Skylight Theatre Company Opens the World Premiere of Louisa Hill's LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD'S HOME FOR UNWED MOTHERS

Recipient of the Mark Twain Award for Comic Playwriting from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Louisa Hill's play opens in Los Angeles on April 8, 2017 at the Skylight Theatre Company. The roots of reproductive justice are unearthed in this poetically raw play by Louisa Hill. Knocked up as a teenager, Dee finally meets the baby she gave up for adoption. Only thing is, the baby is now 25, really into death metal, and wants nothing to do with her.

Playwright Louisa Hill received the Mark Twain Award for Comic Playwriting from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, the same year she received her MFA from the University of Iowa's Playwrights' Workshop in 2012, where she was the Iowa Arts Fellow. In February 2016, Hill's play The Lord of the Underworld's Home for Unwed Mothers was awarded Third Place for the Humanitas/Center Theatre Group Playwriting Prize, receiving a staged reading at the Kirk Douglas Theatre directed by Seema Sueko. As the writers' assistant for the A&E procedural Unforgettable, Hill wrote the script for the episode "Breathing Space," which aired in January 2016. The previous year, she wrote the story for the episode "Moving On." Most recently she was the writers' assistant for Jill Soloway's new show I Love Dick. As a resident playwright at Skylight Theatre Company, Hill presented her new play Frances and the Argonauts at Skylight's New Play Festival in August 2015. She developed and presented a staged reading of her play Annette Kellerman Forever! with Brimmer Street Theatre as part of their Blueprint Series in 2013.

"What does choice mean if you've got no other options? To me the play is about considering the heartbreaking consequences of following the rules at the cost of family" - Louisa Hill; Playwright

Tony Abatemarco (Director) is a Broadway director recognized for his work on Lucifer's Child directing Julie Harris in both the Broadway production and film for A & E TV. Regional directing credits include work at Pasadena Playhouse, The Taper, Too, Santa Fe Stages, La MaMa ETC, and Theatre Grévin in Paris. At the Arts Theatre in London's West End, Tony directed Robyn Peterson's Catwalk Confidential. A graduate of The Juilliard Drama Division, as an actor he has won top honors for his lead performances in The Mystery of Irma Vep (Ovation & LA Weekly Awards), Bach at Leipzig (LA Drama Critics' Circle Nominee), La Bete (Ovation Award nominee), Slow Motion (LA Weekly and LA Drama Critics' Circle Award Nominee), and his original Four Fathers (LA Weekly and Dramalogue Awards), as well as for his direction (6 LA Weekly and 18 Dramalogue Awards). Tony won the first Ted Schmitt "Innovation in Small Theatre Award" from Theatre LA and he was the recipient of the first DGA/ SSDC George Stevens Observership. He served as Director of LA Live! at the Natural History Museum and was Artistic Director of Jacques D'Amboise' National Dance Institute at The Mark Taper Forum, for Center Theatre Group. Tony is an award-winning playwright, and his latest short story, Schwinn, was recently published in Great Britain's Boneshaker Magazine.

"The tone of Louisa's writing finds a way of pinning gritty emotion to the underside of playfulness. This play has great metaphorical and thematic depth, and yet it's so natural and conversationally seamless" - Gary Grossman; Producing Artistic Director

Skylight Theatre Company discovers, develops and produces new, exhilarating works that expand mainstream theatre while nurturing and educating the people who create them. Church & State by Jason Odell Williams, produced and developed last season at Skylight will make its Off-Broadway debut on March 27th. A recipient of the prestigious Steinberg National Theatre Critics Citation (Dontrell, Who Kissed The Sea - Nathan Alan Davis), Skylight's resident PlayLAb writers have been recognized with productions nationwide, a national 2014 USA Ford Fellowship in Theater and Performance (Sigrid Gilmer), and locally as a winner in the 2015 Humanitas/CTG Playwriting Prize (Louisa Hill). Skylight won 4 Ovation Awards in 2014 for The Wrong Man and Pray To Ball (the most of any intimate theatre in LA). LA Weekly included the Skylight's productions of Years To The Day, Open House and Sexsting on their Top Ten list of plays for 2013. Skylight's first year as a company dedicated to developing new plays was 2011; their production of Hermetically Sealed made the LA Times annual list of Top Ten Plays, and Mad Women moved from Los Angeles to La MaMa in New York. Since then, plays developed by Skylight have been performed in Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., Oregon, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and internationally in Scotland and France. For more information, script submission policy and production history go to http://skylighttheatrecompany.org

OUR CAST: Corryn Cummins (as Dee), Michaela Slezak (as Corie), AdrIan Gonzalez (Male Chorus), Amy Harmon (Female Chorus), Marylin Winkle (Cellist)

OUR PRODUCTION TEAM: Cindy Lin (Scenic Design), Jeff McLaughlin (Lighting Design), Christopher Moscatiello (Sound Design), and Sarah Figoten Costume Design)

Lord of the Underworld's Home for Unwed Mothers opens at 8:30pm on Saturday, April 8th and runs at 8:30pm Fridays and Saturdays, and 3:00pm on Sundays through May 14, 2017. Skylight Theatre is located at 1816 1/2 N. Vermont Ave, LA, 90027. Tickets are $15 - $39. Reservations: 213-761-7061 or online at http://SkylightTix.com

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