New Rep to Launch 'Next Rep Black Box Festival Symposium Series' This Sunday

New Repertory Theatre announces the NEXT REP BLACK BOX FESTIVAL SPOTLIGHT SYMPOSIUM SERIES, January 24-February 18, 2016 in the Black Box Theater at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, 321 Arsenal Street, Watertown, MA. These events are free and open to the public, no ticket purchase necessary.

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Spotlight Symposium Series:

Whose Holy Land: Tradition, History, and Conflict

Sunday, January 24 following 2pm performance

MODERATOR

• Bridget Kathleen O'Leary, New Rep Associate Artistic Director PANELISTS

Margery Eagan, WGBH

David Bryan Jackson, Performer, Via Dolorosa

Paula Langton, Performer, The Testament of Mary

Jim Petosa, Director, The Testament of Mary / New Rep Artistic Director

Via Dolorosa in Context: Enhancing Inclusive Dialogue

Across Faith Communities

Sunday, January 31 following 2pm performance

MODERATOR

• Dr. Jonathan Garlick, New Rep Board Member PANELISTS

Celene Ibrahim, Andover Newton Theological School

David Bryan Jackson, Performer, Via Dolorosa

Rabbi Moshe Waldoks, Temple Beth Zion - Brookline

Studying Mary: Questions of Faith

Sunday, February 7 following 2pm performance

MODERATOR

• Louise Kennedy, WBUR PANELISTS

Sister Margaret E. Guider, OSF, Boston College

Mary E. Hines, PhD, Emmanuel College

Amy Brown Hughes, PhD, Gordon College

Colm Toibin: Irish Literature for the 21st Century

Thursday, February 18 following 7:30pm performance

MODERATOR

• Kyna Hamill, PhD, Boston University PANELISTS

Ronan Noone, Playwright

Carmel O'Reilly, Director

Megan Sullivan, PhD, Boston University Institute for the Study of Irish Culture

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About VIA DOLOROSA - In 1997, Olivier Award-winning playwright David Hare visited Israel and Palestine to better understand the complex conflicts of the region and to write a play based on his travels. Via Dolorosa is the illuminating result, combining interviews and conversations with artists, politicians, historians, and settlers with the author's own experiences in an extraordinary narrative that examines ideologies and issues of faith from those living in "The Holy Land."

About THE TESTAMENT OF MARY - Years after her son's death, Mary, mother of Jesus, is visited by the Gospel writers seeking the truth. In an honest, insightful, and moving first-person narrative, Mary recounts her son's final days. Based on the novella by author and playwright Colm To?ibi?n, this Tony-nominated play provides a stunning glimpse into the heart and mind of a grieving mother as she's left with the question: was it worth it?

About New Repertory Theatre - New Repertory Theatre is the award-winning, professional theatre company in residence at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown, MA. For over 30 years, New Rep has been a leader of self-produced theatre in greater Boston, producing contemporary and classic dramas, comedies, and musicals in both the 340-seat Charles Mosesian Theater and the 90- seat Black Box Theater. Annually, New Rep serves over 40,000 patrons, including 2,000 season subscribers. In addition to its mainstage productions, New Rep produces Next Voices, a program dedicated to developing new plays with four playwrights through staged readings and one world premiere production. Under its Lifelong Enrichment Arts Programs (LEAP), New Rep also produces its Classic Repertory Company, Page To Stage, Insider Experiences, and Spotlight Symposium Series.

New Rep's Mission - 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.

SYMPOSIUM BIOS:

MARGERY EAGAN is a long-time writer and commentator on current affairs, politics, women's issues, and Catholicism. She co-hosts "Boston Public Radio" with Jim Braude on 89.7 WGBH in Boston. Margery grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts, graduating from Durfee High School. She attended Smith College for a year before transferring to Stanford University, where she majored in American Studies. She began her journalism career as a stringer for the Fall River Herald News in Massachusetts, and freelanced for the New Bedford Standard-Times and The Boston Globe. Her first staff job was at the Burlington Free Press in Vermont; she also was a columnist for the Standard-Times. Margery started at the Boston Herald in 1981 and was named a columnist in 1984; after leaving for a stint at Boston Magazine, she returned to her Herald column until the Globe hired her to be the spirituality columnist for Crux in July 2014. For 14 years, Margery co-hosted a radio show on WTKK-FM. 96.9 with Braude before moving over to WGBH. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, and has three children.

