MTC's MISS BENNET: CHRISTMAS AT PEMBLERLEY Announces Extension

Marin Theatre Company will deck the halls-a little longer this holiday season by announcing an extension of Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley through Friday, December 23.

by Playwright in Residence Lauren Gunderson, and MTC's former Director of New Play Development Margot Melcon. This light-hearted continuance of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice picks up two years after the end of Austen's tale, with the focus this time on middle sister Mary Bennet, now a talented and confident young woman who comes into her own with curiosity and wit while visiting the Darcy household at Pemberley for the winter holiday.

Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley delivers delightful laughs and good cheer with classic characters returning to life in Gunderson and Melcon's good spirited holiday production. Having always lived with her head in a good book, Mary Bennet's never felt more like the odd sister out than when she chooses to spend the Christmas holiday with her prettier and wittier sisters, Jane and Elizabeth, both recently married. When the shy, bookworm Arthur de Bourgh turns up unexpectedly, Mary finds a kindred spirit, but since Arthur is a single man in possession of a good fortune, she's hardly his only suitor. Now Mary must learn to be the heroine of her own story.

Meredith McDonough to Direct

Marin Theatre Company is ecstatic to have Meredith McDonough back in the director's chair. While Meredith has focused primarily on the development and production of new plays and musicals across the country, she is currently in her fourth season as the associate artistic director at Actors Theatre of Louisville, where she has directed The Last Five Years, The Whipping Man and Noises Off, as well as brownsville song (b side for trey) and The Delling Shore in the Humana Festival. She previously spent 4 years as the Director of New Works at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, where she directed and developed the new plays and musicals of Rajiv Joseph, Kim Rosenstock, Laura Schellhardt, Lauren Gunderson, and Groovelily, amongst others. Her production of Opus won the Bay Area Theatre Critics Award, and she also directed the world premiere of Anna Ziegler's Another Way Home and Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge at the Magic Theatre. In NYC her work has been seen at Ars Nova, Keen Company, and New Georges, and she has developed work with Playwrights Horizons, Roundabout, LAByrinth, and the National Alliance for Musical Theatre (where she was the New Works Director for two seasons). Regional credits include: Williamstown, Steppenwolf, Dallas Theatre Center, Roundhouse, Delaware Theatre Company (Associate Artist for two years), Marin Theatre Company and Actors Express, and she has developed work for South Coast Rep., The Playwrights Center, Orchard Project (Associate Artistic Director for two summers), PlayPenn and Bay Area Playwrights. Meredith graduated from Northwestern University with a MFA from the University of California San Diego.

Treat Yourself this Holiday Season with Help from UrbanSitter at MTC

MTC is pleased to continue to partner with UrbanSitter, a website and app that helps busy parents find trusted babysitters and nannies, to enable the numerous young families in the Bay Area to attend live theater more easily. Make it a holiday matinee with UrbanSitter who will provide babysitters for MTC's Sitter Saturday event for Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley on Saturday, December 17, at 2:00 pm. Read David Templeton's feature about this partnership in the North Bay Stage and Screen here.

More about Playwright in Residence Lauren Gunderson

Lauren Gunderson is one of the most produced playwrights in America, the winner of the Lanford Wilson Award and the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award, a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and John Gassner Award for Playwriting, and a recipient of the Mellon Foundation's 3-Year Residency with Marin Theatre Co. She studied Southern Literature and Drama at Emory University, and Dramatic Writing at NYU's Tisch School where she was a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. Her work has been commissioned, produced and developed at companies across the US including South Cost Rep (Emilie, Silent Sky), The Kennedy Center (The Amazing Adventures of Dr. Wonderful And Her Dog!), The O'Neill, The Denver Center, Berkeley Rep, Shotgun Players, TheatreWorks, Crowded Fire, San Francisco Playhouse, Marin Theatre, Synchronicity, Olney Theatre, Geva and more. Her work is published at Playscripts (I and You, Exit, Pursued By A Bear, and Toil And Trouble), Dramatists (Silent Sky, Bauer) and Samuel French (Emilie). She is a Playwright in Residence at The Playwrights Foundation, and a proud Dramatists Guild member. She is from Atlanta, GA and lives in San Francisco.

More about Playwright Margot Melcon

Margot Melcon is a Bay Area native, currently working as the Zellerbach Foundation's new Program Executive for Promoting Culture. Marin Theatre is delighted to have her back to produce her co-production with Lauren Gunderson, as she spent seven years at MTC as Director of New Play Development, where she dramaturged main stage productions - including six world premieres - and administered the company's two annual new play prizes. She produced the New Play Reading Series and managed Marin Theatre Company's commissioning program, developing new plays from Steve Yockey, Carson Kreitzer, Amelia Roper, Thomas Bradshaw and Martyna Majok. Margot has also worked with The American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and has been an active participant in developing new plays locally with the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Crowded Fire Theater, Shotgun Players and Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor; and nationally with the Kennedy Center, the New Harmony Project, and The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. She has served on peer review panels and selection committees for arts organizations across the country. Margot has served as a fellow at the National Critics Institute at the O'Neill Playwrights Festival, and freelance writer for American Theatre Magazine. Margot is a graduate of California State University, Chico.