World Premiere Of Robert O'Hara's ANTEBELLUM Begins 3/30

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company continues its 2008-09 Season with the World Premiere of Antebellum by Robert O’Hara, author of Insurrection: Holding History, and an OBIE Award winner for directing the Off-Broadway hit, In the Continuum. Directed by Chay Yew, the cast features Woolly Mammoth Company Member Jessica Frances Dukes and Jenna Sokolowski.

Antebellum runs March 30 – April 26, 2009, with Pay-What-You-Can performances on March 30 and 31 at 8pm. PRESS OPENING IS SUNDAY, APRIL 5 AT 7PM. Woolly Mammoth is located at 641 D Street, NW (7th & D).

“We are thrilled to keep building our relationship with Robert O’Hara, one of the great multi-talents in our field,” states Woolly Mammoth Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz.  “Following his award-winning direction of In The Continuum, Robert returns to Woolly as a playwright with a provocative new work that unfolds on two continents during the momentous years leading up to WWII.  Ambitious both in its style (inspired by the big Hollywood epics of the period) and its content (a sexual mystery crossing boundaries of race and gender), Antebellum is the work of a passionate artist who reaches for big ideas and big emotions, and always leaves his audience with much to ponder and debate.” 

Part mystery, part Hollywood romance, Robert O’Hara’s stylish new play bridges time, space, religion and race to track a love affair that defies history’s harshest cruelties.  It’s 1939. Hitler’s death camps flourished and Great Britain and France have declared war on Germany.  In Germany, Black American cabaret singer Gabriel (Carlton Byrd) is a kept companion to a Nazi officer (Andrew Price).  Meanwhile, in Atlanta, with Gone with the Wind premiering amid star-studded decadence, a mysterious woman named Edna (Jessica Frances Dukes) shows up at the home of Ariel and Sarah (Nick Vienna, Jenna Sokolowski) attempting to find work.  Against the backdrops of a Southern plantation, a German concentration camp, Hollywood movies and Berlin cabarets, these two stories merge into one sweeping romance – and fate decides which souls survive and which must be sacrificed.

Robert O’Hara received an OBIE Award for his direction of In the Continuum at Primary Stage/Perry Street Theater, seen at Woolly Mammoth in 2006.  His recent projects include rewriting The Wiz (revival at La Jolla Playhouse, directed by Des McAnuff), directing Tough Titty by Oni Faida Lampley (Magic Theater), directing the upcoming Brother/Sister Plays by Tarell Alvin McCraney (co-production at McCarter Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, Public Theater), and completing a new play commissioned by La Jolla Playhouse.  Robert wrote and directed the world premiere of Insurrection: Holding History at the Public Theater, receiving the Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Play.  He has directed extensively in the United States and around the world and had his plays produced internationally.  Robert has written films for Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Jon Avnet, HBO, ABC, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, New Line/Fine Line Cinema, and Artisan Entertainment, and recently completed writing and directing his feature film debut, My Place in the Horror.  

Woolly Mammoth Company Member Jessica Frances Dukes with Carlton Byrd, Andrew Price, Jenna Sokolowski, and Nick Vienna.

Jessica Frances Dukes (Edna) is Woolly Mammoth’s newest company member.  She was last seen at Woolly in the world premiere of Starving, and will also appear this season in Fever/Dream.  She has been performed with African Continuum Theatre Company (SPUNK; Jitney, with Ford’s Theatre), Theater Alliance (Insurrection: Holding History), Studio Theatre (Caroline or Change), The Kennedy Center (Unleashed: The Secret Lives of White House Pets), and regionally in at Indiana Rep and Geva Theater.  Carlton Byrd (Gabriel) is making his Woolly and DC area debuts. He has performed with the Classical Theater of Harlem and Incumbo Theater, and has studied at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Andrew Price (Oskar) is a DC actor recently transplanted to Los Angeles. Locally, he has appeared at Rorschach Theatre, Studio Theatre Second Stage, Catalyst Theatre, and The Kennedy Center, as well as Williamstown Theatre Festival and the NY Fringe Festival.  He is an associate producer of the inaugural Hollywood Fringe Festival (2010).  Jenna Sokolowski (Sarah) returns to Woolly following her performance in She Stoops to Comedy.  A Helen Hayes Award winner for Urinetown at Signature Theatre, she has appeared at Studio Theatre (Grey Gardens), The Shakespeare Theatre Company (The Rivals), Olney Theatre Center (Fiddler on the Roof), Folger Theatre (The Clandestine Marriage), and is currently performing the title role in Eurydice at Round House Theatre.  Nick Vienna (Ariel) makes his first appearance with Woolly.  He has appeared with the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Richard III, Hamlet, and Titus Andronicus.

Chay Yew has directed extensively around the country including at The Public Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Humana Festival/Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Kennedy Center, Mark Taper Forum, Goodman Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, National Asian American Theatre Company, Gala Hispanic Theatre, Singapore Repertory Theatre, Theatre Rhinoceros, and the Smithsonian Institute, among others.  His opera credits include the world premieres of Osvaldo Golijov and David Henry Hwang’s Ainadamar (co-production - Tanglewood Music Center, Lincoln Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic) and Rob Zuidam’s Rage d’Amors (Tanglewood).  Chay is a recipient of the OBIE Award and Dramalogue Award for Direction.  As a playwright, his plays include Porcelain, A Language of Their Own, Red, A Beautiful Country, Wonderland, Question 27 Question 28, A Distant Shore, and 17; adaptations including A Winter People (based The Cherry Orchard) and Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba; and a musical, Long Season.  He is the recipient of the London Fringe Award for Best Playwright and Best Play, a GLAAD Media Award, the Asian Pacific Gays and Friends’ Community Visibility Award, and the Made in America Award.  His plays published by Grove Press were nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, and he is presently editing a new anthology of Asian American plays, Version 3.0, for TCG Publications. Chay is under commission from Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Writer’s Theatre.  His new play, Visible Cities, will be produced by the Napoli Teatro Festival and Singapore Arts Festival in May 2009.

The design team for Antebellum includes Tony Cisek (Set Design), Valerie St. Pierre Smith (Costume Design), Colin K. Bills (Lighting Design), Matthew M. Nielson (Sound Design) and Jennifer Sheetz (Properties).

Now in its 29th Season, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company continues to hold its place at theatre’s leading edge. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz and Managing Director Jeffrey Herrmann, Woolly Mammoth is acknowledged as “Washington’s most daring theatre company” (The New York Times), as a regional and national leader in the development of new plays, and as one of the best known and most influential small theatres in America.  Woolly Mammoth has gained this reputation by holding fast to its unique mission: 

…to ignite an explosive engagement between theatre artists and the community by developing, producing and promoting new plays that explore the edges of theatrical style and human experience, and by implementing new ways to use the artistry of theatre to serve the people of Greater Washington, DC.  

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company is a member of the National New Play Network, Theatre Communications Group, The League of Washington Theatres, and The Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington, and a participant in the A-ha! Program: Think it, Do it, funded by MetLife and administered by Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for the American theatre.  The Theatre’s programs are supported in part by The National Endowment for the Arts, the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs Program/United States Commission of Fine Arts.

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