The Nora Theatre Company to present PRECIOUS LITTLE

Company, Primary Stages, the Long Wharf Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Actors Theatre of Louisville (Humana Festival), People's Light and Theatre Company (where she received a Barrymore nomination for Best Direction), Bay Street, and Playwrights Horizons. Her highly regarded work with new plays has taken her to the O'Neill Theater Center, New York Stage and Film/Powerhouse, the Midwest Playlabs/The Playwrights Center, and other new play programs across the U.S. Ongoing collaborations with playwrights include such wonderful writers as Kirsten Greenidge, Annie Baker, Mat Smart, Ken Urban, Masha Obolensky, Jeffrey Hatcher, Lee Blessing, Richard Dresser, Willy Holtzman, Edwin Sanchez, Y York, and Jose Rivera, among others.Raised in Mexico City, Melia is fluent in Spanish and has translated and adapted a variety of texts. Her edition of the Langston Hughes translation of Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding is now in its eighth printing by Theatre Communications Group. Besides winning the OBIE award for Outstanding Direction, Melia was twice given Directing Awards by the Princess Grace Foundation, USA, including their top honor, the Statuette Award for Sustained Excellence in Directing. She is featured in Women Stage Directors Speak by Rebecca Daniels (McFarland and Co.), and in Nancy Taylor's Women Direct Shakespeare (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press). Her essay on Merchant of Venice was recently published in Jews, Theatre, Performance in an Intercultural Context by Brill Publishing. A graduate oF Brown University, Melia is Chair of the Performing Arts Department at Emerson College in Boston.

About the Cast & Creative Team

Nancy E. Carroll* (A) Broadway: Present Laughter (Roundabout Theatre); International: The Cripple of Inishmaan, Big Maggie (Druid Theatre, Ireland) Return of the Winemaker (Cork Arts Theatre, Ireland); Regional: I Was Most Alive With You, The Seagull, Good People, The Luck of the Irish, Prelude to a Kiss, Brendan, The Rose Tattoo, Dead End (Huntington Theatre Company); Rapture Blister Burn(Geffen Playhouse); Our Town, She Loves Me (Williamstown Theatre Festival); The Year of Magical Thinking, The Glass Menagerie(Lyric Stage Company of Boston); Return of the Winemaker, Trad (Tir Na); The New Electric Ballroom, North Shore Fish, Breath of Life, Doubt, Happy Days, My Old Lady, Collected Stories (Gloucester Stage Company); Uncanny Valley (Stoneham Theatre); The Clean House, Frozen, Sweeney Todd, Kindertransport (New Repertory); Mothers and Sons, Other Desert Cities, The Savannah Disputation, The Women, Company, A Man Of No Importance (SpeakEasy Stage Company); Bailengangaire (Súgán Theatre); Humble Boy, Hamlet, The Winter's Tale (Publick Theatre); Auntie and Me (Merrimack Repertory); Buried Child, The Unexpected Man (Nora Theatre Company). TV and Film: Spotlight, Olive Kitteridge, Irrational Man. Elliot Norton Awards: Present Laughter, Brendan, Bailegangaire.

Lee Mikeska Gardner* (Brodie, Artistic Director of The Nora Theater Company) was last on stage playing Tess in The Nora's production of Marjorie Prime. Other Boston roles: Emilie in Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight (Elliot Norton award for Outstanding Actress, Small Theatre) and Carla in the IRNE nominated Chosen Child at Boston Playwrights' Theatre. Favorite roles (all in pre-Trump Washington, D.C.) include Terry in Sideman (Helen Hayes Nomination for Outstanding Actress) and Florence Foster Jenkins in Souvenir at Charter Theatre, Mary in A House in the Country with Charter Theatre (Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Actress,) Luisa in A Shayna Maidel at Rep Stage (Best Actress in the Baltimore City Paper,) Claire in The Two-Character Play at Spooky Action and Josie in The Show Off at The American Century Theatre. Lee has earned an additional three Helen Hayes nominations for performance. As a director Lee most most recently helmed Journey to the West, a co-production with Underground Railway Theater. Other directing credits at The Nora are: Her Aching Heart, Grounded, Saving Kitty (with Jennifer Coolidge) and Arcadia. An Artistic Associate for ten years at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Lee directed a show a season, earning Helen Hayes nominations for direction for After Ashley, Life During Wartime, and Goodnight, Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet. As an Associate Artist with 1st Stage Lee directedBlithe Spirit, The How and The Why, Humble Boy and Fuddy Meers. Lee served as The Managing Director for Washington Shakespeare Company for five years directing shows including the world premieres of Caesar and Dada and Learning Curves as well as A Midsummer Night's Dream. Other favorite directing projects include Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie at The Kennedy Center; Angels in America and Peristroika at Signature Theatre; T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party for the Washington Stage Guild (Theatre Lobby Award,);Golden Boy and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with the Keegan Theatre (Artistic Associate); The Butterfingers Angel..., Thom Pain (Based on Nothing), Stones In His Pockets and Three Tall Women at Rep Stage, where Lee also served as Managing Director for two years. Lee spent seven years as Associate Artistic Director with the Shenandoah Playwrights' Retreat working on plays in development. As an educator, Lee has taught or served as a Guest Artist at Colleges and Universities across the nation including Emerson, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, UVA, Charlottesville, University of Maryland, College Park, and Middlebury College. Lee has a B.F.A. in the Performing Arts from George Mason University and an M.F.A. in Acting from The Catholic University of America.

Karoline Xu (C) is thrilled to join Precious Little! She was most recently seen as Agnes in A Dream Play (Harvard/Farkas Hall). Professional credits include Dry Land (Company One), Blood Wedding (Apollinaire), A Language to Hear Myself (American Repertory Theater), Hitting Bedrock (La MaMa ETC), Readymade Cabaret (Judson Church). This summer, she was an acting intern with Santa Cruz Shakespeare and the understudy for Hamlet in Hamlet. Senior at Harvard College.

The production team includes Judy Gailen (Scenic Designer), Wen-Ling Liao (Lighting Designer), Elizabeth Rocha (Costume & Properties Designer), and Nathan Leigh (Sound Design & Original Music). Cassie M. Seinuk is the Stage Manager.

Precious Little plays at Central Square Theater, 450 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Thursday, March 2 to March 26, 2017. Tickets may be purchased by calling 617.576.9278 x1, at the Central Square Theater box office, or online at CentralSquareTheater.org.

Central Square Theater (CST) opened in 2008 through a groundbreaking partnership between The Nora Theatre Company (The Nora) and Underground Railway Theater (URT). This collaboration has been called a model for the arts community (The Boston Foundation, Culture is our Commonwealth, and The National Collaboration Prize), as it has paired two like-minded performing arts organizations in a strategic alliance with the City of Cambridge and MIT, resulting in the development of a state-of-the-art performing arts center in the heart of Central Square. CST has a mission to support its two theaters-in-residence while maintaining a shared vision of artists and audiences creating theater vital to their communities. The Nora and URT have a combined track record of over 50 years producing award-winning theater. Located in Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and steeped in its multiracial, intergenerational, ethnically and economically diverse neighborhoods, the CST theater experience exudes a democratic energy where classes, races and age groups come together to be inspired, entertained and energized.

Central Square Theater is accessible to persons with special needs and to those requiring wheelchair seating.

For further information please call 617.576.9278 or visit CentralSquareTheater.org.