New Repertory Theatre Begins Season With BOSTON MARRIAGE 9/13

New Repertory Theatre, in residence at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, is thrilled to begin its 2010-2011 Season with David Mamet's clever, biting comedy Boston Marriage. Boston Marriage opens on Sunday, September 12, 2010 at 2pm and plays through Sunday, October 3, 2010 at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in the Charles Mosesian Theater.

"I am delighted to start our 27th Season with one of David Mamet's most accomplished and humorous plays, Boston Marriage," says Kate Warner, Artistic Director for New Repertory Theatre. "This season, I selected plays that explore ideas of transformation, wherein characters have experiences that change their perspectives in a significant way. In Boston Marriage, Anna and Claire's relationship transforms through a wickedly funny satire of class and customs."

Ms. Warner also adds, "I am pleased to bring director David Zoffoli back to New Repertory Theatre, and I am eager to work with the cast and design team David and I have assembled."

"I'm so enjoying working with our local talent," said David Zoffoli, the director of Boston Marriage. "The physical production--think wild Gibson girls in the Gilded Era--will be stunning, and the actors get Mamet's rhythm and wit."

Mr. Zoffoli adds, "When Mamet wrote the play in the '90s, he effectively re-introduced the term "Boston marriage" to contemporary America. At the turn of the 20th century, a "Boston marriage" described a living arrangement between two women that was independent of any male support. The term probably comes from Henry James' Bostonians, in which he details an implicit marriage between two women. Mamet's hilarious take on such an arrangement is brilliant."

Boston Marriage features New Rep favorites Jennie Israel (Tartuffe) as Claire, and Debra Wise (Orson's Shadow and The Real Thing) as Anna.

In this biting comedy by David Mamet, Anna and Claire, two "women of fashion" who have long resided together, scheme to obtain the objects of their desire. Anna maintains their upper-middle class Victorian lifestyle as the mistress of a wealthy man who provides her with a healthy income and a distinctive emerald necklace for her companionship. When Claire's attentions stray from Anna, Anna devises the "perfect plan" that grows in outlandishness, even as it backfires, and the innocent parlor maid gets caught in the crossfire.

New Repertory Theatre produces plays that speak powerfully to the essential ideas of our time. Through the passion and electricity of live theater performed to the highest standards of excellence, New Rep expands and challenges the human spirit of both artists and audience. New Rep presents world premieres, contemporary and classic works in several intimate settings. We are committed to education and outreach, including special dedication to the creation of innovative in-school programming and providing access to underserved audiences. New Rep is an active advocate for the arts and a major voice in the national dialogue defining the role of theater in our culture.

ARTISTS

Jennie Israel (Claire) has taught voice, Shakespearean text, and acting at Bowdoin College, Harvard College, Boston College, SUNY/Purchase, Emerson College, and The Boston Conservatory. She holds her MFA from the Yale School of Drama. Credits include New Rep: Tartuffe and DollHouse this spring; Actors' Shakespeare Project (founding member): A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Duchess of Malfi, King John, All's Well That Ends Well, King Lear,and Julius Caesar; Gloucester Stage: Richard III; The Huntington Theatre: Table Manners and Les Liasons Dangereuses; Súgán Theatre Company: Molly Maguire; Commonwealth Shakespeare: Macbeth and As You Like It; The Vineyard Playhouse: Living in Exile and The Heidi Chronicles. Regional credits include Yale Repertory Theatre: The Marriage of Figaro/Figaro Gets a Divorce, The Beaux Stratagem and Pericles; Actors Theatre of Louisville: Guernica and King Lear; The Greenwich Street Theatre: Antony and Cleopatra; Chautauqua Theatre Festival: Antigone; Shakespeare & Company: Undine's Valediction, The Scarlet Letter, Macbeth, and Summer; Theatre Chicago: Goose and TomTom; and Sun Valley Shakespeare Festival: A Midsummer Night's Dream. Film and television credits include: Rudy (TriStar Pictures), Guiding Light (CBS), and Coming to Litchfield, an independent film.

Debra Wise (Anna) is delighted to return to New Repertory Theatre, having felt part of the generous New Rep community since playing Vivien Leigh in Orson's Shadow and Annie in The Real Thing. A founding member of Underground Railway Theater (URT), she now serves as Artistic Director and has been involved in the collaborative creation of over 30 new works as performer, playwright, director, and/or dramaturge. URT is in-residence at the Central Square Theater in Cambridge, with The Nora Theatre Company. Upcoming URT productions there include The Fever Chart - Three Visions of the Middle East and Ti-Jean and His Brothers. Wise is also Artistic Co-Director of the science theater partnership Catalyst Collaborative@MIT (CC@MIT); CC@MIT's next production is Breaking the Code, starring Allyn Burrows as Alan Turing, in which Wise will also be appearing. See www.centralsquaretheater.org. From '97-'03, Ms. Wise co-directed the Women on Top Theater Festival of new works by women theater artists, in which she won a 'Top Ten' citation for solo performance (The Boston Globe). Wise has performed with other companies both in New York (The Public and the Ark, with Julie Taymor and Elizabeth Swados) and in Boston (SpeakEasy Stage Company, Súgán Theatre Company, and Revels). She is Theater Specialist for the Art Works for Schools Program, a collaboration with Harvard's Project Zero, teaching thinking in and through the arts across the curriculum. Wise led the development of URT's performances in non-traditional venues, with projects commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Museum of Science, New Center for Arts and Culture, Museum of Fine Arts, the ICA, and Mary Baker Eddy Library

David Mamet (playwright) was born in Chicago in 1947. He studied at Goddard College in Vermont and at The Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater in New York. He taught at Goddard College, Yale School of Drama, New York University, and at Atlantic Theater Company, of which he is a founding member. He is the author of many plays including: Race, November, Speed-the-Plow, The Cryptogram, Oleanna, Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo, and Sexual Perversity in Chicago. He has also written screenplays for such films as House of Games, the Oscar-nominated The Verdict, The Spanish Prisoner, The Winslow Boy, and Wag the Dog. His plays have won the Pulitzer Prize and the Obie Award.

David Zoffoli (director) is thrilled to be returning to New Repertory Theatre after directing the world premiere of David Rambo's Ice-Breaker. Recent directing credits include Merrimack Repertory Theatre: All in the Timing (Elliot Norton Award, Best Production), Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, Defying Gravity, Light Up the Sky, Full Gallop, Hamlet, Travels with my Aunt, Search for Signs of the Intelligent Life, and Shirley Valentine; Syracuse Stage: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten; Festival Theatre: Land's End; Gloucester Stage: Dear Liar (Elliot Norton Nomination, Best Production), LifeX3, Enigma, and Variations; North Shore Music Theatre: Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream; and Peterborough Players: The Mousetrap. Mr. Zoffoli was named Big Brother of the Year of the Merrimack Valley and volunteers as Chairman of the Haverhill Cultural Council. He owns and operates Greenyankee.com, an online community for eco-smart people, places, and products. His adaptation of A Christmas Carol is in revival this year for its 21st season at the North Shore Music Theatre.