Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company to Present WOMEN LAUGHING ALONE WITH SALAD, 9/7-10/4

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company announces its first production of Season 36, the world premiere of Women Laughing Alone with Salad by playwright Sheila Callaghan, directed by Kip Fagan. Women Laughing Alone with Salad will run from September 7 to October 4 as part of the inaugural Women's Voices Theater Festival.

What's on the menu for Meredith, Tori, and Sandy: the three women in Guy's life? Healthy lifestyles, upward mobility, meaningful sex? Or self-loathing and distorted priorities? Sheila Callaghan serves up a new play on a bed of bawdy language in a gender-bending comedy vinaigrette, inviting everyone-men and women, mothers and sons-to savor this complex recipe of desire and shame.

This is the second world premiere by Sheila Callaghan to be launched at Woolly Mammoth: Fever/Dream, an adaptation of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's Life is a Dream satirizing corporate America, appeared on Woolly's stage in 2009. Callaghan's previous play Crumble (Lay Me Down Justin Timberlake) appeared in DC in 2008, presented by Catalyst Theater Company. In the TV world, Callaghan has garnered acclaim for her work as a writer and producer on the celebrated Showtime original series Shameless.

"I'm thrilled to welcome Sheila Callaghan back to Woolly to be part of the Women's Voices Theater Festival," says Woolly Mammoth Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz. "Women Laughing Alone with Salad is an outrageous work that stakes its own stylistic territory while raising provocative questions for both women and men. By dealing forthrightly with advertising, body image, feminism, desire, and shame, the play is sure to stir many lively conversations that will stimulate audiences and energize the festival."

Woolly Company Member and 2014 Helen Hayes Award winner for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Play (Marie Antoinette) Kimberly Gilbert will perform alongside Thomas Keegan (Zombie: The American). Janet Ulrich Brooks and Meghan Reardon, new to the Woolly stage but known for their work in Chicago at the Goodman Theatre and TimeLine Theatre Company, will round out the ensemble.

Director Kip Fagan will lead the production team. Woolly Company Members including set designer Misha Kachman, lighting designer Colin K. Bills, video/projection designer Jared Mezzocchi, and costume designer Ivania Stack join the team as well, completed by sound designer Palmer Hefferan.

Women Laughing Alone with Salad is Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company's contribution to the Women's Voices Theater Festival, a citywide celebration of new work by female playwrights from more than 50 professional theaters throughout the Nation's Capital region, taking place in D.C. for the first time this fall.

More information about Woolly's 36th Anniversary Season can be found at woollymammoth.net. More information about the Women's Voices Theater Festival can be found at www.womensvoicestheaterfestival.org.

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