Long Wharf Theatre's SYLVIA Closes 3/14

Beloved playwright A.R. Gurney, a Connecticut resident and author of the plays The Cocktail Hour, The Dining Room and Love Letters, returns to Long Wharf Theatre with his hit comedy Sylvia.

The play runs through March 14 on the Mainstage. 

Sylvia is directed by Long Wharf Theatre Artistic Director Eric Ting and stars Jacob Ming-Trent, John Procaccino, Erica Sullivan, and Karen Ziemba.

First produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club in 1995, with Sarah Jessica Parker in the title role, Sylvia has been described by the New York Daily News as "one of the most involving, beautiful, funny, touching and profound plays ever seen." "This is one of the great comedies by one of the great playwrights of the last 20 or 30 years," said Long Wharf Theatre Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein. "Gurney combines tremendous wit with intelligence, elegance of language and nonstop theatrical invention."

Sylvia (Sullivan) would do anything for Greg (Procaccino). A constant companion, she loves him unconditionally and hangs on his every word. Greg would do anything for Sylvia, including stay home from work to spend time with her. Greg's wife Kate (Ziemba), on the other hand, isn't thrilled that Sylvia's made herself so at home - in truth there's a good bit of jealousy creeping in. Gurney charms with his comedy about married life, the things that bind us, and the dogs that get in the way.

The creative team is Frank J. Alberino (sets), Valerie Webster (costumes), Ben Stanton (lights), Jill BC DuBoff (sound), Charles M. Turner III (stage manager), Erin Treat (dramaturg).

For more information about the show or to purchase tickets, visit www.longwharf.org or call 203-787-4282.

Tickets: $30-$65
Performance Schedule: Tuesdays at 7 p.m., Wednesdays, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Box office phone number: 203-787-4282
Website: www.longwharf.org.

CREATIVE TEAM
Jacob Ming-Trent

Tom/Phyllis/Leslie

Broadway: Shrek the Musical, (Original Cast; Shrek's papa and u/s Shrek) Off Broadway: George Bernard Shaw's Widower's Houses, Lickcheese. London's Barbican Theater: Continental Divide (Time magazine's Theatre Event of the Year). National tours: 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (first national tour) and Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona. Jacob has also worked with the Lincoln center, New York Public Theater, Berkeley Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, A.C.T, Epic Theater Ensemble, The York, The Acting Company, Living Image Arts, Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Pittsburgh Musical Theatre, and others. TV: "Law & Order" and several commercials. Jacob is a proud teaching artist, teaching and working in the New York public schools over the past three years. Jacob is a graduate of the American Conservatory Theater's M.F.A Program, and the New York Public Theater's Shakespeare Lab. You can see him this summer in On The Levee produced by Lincoln Center.
John Procaccino

Greg

Mr. Procaccino has appeared on Broadway playing leading roles in An American Daughter; A Thousand Clowns; and Conversations With My Father, starring Judd Hirsch; and understudied Alan Alda in Art. Mr. Procaccino co-starred with Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson in the premiere of Anne Meara's play Down the Garden Paths at Long Wharf Theatre. Also at Long Wharf Theatre, We Won't Pay, We Won't Pay and James Tyrone in A Moon for the Misbegotten. Other theatre includes Good Boys and True and Art (Steppenwolf Theatre); All the King's Men, Prayer for My Enemy, Arms and the Man, The Singing Forest and Nora (Seattle's Intiman Theatre). As a company member at Seattle Repertory Theatre, Mr. Procaccino's productions include Two Gentlemen of Verona, Tartuffe, Caucasian Chalk Circle, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and The Beauty Queen of Leenane. At Seattle's ACT Theatre, he performed in A Moon for the Misbegotten, The Night of the Iguana, Grand Magic, Dinner With Friends, Side Man, The Crucible and his solo performance in Wallace Shawn's The Fever. He has also appeared at Center Stage and the Old Globe Theatre. Film and television credits include The Runner Stumbles, Three Fugitives, Magic in the Water, Born to be Wild, "Law & Order," "NYPD Blue," "Northern Exposure" and the Stephen King mini-series "Rose Red." Mr. Procaccino did the play Art with Judd Hirsch last summer, quite possibly one of the best times he's ever had in the theatre.