JONATHAN GARLICK's research expertise is in stem cell biology, wound repair, and human tissue engineering. His pioneering work using stem cells to grow human skin and oral tissues has developed new therapeutic approaches for cancer, wound healing, and complications of diabetes. He has established the Center for Integrated Tissue Engineering at Tufts to accelerate the discovery and clinical application of new drugs. A professor and director of the Division of Cancer Biology and Tissue Engineering at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine, Dr. Garlick is also Professor in the Department of Developmental, Molecular and Chemical Biology at Tufts University School of Medicine; the Department of Biomedical Engineering; the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences; and is a 2013 Talloires Scholar in Residence. Dr. Garlick received his DDS and PhD from Stony Brook School of Dental Medicine and his oral pathology training from Long Island Jewish Medical Center. He has authored more than 100 articles and book chapters and served on numerous National Institutes of Health (NIH) review panels. Professor Garlick was awarded Stony Brook School of Dental Medicine's Distinguished Alumnus Award and the President and Chancellor's Award, the State University of New York's highest teaching honor.

MARGARET E. GUIDER is an Associate Professor of Missiology at Boston College. She completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in education at the University of Illinois and taught in the inner city of Chicago. Encouraged to pursue graduate work in theological studies, she completed a master's degree in theology at the Catholic Theological Union, along with additional coursework in Franciscan Studies at the Franciscan Institute of St. Bonaventure University. In 1990, she joined the faculty at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, and in 2008, she became a member of the ecclesiastical faculty of the School of Theology and Ministry. Sr. Guider is the author of Daughters of Rahab: Prostitution and the Church of Liberation in Brazil and editor of Doing What Is Ours to Do: A Clarean Theology of Life. She is past-president of the American Society of Missiology and a member of the Catholic Theological Society of America, the American Academy of Religion, and the Association of Professors of Mission. She has served as a Trustee of the University of St. Francis and Siena College. Sr. Guider is a member of the Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate (Joliet, IL) and served as the Congregation's Vice-President and Councilor for Mission from 2008-2012. She has taught graduate level courses on Mary for many years.

KYNA HAMILL received her PhD in Theatre History from Tufts University. She is currently the Assistant Director of the CAS Core Curriculum and also teaches dramatic literature in Boston University's School of Theatre. She specializes in the iconography of the Commedia dell'arte, theatre and war, and theatre semiotics. She has published articles in Print Quarterly, Theatre Symposium, and The Performance of Violence in Contemporary Ireland. She also edited They Fight: Classical to Contemporary Stage Fight Scenes, a collection of stage combat scenes, with special attention paid to diverse weaponry and scenes for women. Her current research project examines the legacy of the Baroque print artist, Jacques Callot on art, literature, and theatre.

MARY E. HINES is a Professor of Theology at Emmanuel College. Dr. Hines regularly teaches courses in Catholic theology, women and religion, Global Christianity, and church and sacraments. For ten years, she was an appointee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops to the Anglican Roman Catholic Consultation in the United States, one of the bilateral ecumenical consultations initiated after Vatican II. A member of a number of professional societies, Dr. Hines is particularly active in the Catholic Theological Society of America in which she has held office and frequently presents papers. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Woburn Public Library.

AMY BROWN HUGHES is an Assistant Professor of Theology at Gordon College. She received her PhD in historical theology with an emphasis on early Christianity from Wheaton College in 2013. While at Wheaton, she was privileged to work with the Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. She also received an MA in history of Christianity from Wheaton College in 2008 and a BA in theology and historical studies from Oral Roberts University in 2001. She is currently working with Lynn H. Cohick on a book for Baker Academic about women in the first through fifth centuries of the Christian tradition: Christian Women in the Patristic World: Influence, Authority and Legacy and co-authoring a series of essays about early Christian writers with George Kalantzis for the early Christianity section of a volume for Protestant readers of the Christian tradition. She is a member of the American Society for Church History and regularly presents papers at the annual meeting of the North American Patristic Society.

CELENE IBRAHIM is a chaplain, scholar, and educator. Her contributions to increasing religious and interreligious literacy have been featured on diverse forums including The New York Times, BBC Persian, Public Radio International, and the Religion Initiative of the Council on Foreign Relations. Ms. Ibrahim is widely published and holds a joint faculty appointment as Islamic Studies Scholar-in-Residence at Hebrew College and Andover Newton Theological School, where she is the co-director of the Center for Inter-Religious and Communal Leadership Education [CIRCLE]. She holds an MA in Women's and Gender Studies and Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandies, an MDiv. from Harvard Divinity School, and a BA in Near Eastern Studies with highest honors from Princeton University. She is honored to serve as the Muslim Chaplain for Tufts University. Ms. Ibrahim lectures on themes including Muslim feminist theology, theologies of religious pluralism, critical social theory, and the history of Islamic thought. She has been recognized as a Harvard Presidential Scholar and a Fellow in Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, among other honors.

