Magic Theatre presents the world premiere of Theresa Rebeck's What We're Up Against February 2nd through March 6, 2011. Ms. Rebeck is one of America's master playwrights and returns to Magic Theatre with What We're Up Against, her laugh-out-loud comedy about men, women, and survival in the workplace. The cast includes Rod Knapp, James Wagner, Pamela Gaye Walker and Sarah Nealis. Magic Artistic Director, Loretta Greco will direct play.
"Working with
Theresa Rebeck is a joy", says Greco. "Theresa never stops trying to get to the bottom of things that truly matter. She's a wonderful combination of strength, passion, and rage -- and she's funny... wickedly and unabashedly funny -- so it goes without saying that she is a perfect conjurer of theater that pulses with life. We are thrilled to have her back home at Magic and look forward to celebrating her new work What We're Up Against following our rich collaboration on Mauritius during my first season."
Magic's collaboration with
Theresa Rebeck on her new play began after the successful 2009 run of Mauritius. Rebeck offered to hold an evening of readings of her short work to benefit the theater. During the reading of an eight-page play produced by
Naked Angels in New York in 1992, the audience laughed themselves out of their seats. Everyone, staff and audience alike, believed they were hearing a finished work from Theresa's past, but they were wrong. The day she returned home, she began to think about a full-length play with Magic's audience and actors in mind. That play is What We're Up Against.
What We're Up Against is a National New Play Network World Premiere. The play has also been awarded this year's Rella Lossy Playwright's Award.
BIOGRAPHIES
Theresa Rebeck-Playwright. The plays of master playwright
Theresa Rebeck are produced widely throughout the United States and abroad. In 2010 she won the 2010 PEN/
Laura Pels Foundation Award for an American Playwright in Mid-Career and was named Associate Artist at
Roundabout Theatre Company. Past New York productions of her work include Mauritius at the Biltmore Theatre in a
Manhattan Theater Club Production; The Scene, The Water's Edge, Loose Knit, The Family of Mann and Spike Heels at
Second Stage; Bad Dates, The Butterfly Collection and Our House at
Playwrights Horizons; and View of the Dome at New York Theatre Workshop. Omnium Gatherum (co-written, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2003) was featured at the Humana Festival, and had a commercial run at the Variety Arts Theatre. The Understudy premiered at the 2008
Williamstown Theatre Festival and ran in New York at the
Laura Pels Theater in a
Roundabout Theatre Company production in the 2009 - 2010 season. The Novelist will open at the
Mark Taper Forum next fall.
Magic Theatre introduced
Theresa Rebeck's work to its audiences in 2009 with a sellout production of Mauritius. She returns in January to rehearse the play she developed with Magic in mind, What We're Up Against, which begins previews February 2nd, 2011 and runs through March 6. Magic shares the World Premiere of What We're Up Against with Victory Gardens in Chicago and The Alley in Houston in 2012.
Rebeck has published two novels, Three Girls and Their Brother and Twelve Rooms With A View. She is a prolific writer of work for television series, such as NYPD Blue and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. She holds an MFA in playwriting and a PHD in Victorian melodrama from Brandeis.
Loretta Greco - Director. The sixth Artistic Director in Magic's forty-four-year history,
Loretta Greco assumed artistic leadership in April 2008. What We're Up Against the sixth Magic play she has directed and follows the acclaimed west coast premiere of
Theresa Rebeck's Mauritius and world premiere of Luis Alfaro's Oedipus El Rey. Since her arrival, Ms. Greco has produced the work of many of the nation's important emerging and mid-career playwrights and directors, including
Tripp Cullman,
John Kolvenbach,
Tarell Alvin McCraney,
Octavio Solis,
Lydia Stryk,
Liz Duffy Adams and
Lloyd Suh. Her Bay Area credits also include the critically acclaimed revival of
David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow and the west coast premiere of
David Harrower's Blackbird for ACT. Ms Greco's selected New York premieres include: Tracey
Scott Wilson's The Story (
Public Theater /Kesselring Prize/AUDELCO Nom); the Obie Award Winning Lackawanna Blues by
Ruben Santiago Hudson (
Public Theater); Katherine Walat's Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen (
Women's Project); Two Sisters and a Piano by Pulitzer Prize Winner,
Nilo Cruz (
Public Theater/Kesselring Prize);
Emily Mann's Meshugah (
Naked Angels);
Laura Cahill's Mercy (Vineyard);
Karen Hartman's Gum (
Women's Project); A Park in our House by
Nilo Cruz (New York Theatre Workshop); and Toni Press Coffman's Touch (
Women's Project). Ms Greco directed the national tour of
Emily Mann's Having Our Say as well as the play's international premiere at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa. Regional credits include: Romeo and Juliet and Stop Kiss (Oregon Shakespeare Festival) as well as productions at
South Coast Repertory Theatre,
LaJolla Playhouse, McCarter, Long Wharf, Intiman,
Williamstown Theater Festival,
Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Repertory Theatre of St Louis, Coconut Grove Playhouse, Playmakers Repertory Company, and the
Cleveland Play House. As a Producer, Ms. Greco developed and produced the work of a variety of distinguished contemporary writers including
Athol Fugard,
Joyce Carol Oates,
Emily Mann,
Nilo Cruz,
Lynn Nottage, Neena Beeber,
Diane Paulus,
Rinne Groff, and
Lisa D'Amour. Ms. Greco received her MFA from Catholic University and is the recipient of two Drama League Fellowships and a Princess Grace Award.
The National New Play Network is an alliance of leading nonprofit theaters that champion the development, production and continued life of new plays. Since its founding in 1998, NNPN has commissioned over a dozen playwrights, provided seven MFA graduates with paid residencies, and supported nearly 50 productions nationwide through its innovative Continued Life of New Plays Fund, which creates "rolling world premieres" of new plays. Through these activities and others, NNPN has granted nearly a half million dollars to theaters and artists in the past ten years. All told, hundreds of artists have gained employment through these efforts in the 24 regions of the country where NNPN member theaters are located.
The Rella Lossy Playwright Award was established with an endowment from Dr. Frank Lossy and his family after the death of Dr. Lossy's wife.