Erica Sullivan

Sylvia

Ms. Sullivan most recently understudied Mrs. Givings in Sarah Ruhl's, In The Next Room (Lincoln Center Theatre). Other credits include A Woman Of No Importance and Lulu (Yale Rep), Trouble Tales, Hungry and The Way To Wealth (Williamstown Theatre Festival), The Whale Play (New Theatre House), and Christopher Bayes' Commedia dell'Arte show Even Maybe Tammy (The Flea Theatre); Film and television credits include There Will Be Blood, A Coat of Snow, For the People, "Strong Medicine," "10-8," and "Crossing Jordan." Erica is a recent graduate of the Yale School of Drama where she was the recipient of the Jerome L. Greene Foundation Scholarship and the Herschel Williams Acting Award.
Karen Ziemba

Kate

Contact (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Awards) Curtains (Outer Critics Circle Award, Tony and Drama Desk nominations), And The World Goes ‘Round (Drama Desk Award), Never Gonna Dance (Outer Critics Circle Award), Steel Pier, Chicago, I Do! I Do!, Crazy For You, 42ND Street, A Chorus Line; NYC Opera's 110 In The Shade, The Most Happy Fella; City Center Encores' Allegro, Bye Bye Birdie, The Pajama Game, Ziegfeld Follies of 1936; Six Degrees of Separation (The Old Globe, San Diego), Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare Theatre Company,D.C./Hartford Stage); The Three Penny Opera (Williamstown Theatre Festival,MA.); All three "Law and Order" series, "Scrubs," The Producers movie, PBS' "My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies","Gershwin at 100", "Stephen Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall", and for The Kennedy Center Honors in tributes to recipients Julie Harris and Angela Lansbury.

A.R. Gurney

Playwright

A. R. Gurney has been writing plays for many years. Among them are: Scenes from American life, The Dining Room, The Cocktail Hour, Love Letters, Sylvia, , Ancestral Voices, Big Bill, Mrs. Farnsworth, and Indian Blood. He has written three published novels, several television scripts, and the librettos for two operas. Gurney taught literature at M.I.T. for twenty-five years before devoting himself full time to the theatre. He is a member of the Theatre Hall of Fame and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has honorary degrees from Williams College and Buffalo State University. His work and career is described in more detail at his website: argurney.com.

Eric Ting

Director

Mr. Ting is in his sixth season at Long Wharf Theatre, his third as Associate Artistic Director. Recent directing credits include The Old Man and the Sea (a production he co-adapted from Hemingway's book), Bad Dates, The Bluest Eye (Hartford Stage and Long Wharf) and Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy (American Repertory Theatre), The Little Prince (Round House Theatre), and Underneath The Lintel (Long Wharf, 05/06 Connecticut Critics Circle awards for Best Director and Best Production of a Play). Upcoming: his adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea (Long Wharf Theatre); and Shipwrecked! An Entertainment... (Shakespeare Santa Cruz). Ting's work has been presented internationally, including France, Canada, Romania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Bali. Awards and grants include a 2004-2006 TCG New Generations Future Leaders fellowship and a Jerome & Roslyn Milstein Meyer Career Development Prize.

Frank J. Alberino

Scenic Designer

Mr. Alberino, Long Wharf Theatre's assistant properties manager, is pleased to be in his thirteenth season at the theatre. A Connecticut native, Frank received his BFA from Purchase College in New York and works locally as a scenic designer. His Long Wharf design credits include Lil's 90th, Take The Stage (LWT Gala 2009), Bad Dates, Sister's Christmas Catechism, Late Night Catechism, Opening Doors (LWT Gala 2008), Black Nativity, Illumination (LWT Gala 2007), A New War, My Red Hand - My Black Hand, Gary Grinkle's Battles with Wrinkles and Other Troubles in Mudgeville, Race, and the upcoming production of Sylvia. Frank works closely with Julian Schlusberg and the students at The Foote School in New Haven. Some of his Foote productions include A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Secret Garden, Pippin, Pride and Prejudice, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Steel Magnolias, Chess, Barnum and Big River. Frank is the recipient of Outstanding Production in CT & Excellence in Design (CT Drama Association) for his productions of On the Verge or the Geography of Yearning and Summer and Smoke.