DAVID BRYAN JACKSON first performed Via Dolorosa in Washington, DC in 2000. Since then he has performed it in Florida, Maryland, Virginia, and California. He has previously worked with Pittsburgh Irish Theatre, Classical Theatre, and Washington, DC area theatres such as Shakespeare Theatre Company, Folger Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Studio Theatre, Source Theatre, Scena Theatre, Signature Theatre, Washington Stage Guild, Washington Shakespeare Company, Arena Stage, The Kennedy Center, and Potomac Theatre Project. He has also directed plays at several Washington, DC area theatres, including co-directing Peter Pan with Jim Petosa at the Olney Theatre Center where he served as Literary Manager for several years. On-screen credits include the soon-to-be-released independent films Dinner with the Alchemist and Her Tango, as well as episodes of AMC's Turn: Washington's Spies. His voice can be heard in two Star Trek video games, and he played the title role in the award- winning short film Unloved. He has law degrees from both sides of the Atlantic, and he has also worked at various times as an attorney, editor, lumberjack, carpenter, Lucite embedder, stand-up comic, and troubadour. His Song for the Earth can be heard on Zoe Ravenwood's recent album The Problem Might be Me.

LOUISE KENNEDY is the senior editor for education at WBUR, Boston's NPR news station, overseeing multimedia coverage of education and learning at all stages of life. She joined the station in 2012 as director of community engagement. Before working at WBUR, Louise was a longtime editor and writer at The Boston Globe, most recently as theater critic. She is a native of Dayton, Ohio, and holds a bachelor's degree in history from Yale College. You can follow her on Twitter, @LouiseWBUR.

PAULA LANGTON returns to New Repertory Theatre after performing in Assassins, On the Verge, Amadeus, and Bakersfield Mist. Recent credits include Love's Labour's Lost and Mother Courage (Shakespeare & Company); A Taste of Honey, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, Good, and Monster (Boston Center for American Performance); A Question of Mercy (Potomac Theatre Project); The Glass Menagerie (Olney Theatre Center); Trojan Barbie and Donnie Darko (American Repertory Theater); Walking the Volcano and Daughter of Venus (Boston Playwrights' Theatre); and Romeo and Juliet, Middletown, Twelfth Night, Othello, The Winter's Tale, King Lear, Measure for Measure, Henry V, All's Well That Ends Well, and Richard III (Actors' Shakespeare Project). She has also performed with Boston Theatre Works, Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company, Charles Playhouse, Nora Theatre, Gloucester Stage Company, Coyote Theatre, Hasty Pudding, New York Theatre Workshop, and others. Ms. Langton serves as Head of Acting at Boston University's School of Theatre. She will next appear at New Rep in Blackberry Winter.

RONAN NOONE is a graduate of Boston University's MFA Playwriting Program and is currently an Assistant Professor in the same program. His plays, Scenes from an Adultery, The Lepers of Baile Baiste, The Blowin of Baile Gall, The Gigolo of Baile Breag, Brendan, Little Black Dress, and The Compass Rose, have played in theatres across the United States. His play The Atheist played at the Huntington Theatre Company and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. It was also co- produced by The Culture Project and Ted Mann's Circle in the Square Productions in New York, and received both Drama Desk and Drama League Acting nominations. Other recent international productions have taken place in Edinburgh, London, and the Philippines. His full- length and one-act plays are published by Samuel French, Smith and Kraus, Baker Plays, and Dramatists Play Service. Awards include Jeff Recommendations in Chicago, Ovation Recommendations in Los Angeles, Critics Award in Austin, Texas, American Critics Steinberg New Play Award nomination, three separate Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) Awards for Best New Play, the Boston Theatre Critics Association's Elliot Norton Outstanding Script Award, and a Kennedy Center National Playwriting Award. His essay on theatre, "Being Afraid to Breathe," is published by the Princeton University Library Chronicle LXVIII. Mr. Noone has also developed work for television with Pretty Matches Productions and the reality TV-based production company High Noon Entertainment. His 2014 Live Action Short, The Accident has played the Boston International Film Festival and the Montclair Film Festival. His play The Second Girl, directed by Campbell Scott, had its World Premiere at the Huntington Theatre Company in January 2015. Originally from Ireland, Mr. Noone now resides in Weymouth. RonanNoone.com

BRIDGET KATHLEEN O'LEARY joined New Rep as Artistic and Education Associate in 2008. Most recently, she has directed New Rep's productions of Scenes from an Adultery, Muckrakers, Pattern of Life, Lungs, Fully Committed, Collected Stories, DollHouse, boom, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and Fool for Love. Other directing credits include Othello (Actors' Shakespeare Project); The Flick (Gloucester Stage); Reconsidering Hanna(h) and The Devil's Teacup. (Boston Playwrights' Theatre); The Other Place (The Nora Theatre and Underground Railway Theater); Recent Tragic Events, and Aunt Dan and Lemon (Whistler in the Dark). In 2007, she assisted Artistic Director Wendy C. Goldberg at the National Playwrights' Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and worked as an assistant on new plays by Rebecca Gilman and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. Before moving to Boston, Bridget worked in Washington, DC with the Olney Theatre Center, Theater Alliance, Cherry Red Productions, Charter Theater, Studio Theatre Second Stage, and Phoenix Theatre DC, of which she was a founding member. She is the Chair of the Literary Committee for the National New Play Network and a member of the New England New Play Alliance. Bridget received her MFA in directing at Boston University.

