The REP announces 2013-2014 season
Season includes world, Pittsburgh premieres; opens with Arthur Miller’s ‘All My Sons’
PITTSBURGH – The REP, Point Park University’s professional theatre company, will produce four works, including a world premiere and a Pittsburgh premiere, in the 2013-2014 season. The season begins Sept. 6 and runs through April 6, 2014, at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.
The season opens with Arthur Miller’s post-World War II drama, All My Sons, directed by his son, Robert A. Miller, Point Park University’s Conservatory of Performing Arts Distinguished Master Artist-in-Residence. Other productions include the Pittsburgh premiere of EM Lewis’ Heads, directed by John Shepard, the world premiere of Pittsburgh playwright Tammy Ryan’s Soldier’s Heart, directed by John Amplas, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage’s By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, directed by Tome’ Cousin.
The REP 2013-2014 season subscriptions, which save patrons up to 35 percent off single ticket prices, are available now and can be purchased for $64-$72. Single tickets, ranging from $24-$27, will go on sale at 10 a.m., Monday, Aug. 19. Those who purchase three subscriptions get the fourth free. To order a season subscription, contact the Pittsburgh Playhouse box office by phone 412.392.8000, or online www.pittsburghplayhouse.com.
The REP’s 2013-2014 season:
All My Sons
By Arthur Miller
Directed by Robert A. Miller
Friday, Sept. 6 – Sunday, Sept. 22
Rauh Theatre
Arthur Miller’s first commercial success, All My Sons, is the story of a seemingly All-American family, the Kellers, caught up in the struggle between personal responsibility and their duty to the nation.
Acclaimed Hollywood producer, director and screenwriter, Robert A. Miller, is best known for producing The Crucible, nominated for two Academy Awards and featuring Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, Joan Allen and Paul Scofield. Miller also produced Focus, starring William H. Macy, Laura Dern and David Paymer. His directorial credits includeCompany of Angels in Hollywood, and Bend in the River, a live PBS broadcast featuring Ken Kesey. Miller directed several plays for The REP, including his first-ever production of his father’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Death of a Salesman in 2008. He also directed The REP’s world premieres of The Umbrella Man in 2010 and A Child’s Guide to Heresy in 2011, and is a producer of the movie The Umbrella Man, filmed in 2012 in Pittsburgh and Dallas. Miller has served as a Distinguished Master Artist-in-Residence at the Conservatory of Performing Arts since 2009.
Soldier’s Heart
By Tammy Ryan
Directed by John Amplas
World Premiere
Friday, Sept. 27 – Sunday, Oct. 13
Studio Theatre
In a Soldier’s Heart, an American soldier leaves her son behind to defend the country she loves. When her commanding officer becomes her assailant, she returns home to face her greatest test, bringing back more than she bargained for.
Tammy Ryan’s award-winning plays have been produced across the country and internationally. She won the 2012 Francesca Primus Prize awarded by the American Theater Critics Association for Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods, which was produced at The REP in 2011. Her work has been commissioned, produced and developed at numerous theatre companies, including The REP, Alliance Theater Company, Dorset Theater Festival, Florida Stage, Marin Theater Company, City Theater, Bricolage, and the Lark Play Development Lab. Her plays for young audiences have twice received the National Playwriting for Youth Bonderman Award.
Director John Amplas has been teaching all levels of acting and directing at Point Park since 1982, and has served as both an actor and director in countless Pittsburgh Playhouse productions dating back to 1972. He is an accomplished film actor with more than 20 films to his credit, most notably starring in the title role in George A. Romero’s horror classic, Martin. He also appeared in other Romero films, including Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders, Day of the Deadand Creepshow, and had a featured role in Melissa Martin’s film, The Bread My Sweet. On stage, he has appeared inAh Wilderness, The FBI Girl, The Visit (world premiere), Breaker Morant, Le Bête, Knights of the Round Table, Brecht on Brecht, Glengarry Glen Ross, Hair, and Off-Off Broadway productions of Look Back in Anger and Streamers. He has directed several Conservatory Theatre Company and The REP productions, including Confluence of Dreaming (world premiere), Antigone, No Place to Be Somebody, The Threepenny Opera, The Elephant Man, The Third Lie (world premiere), Quills and When Ya Comin’ Back Red Ryder. In 2007, Amplas and actor Bill Nunn established the Pittsburgh Regional August Wilson Monologue Competition.
