Anacostia Playhouse Stages THE GIN GAME, Now thru 1/22

The Anacostia Playhouse will kick off 2014 with a new production of D.L. Coburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Gin Game. It's Visitor's Day at the Bentley retirement home and Fonsia Dorsey, a newcomer, seeks refuge on an isolated sun porch. It is there that she meets Weller Martin. Weller begrudgingly offers to teach Fonsia to play Gin. Over the next few weeks the two find companionship in one another as they play cards. "I'm still alive!" Weller shouts to Fonsia -compelling the audience to examine the ways in which our society treats its elders.

The Gin Game will be directed by Rob Lutfy, the 2012-13 William R. Kenan, Jr. Directing Fellow at The John F. Kennedy Center. Mr. Lutfy chose to take on this project because it resonates deeply with him on a personal level. "The choice to direct this play was a personal one", he said. "In a way, this process has been a love letter to my grandmother, who passed away in a nursing home after a long fight with Alzheimer's. Directing The Gin Game has allowed me recognize the loneliness and tragedy so many Americans experience, including my own grandmother. My hope for this production is that the audience is overwhelmed by what happens in the room - I want them to they carry this story with them; I hope the audience treasures this story the way I do."

Dane Galloway and Adele Robey, an Anacostia Playhouse co-founder, will bring Weller and Fonsia to life, as the actors spar opposite one another as they did last spring, during the Theatre Lab's production of August: Osage County.

Regarding his performance in The Gin Game, Mr. Galloway said, "What I found challenging was not portraying the obvious problems of the aged, but the choices we make in life, choices that stay with us to the end of our days and in some cases haunt us to the very end."

The Gin Game opens tonight, January 11th at 8pm and will run through February 2, 2014: Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8pm, Saturdays and Sundays at 3pm.

The Anacostia Playhouse opened its doors in the summer of 2013 by the founders of the H Street Playhouse. The new theater (at 2020 Shannon Place, SE) is located in a place of both rich history and great promise, much as H Street was when the H Street Playhouse opened there in 2002.

More information about The Anacostia Playhouse: www.anacostiaplayhouse.com.

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