smoke on the Mountain by Mark Hardwick and Connie Ray, to name just a few.

Though Herring is making her Trustus directorial debut, her roots in Columbia theatre are deep. The eldest daughter of the late actress, director and drama teacher, Bette Herring, she cut her teeth at Town Theatre under the tutelage of the beloved children's theatre director Mary Lou Kramer. She is a graduate of the USC Theatre department.

Tickets are on sale now at the Trustus Box Office 803.254.9732. Visit Trustus at www.trustus.org, www.facebook.com/TrustusTheatre or www.twitter.com/trustustheatre.

Pictured: Elena Martinez-Vidal and Elisabeth Gray Engle. Photo Credit: Richard Kiraly.

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