Rachel Chavkin Replaces Kate Whoriskey as Director of Yale Rep's FAIRYTALE LIVES OF RUSSIAN GIRLS, Begin. Jan. 31, 2014

Yale Repertory Theatre (James Bundy, Artistic Director; Victoria Nolan, Managing Director) has announced that two-time OBIE Award winner Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812) will direct THE FAIRYTALE LIVES OF RUSSIAN GIRLS by 2012 Whiting Writers' Award winner Meg Miroshnik, January 31-February 22, 2014.

Previously announced director Kate Whoriskey has withdrawn from the production due to a scheduling conflict.

Once upon a time-in 2005-a twenty-year-old girl named Annie returned to her native Russia to brush up on the language and lose her American accent. Underneath a glamorous Post-Soviet Moscow studded with dangerously high heels, designer bags, and luxe fur coats, she discovers an enchanted motherland teeming with evil stepmothers, wicked witches, and ravenous bears. Annie must learn how to become the heroine of a story more mysterious and treacherous than any childhood fairytale: her own.

Meg Miroshnik (PLAYWRIGHT) Plays include The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls (Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist, 2012; Alliance/Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Award, 2011-12), The Droll {A Stage-Play about the END of Theatre}, The Tall Girls (ALLIANCE THEATRE, directed by Susan V. Booth, March 2014), and an adaptation of the libretto for Shostakovich's Moscow, Cheryomushki. Her work has been developed or produced by La Jolla Playhouse, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, Center Theatre Group, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, South Coast Repertory, the Sallie B. Goodman Fellowship at the McCarter Theatre Center, ALLIANCE THEATRE, The Kennedy Center, Lark New Play Development Center, Chicago Opera Theater, the Moscow Playwright and Director Center, Washington Ensemble Theatre, Yale Cabaret, Perishable Theatre, WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory, One Coast Collaboration, and published in Best American Short Plays, 2008-2009 (Applause, 2010). She holds commissions from South Coast Rep, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and Yale Rep. Originally from Minneapolis, she currently lives in Los Angeles, where she is a member of the Playwrights Union. A graduate of Yale School of Drama, she is a recipient of the 2012 Whiting Writers' Award.

Rachel Chavkin (DIRECTOR) is a two-time OBIE Award winning and Drama Desk nominated director, and founding Artistic Director of the Brooklyn-based ensemble The TEAM (www.theteamplays.org). Her directing credits include Dave Malloy's electro-pop opera Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (Ars Nova, world premiere; Kazino, commercial transfer); The TEAM's Mission Drift (co-produced by PS 122, Lisbon's Culturgest, and London's Almeida Theatre), with music by Heather Christian, most recently seen at London's National Theatre; Three Pianos by Rick Burkhardt, Alec Duffy, and Dave Malloy (New York Theatre Workshop, American Repertory Theater, Incubator Arts Project); and the world premiere of Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge (Act II) at HERE Arts Center. Rachel is a NYTW Usual Suspect, an Artistic Associate at Classic Stage Company, an Artistic Associate at London's Gate Theatre, an alumnus of Soho Rep's Writer/Director Lab, the Drama League Directors Project, the Women's Project Director's Lab, and a New Georges Affiliate Artist. She is a graduate of New York University (BFA) and Columbia University (MFA).

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Photo by Linda Lenzi