CARMEL O'REILLY has directed numerous productions in the New England area over the past twenty-five years with many theatre companies, including the A.R.T, New Rep, Speakeasy Stage, Gloucester Stage, WHAT, Lyric Stage and others. She is founder and Artistic Director of the Su?ga?n Theatre Company, for which she directed many Elliot Norton award-winning productions. She has directed at several area colleges including Harvard, Emerson, and Boston College, where she was the Monan Visiting Professor in Theatre Arts in 2010. Most recently she directed two new plays by Bernard McMullan for Tir Na Theatre Company: Jimmy Titanic, which has toured to NYC, Philadelphia, Santa Barbara, Dublin, Belfast, and other cities, and the hit Christmas comedy, The Return of the Winemaker.

JIM PETOSA joined New Repertory Theatre as an award-winning theatre artist, educator, and leader in 2012. He has served as Director of the School of Theatre, College of Fine Arts, at Boston University since 2002, and Artistic Director of Maryland's Olney Theatre Center for the Arts and its National Players educational touring company (1994-2012). While at BU, he established the Boston Center for American Performance (BCAP), the professional production extension of the BU School of Theatre, in 2008. Throughout the Northeast, Mr. Petosa has directed for numerous institutions, including Broken Glass, Assassins, On the Verge, The Elephant Man (IRNE Nomination), Amadeus, Three Viewings, The Last Five Years, and Opus at New Rep. In Boston, his work was nominated for two IRNE awards for A Question of Mercy (BCAP). He has served as one of three artistic leaders for the Potomac Theatre Project (PTP/NYC) since 1987. In Maryland, his work earned over 25 Helen Hayes Award nominations as well as the award for outstanding direction of a musical for Jacques Brel is Alive and Well... His production of Look! We Have Come Through! was nominated for the Charles MacArthur Award for outstanding new play, and he earned the Montgomery County Executive's Excellence in the Arts and Humanities Award for Outstanding Artist/Scholar. A member of Actors' Equity Association, Mr. Petosa has served on the executive board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and currently serves on the Board of Directors for StageSource. Originally from New Jersey, he was educated at The Catholic University of America and resides in Quincy.

MEGAN SULLIVAN is the Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning at Boston University. She also teaches courses in Irish Studies. She is the author of one book, Women in Northern Ireland: Cultural Studies and Material Conditions; one collection of interviews, Irish Women and Cinema: 1980- 1990; and many articles and essays in Irish Studies. In March of 2016 her co-edited volume Parental Incarceration: Personal Accounts and Developmental Impact will be published by Routledge Press.

MOSHE WALDOKS is the senior rabbi at Temple Beth Zion (TBZ) in Brookline. He was educated in a Yiddish-speaking yeshiva and holds a doctorate in Jewish intellectual history. He has taught at Wellesley College, Hebrew College, and Brandeis University. One of the hallmarks of his career has been his activities as a bridge-builder across cultures and faiths. Participating in a groundbreaking encounter with Polish Catholicism in 1988 as a guest of Krakow's Cardinal Macharski, he and his colleagues confronted the age-old anti-Semitic teachings of the pre- Vatican II Polish Church. This encounter was especially poignant, as he and his group from the Anti-Defamation League, led by Lenny Zakim, toured Auschwitz with the Cardinal. This trip led to his active, ongoing Jewish-Catholic and Jewish-Christian dialogue in the Boston area. In 1989, Rabbi Waldoks was instrumental in arranging the first meeting of the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama, in a Buddhist monastery in the United States. This encounter led to the historic "Jew in the Lotus" trip to Dharamsala, India in the fall of 1990 and his continued involvement in Jewish-Buddhist Dialogue. In recent years, he has been active in Jewish-Muslim relations in Boston, and has initiated and supported TBZ's affiliation with the Greater Boston Inferfaith Organization. In addition, he is an active member of the Brookline Clergy Association. In 2008, he was chosen by Newsweek magazine as one of the top 25 pulpit Rabbis in the United States. He is also a storyteller and stand-up comedian having co-edited of The Big Book of Jewish Humor.