Southern storytelling at its best! Writer/performer John Posey (How to Get Away with Murder, Teen Wolf) returns to L.A. with an all-new revival of his critically acclaimed comedy about a former small-town football star who attempts to live vicariously through his son. Father, Son & Holy Coach, presented by Rainy Night Films in association with Tyler Posey and directed by Terri Hanauer, opens as a guest production at the Odyssey Theatre on February 13. (Scroll all the way down for links to high resolution photos.)
Welcome to Tupelo County, Georgia, where even the local Easter egg hunt takes on legendary, Super Bowl proportions. In Father, Son & Holy Coach, Friday night football is the motif that illuminates a father/son journey gone hilariously off the rails. Over the course of 85 minutes, Posey, who confesses he was shaped by a complex and conflicted relationship with his own father, seamlessly portrays over two dozen different characters - the entire town of Tupelo.
"It's a very funny, but also poignant, study of the fragile psyche of an aggressively overprotective father," explains Posey. "This man's main reason for living is to prevent his child from experiencing what he perceives to be life's failures. Finally, after years of trying to live up to his father's expectations, the son must go his own way."
Posey debuted Father, Son & Holy Coach to rave reviews in1993 ("Wonderful... much humor drawn from real people" - Daily Variety; "A funny and absorbing chronicle of a fanatical father's attempt to rear a gridiron superstar" -Los Angeles Times) and has since toured it all around the country. The screen adaptation has recently been set up at Salt Entertainment Group.
Best known as Scott McCall on the MTV series Teen Wolf, producer
Tyler Posey is John's real-life son.
"This is a father/son story, and this production is a father/son endeavor," John says.
A graduate of the University of Florida, John grew up in Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma. He first came to the attention of network casting executives who discovered him on stage with the Atlanta-based comedy group, "Comedia," a group Posey co-founded in the '80s, and brought him to Los Angeles. Since then, John has compiled a long list of credits that includes recurring roles on How to Get Away with Murder and Teen Wolf and guest starring appearances on Criminal Minds, 24, Boston Legal, NCIS, Scorpion, ER, Seinfeld, Manhunter, From the Earth to the Moon and Newsradio among others. Favorite theater roles include Where the Great Ones Run for Rogue Machine. An established writer, Posey is currently collaborating with Academy Award-winning writer Tom Schulman (Dead Poet's Society) on a screenplay about a prep school lacrosse team and their "not-so-prep school" coach. He has sold original feature scripts to Disney, including Eddie The Eagle, The Accidental Olympian about the wildly inept British ski-jumper who found fame in the 1988 winter Olympic games, and to Sony. He wrote, produced and starred in Legendary, a coming-of-age drama with
Patricia Clarkson and
Danny Glover that was released in 2010. His original script, Gorgeous George, has been set up at WWE Film Studios. Posey wrote for the TV series Doc from 2001-2004 and created the syndicated radio series A Lighter Look at Sports for CNN radio.
Terri Hanauer most recently directed the critically acclaimed world premiere of Peter Lefcourt's Café Society at the Odyssey. Other directing credits include La Ronde de Lunch in an "Ovation Recommended" production for the Katselas Theatre Company (StageSceneLA Award for Best Direction); the world premieres of The Way You Look Tonight, Mutually Assured Destruction and The Assassination of Leon Trotsky: A Comedy, all at the Odyssey Theatre; Mitch Hara's Mutant Olive at the Lounge Theatre,
Beverly Hills Playhouse, NY Solo Festival and Whitefire Theatre Solo Festival ("Best Solo Show" award);
Donald Margulies' Collected Stories, also at the Odyssey, which was invited to the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival; The Trip Back Down by
John Bishop at the Whitefire (BroadwayWorld nomination for Best Director); and Thaao Penghlis' touring solo show, Places. She directed the feature film adaptation of Peter Lefcourt's stage play, Sweet Talk, currently available on Video on Demand and iTunes. Her short film, A Day in the Life, was screened at numerous festivals, and Recycling Flo was chosen by AFI to represent it at the Cannes Film Festival International Short Film Corner, was an official selection in over 40 film festivals, and won two Best Short Film/Jury Prizes. Terri also co-directed 13 half-hour episodes of Zane's Sex Chronicles for HBO/Afterdark.
Set design for Father, Son & Holy Coach is by Pete Hickok, lighting design is by
Donny Jackson, sound design is by Dino Herrmann, projection design is by Yee Eun Nam and the production stage manager is Marissa Drammissi. Victoria Watson, Theatre Planners is associate producer and Racquel Lehrman, Theatre Planners produces.
Father, Son & Holy Coach opens for press on Feb. 13 and continues through March 20. Performances take place Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. There will be two preview performances, on Thursday, Feb. 11 and Friday, Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. All tickets are $25, except previews which are $15. The Odyssey Theatre is located at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, 90025. For reservations and information, call (323) 960-7724 or go to
www.plays411.com/holycoach.
