Los Altos Stage Company to Present DEAD MAN'S CELL PHONE

Los Altos Stage Company opens its 20th Anniversary Season with a surrealistic comedy that confronts our assumptions about morality, redemption, and the need to connect in a technologically obsessed world. Dead Man's Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl opens on September 3rd and runs through September 27th at the Bus Barn Theater in Los Altos.

Winner of the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play, this work explores the paradox of modern technology's ability to both unite and isolate people in the digital age. An incessantly ringing cell phone in a quiet café. A stranger at the next table who has had enough. A dead man with a lot of loose ends. So begins Dead Man's Cell Phone, the wildly imaginative comedy by playwright Sarah Ruhl, recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant and Pulitzer Prize finalist for her play The Clean House.

Sarah Ruhl's plays have been produced at theaters around the country, including Lincoln Center Theater, the Goodman Theatre, Arena Stage, South Coast Repertory, Yale Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, among others, as well as internationally. She is the recipient of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (The Clean House, 2004), the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award, and the Whiting Writers' Award. The Clean House was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005.

The Los Altos Stage Company's production is directed by Jeffrey Lo, Company Manager/Casting Associate at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, who most recently directed Sarah Ruhl's earlier work, Eurydice, at Palo Alto Players. This production features a talented ensemble of Bus Barn Theater veterans, as well as new faces, including: Marjorie Hazeltine, David Scott, Judith Siebenthal, Scott Solomon, Kristin Walter and Adrienne Walters.

Performances are Wednesday through Saturday evenings at 8 pm and Sunday matinees at 3 pm. Ticket prices range from $18 (student) to $36. Opening Night tickets, including a reception with the artists, are also $36. Tickets are available on-line at www.losaltosstage.org or by calling the Box Office at (650) 941-0551.

Los Altos Stage Company is a quintessential American neighborhood playhouse, serving Los Altos and the greater South Bay area, and paying tribute to the full canon of American musicals, comedies, and dramas. This 20-year-old theater company strives to bring together a diversity of theater enthusiasts, practitioners, and supporters to create, explore and celebrate the rich tapestry of American culture and experience through live theater. Los Altos Stage Company produces five to six shows annually at its intimate 99-seat theater located on the Los Altos Civic Center campus.