Heads
By EM Lewis
Directed by John Shepard
Pittsburgh Premiere
Studio Theatre
Friday, Jan. 31 – Sunday, Feb. 16
In this prize-winning contemporary hostage drama, a British embassy worker, an American engineer, a network journalist and a freelance photographer must decide what each is willing to do to survive.
EM Lewis won the 2008 Francesca Primus Prize for an Emerging Female Theater Artist for Heads, a play Edward Albee called “provocative and wonderfully threatening.” The Los Angeles Times named it one of the top 10 productions of 2007. The Denver Examiner remarked, “If you are looking for an evening of theatre that will get you thinking, that will leave an indelible impression long after the show has ended, and that will move you to tears – then this is for you. …Heads is a welcome, intelligent, and moving drama that is a must see.”
Lewis’ award-winning plays have been produced around the country, and around the world. In addition to winning the Primus Prize for Heads, Lewis won the 2009 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for her play Song of Extinction, and 2010-2011 Hodder Fellowship in playwriting from Princeton University. Lewis is a member of Moving Arts Theater Company, the Dramatists Guild, the International Centre for Women Playwrights, and the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights.
Director John Shepard appeared on Broadway in David Mamet’s American Buffalo with Al Pacino (as well as the subsequent national tour and on the West End), and Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge (with Tony LoBianco). For The REP, Shepard has directed Buried Child, The Chicken Snake (World Premiere), One Flea Spare, The Visit, Mother Courage and, most recently, August: Osage County, which was named “Best of 2012” by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Shepard teaches acting and directing at Point Park and has directed several Conservatory Theatre productions, including Evita, Marat/Sade, Candide, and Joined at the Head, among others. He has directed locally for Off the Wall (Shining City) and at theatres across the country. As an actor, he appeared in the world premieres of The Electric Babyfor Quantum and Mid-Strut for The REP, and was chosen as Performer of the Year by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for his performance as Willy Loman in The REP’s 2008 production of Death of a Salesman.
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark
By Lynn Nottage
Directed by Tome’ Cousin
Friday, March 21 – Sunday, April 6
Studio Theatre
“A dazzling comedy about racial identity in Hollywood” (New York Post), Lynn Nottage’s hilarious satire chronicles the 70-year journey of Vera Stark, a headstrong African-American maid and budding actress, and her tangled relationship with her boss, a white Hollywood star desperately grasping to hold onto her career. When circumstances collide and both women land roles in the same Southern epic, the story behind the cameras leaves Vera with a controversial legacy scholars will debate for years to come. By The Way, Meet Vera Stark enjoyed an extended run Off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre (Lily Award, Drama Desk Nomination) and, most recently, at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. “As delightful to look at as a Valentine's Day box of candy ... ebulliently comic,” The Los Angeles Times raved.
Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club and Goodman Theatre (OBIE, Lucille Lortel, New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Audelco, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play). She won the 2010 Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, inaugural Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play (Ruined), and Helen Hayes Award (Ruined). Her other honors include the 2007 MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant,” National Black Theatre Festival’s August Wilson Playwriting Award, 2005 Guggenheim Grant for Playwriting, and the 2004 PEN/Laura Pels Award for Drama.
Point Park University graduate Tome’ Cousin is an internationally recognized director, choreographer, educator, performer and creator of musical theater works, ballets, films, new opera, song cycles and art installations, as well as a published author. Cousin has appeared on Broadway in Contact, A Free Man of Color, and Dreamgirls, national tours of Dreamgirls, My One and Only, and A Chorus Line, and internationally in Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity (Switzerland), The Who’s Tommy, La Cage aux Folles, Starlight Express, and Tabaluga und Lilli (Germany). He serves as the directing supervisor for original director/choreographer Susan Stroman’s Tony Award-winning musical Contact, having staged 12 companies worldwide including premieres in Hungary, Korea and Poland. In 2007-2008, he directed the revival of the Susan Stroman, David Thompson, Harry Connick Jr. musical, Thou Shalt Not, at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. Last season, he co-directed/co-authored the workshop revival of June Havoc’s Marathon 33 (M33), at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. Cousin teaches at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama and has been commissioned by the estate of the famed Harlem Renaissance photographer James VanDerZee to create and direct an original new multimedia opera based on his life and works.
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