Valerie M. Webster

Costume Designer

Ms. Webster's work has been seen at many regional theaters, in film, on television. Her design credits include La Finta Pazza; Giasone (Yale Baroque Opera Project) Our Town (Yale Dramat); Into the Woods; A Midsummer Night's Dream; Caucasian Chalk Circle; Godspell; Willie Wonka (ACES ECA) Black Nativity (Long Wharf Theatre); My Way, Fully Committed (Arkansas Repertory Theatre); Romeo and Juliet, Histoire du Soldat (Arkansas Symphony Orchestra); Arkansas Alive, Heroes and Villains (ART Arts in Education Tour); and the feature Film Solas 9. Valerie makes her home in West Haven, Connecticut with her husband, where she is the full time Costume Shop Manager at Long Wharf Theatre, and elective teacher at ACES ECA.
Ben Stanton

Lighting Designer

New York: Coraline (MCC/True Love Productions), Why Torture Is Wrong And The People Who Love Them (The Public Theater), Gingerbread House (StageFARM), Humor Abuse (Manhattan Theater Club), Light Raise the Roof, Play Yourself, Bexley OH! (New York Theater Workshop), Three Changes, A Feminine Ending, Essential Self-Defense (Playwrights Horizons), The Dear Boy, The Triple Happiness (Second Stage), Astroland (The Kitchen), Sandra Bernhard: Everything Bad & Beautiful (Daryl Roth Theater), Walmartopia, Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell (Minetta Lane Theater), Bad Jazz (Play Company), Orange Flower Water, Stone Cold Dead Serious (Edge Theater), Die Mommie Die (New World Stages), Hunting and Gathering (Primary Stages), Jollyship the Wizbang (Arsnova), The Thugs (Soho Rep), Finer Noble Gases, American Sligo, Rag and Bone (Rattlestick Theater), Lower Ninth (Flea Theater). Regional: La Jolla Playhouse, The Old Globe, Dallas Theater Center, South Coast Rep, Huntington Theater, Philadelphia Theatre Co., The McCarter Theater, Intiman Theater, Paper Mill Playhouse, Westport Country Playhouse, Hartford Stage, Actors Theater of Louisville, Cincinnati Playhouse, St. Louis Rep. Chautauqua Theater Co, Bay Street Theater, New York Stage and Film, Williamstown Theater Festival.
Jill BC Du Boff

Sound Designer

Ms. Du Boff's Long Wharf credits include Lil's 90th and Two Days. Her Broadway credits include The Constant Wife, The Good Body, Bill Maher: Victory?, Three Days of Rain (associate), Inherit The Wind (associate) and Wit (National Tour). She has designed off-Broadway at the Atlantic, Lincoln Center, MTC, MCC, Playwrights Horizons, Public, Vineyard, Second Stage, NYTW, WP, Flea, Cherry Lane, Signature, Clubbed Thumb, Culture Project, Actor's Playhouse, New Group, Promenade, and Adobe. Her Regional credits include Minneapolis Children's Theatre, Bay Street, La Jolla Playhouse, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Westport Country Playhouse, Berkeley Rep, Portland Stage, The Alley, Kennedy Center, NYS&F, South Coast Rep, Humana, Williamstown, Berkshire Theatre and ATF. Her work can be heard on television, radio and film. She has been nominated for two Drama Desk awards, two Hewes Award, and is a recipient of the Ruth Morley Design Award. She is on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College.

Charles M. Turner III

Stage Manager

Long Wharf Theatre: The Old Man and the Sea, The Bluest Eye, The Santaland Diaries, The Price, Underneath The Lintel and Aphrodisiac. Broadway: Golda's Balcony (Helen Hayes) and Metamorphoses (Circle in the Square). Off-Broadway: Second Stage, Playwrights Horizons, Edge Theater Company, Actors Playhouse, New World Stages, Manhattan Ensemble Theater, Soho Playhouse, Cherry Lane Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club and New York Theatre Workshop. Regional: Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Paper Mill Playhouse, A.C.T., New York Stage & Film, Wadsworth Theatre, Hartford Stage, City Theatre and Actors Theatre of Louisville. Additional: PS 122, 52nd Street Project, Clubbed Thumb, Summer Play Festival, Roundabout Playreading Series, Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, Lucille Lortel Awards, Ravinia Festival, New York Philharmonic, Juilliard School and founding member of Intelligent Beasts.
Erin Treat

Dramaturg

Ms. Treat is the Artistic Resident for the 2009-2010 season at Long Wharf Theatre. She has a BFA in Dramaturgy and a BA in English Literature from the University of Arizona. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Dramaturgy from SUNY Stony Brook. She has provided dramaturgical support for LWT's productions of Have You Seen Us? and Lil's 90th. Her regional theatre credits include work for Arizona Theatre Company, Arizona Opera, Beowulf Alley Theatre, and the Arizona Repertory Theatre.