The Regional Premiere of Theresa Rebeck's DEAD ACCOUNTS Kicks Off Dragon Theatre's 2017 Season

When Jack, a New York banker, suddenly shows up at his parents' Cincinnati home in the middle of the night with a sack full of ice cream and no wife, his sister Lorna wants to know what's going on. Where's his socialite wife? Is he home for good? And why is he giving away so much money? Theresa Rebeck's (Bad Dates, Dragon 2011) dark comedy examines the conflict between Main Street and Wall Street, flyover state values versus coastal state values, and the humor within a family in turmoil.

Dead Accounts kicks off Dragon Productions Theatre Company's 2017 Main Stage series. For the first time ever, Dragon's season has two thematic series. The Main Stage Season is entitled Women Take Center Stage. Dragon was founded by actress Meredith Hagedorn because she wanted to make theatre filled with great roles for women. Dragon is a company largely run by women, and has given opportunities to women in all aspects of production, so for our 17th season we decided to celebrate women. Two of our plays have all-female casts, two of our plays were written by women, and two of our plays are directed by women. All of our plays let women take center stage to tell funny, poignant, powerful stories.

Rebeck's darkly comedic play Dead Accounts premiered on Broadway in November of 2012 with Katie Holmes and Norbert Leo Butz in the lead roles of Lorna and Jack. Rebeck writes in the preface to the play that she wrote the play to examine, with love and humor, the growing divide between "Main Street" and "Wall Street," in the middle of the American mortgage crisis. Rebeck said, "America doesn't know how to talk to itself anymore. It wasn't always like this. I was born and raised in the Midwest, where people were taught that decency and integrity and community were all important values. We were democrats with a little 'd.'"

The heart of her play is an examination of "traditional" midwestern values versus "liberal" coastal values, which couldn't be more timely in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Rebeck then says "How do you make this funny? There are times when I wonder how I ever thought that I could dramatize the death of a national discussion as a family comedy. But so many of us are the spawn of this perplexing divide; we carry it in our DNA. The question - How did we start there, and get here? - is in fact a question of mortality. Which, as we all know, is hilarious. Death is coming to our little family, and so we fight to live. Peculiarly, that is funny. And we do have things to teach each other. As long as we remember how to talk."

Theresa Rebeck is a widely produced playwright throughout the United States and abroad. New York productions of her work include Dead Accounts at the Music Box Theatre; Seminar at the Golden Theatre; 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; The Understudy at the Laura Pels Theater in a Roundabout Theatre Company production; 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. Her newest work, Poor Behavior premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2011. Dead Accounts, commissioned by the Cincinnati Playhouse, premiered January 2012.

In television, Ms. Rebeck has written for Dream On, Brooklyn Bridge, L.A. Law, American Dreamer, Maximum Bob, First Wave, and Third Watch. She was the creator of the NBC drama Smash. She has been a writer/producer for Canterbury's Law, Smith, Law and Order: Criminal Intent and NYPD Blue. Her produced feature films include Harriet the Spy, Gossip, and the independent features Sunday on the Rocks and Seducing Charlie Barker, an adaptation of her play, The Scene. Awards include the Mystery Writer's of America's Edgar Award, the Writer's Guild of America award for Episodic Drama, the Hispanic Images Imagen Award, and the Peabody, all for her work on NYPD Blue. She has won the National Theatre Conference Award (for The Family of Mann), and was awarded the William Inge New Voices Playwriting Award in 2003 for The Bells. Mauritius was originally produced at Boston's Huntington Theatre, where it received the 2007 IRNE Award for Best New Play as well as the Eliot Norton Award. Other awards include the PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award, the Athena Film Festival Award, an Alex Award, a Lilly Award and in 2011 she was named one of the 150 Fearless Women in the World by Newsweek.

Ms. Rebeck is originally from Cincinnati and holds an MFA in Playwrighting and a PhD. in Victorian Melodrama, both from Brandeis University. She is a proud board member of the Dramatists Guild, a Contributing Editor to the Harvard Review, an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre Company, a Playwright Adviser and Board Member of the LARK and and has taught at Brandeis University and Columbia University. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

Featuring the talents of: Michael Champlin (Jack), Kristen Kaye Lo (Lorna), Janine Saunders Evans (Jenny), Brian Flegel (Phil), Jackie O'Keefe (Barbara)

Designers & Production Team: William Campbell (Lighting Design), Michael Champlin (Co-Director), Ashley Taylor Frampton (Production Manager), Josiah Frampton (Box Office Manager), R. Dutch Fritz (Scenic Designer), Meredith Hagedorn (Executive Artistic Director), Lance Huntley (Sound Designer), Kristen Kaye Lo (Co-Director), Charlynn Knighton (Properties Designer), Tahiya Marome (Costume Designer), Charles McKeithan (Technical Director), Linda Olbourne (Company Manager), Chrissie Schwanhausser (Stage Manager), Kimberly Wadycki (Managing Director and Press Inquiries), Kathy Yan (Assistant Stage Manager), Maggie Ziomek (Graphic Design)

WHEN: January 27 - February 19, 2017

Thursdays - Saturdays, 8pm, Sundays, 2pm. Doors open 30 minutes before the show.

Pay What You Will Preview, Thursday, January 26th at 8pm

Opening Night Friday, January 27th at 8p with a post-show reception

Post-show discussion with the cast and director Sunday, February 5th

WHERE: The Dragon Theatre in downtown Redwood City?

2120 Broadway Street at the intersection of Broadway and Theatre Way

HOW MUCH:

$35 for general admission seats. $27 for student/senior tickets.

$15 rush tickets on Thursdays and Fridays starting 2nd week. Limited availability and cash only at the door.

Pay what you will preview on Thursday January 26th - no reservation necessary, just walk up and pay cash at the door. Doors open at 7:30p; show starts at 8p.

$175 for the VIP box (seats 4 people and includes champagne and chocolates.)

CONTACTING THE BOX OFFICE: Leave a voicemail at 650-493-2006 x 2 and your call will be returned within 2 business days. If you'd rather email, contact Josiah at tickets@dragonproductions.net.

The Dragon Box Office is not staffed 7 days a week so there might be a delay in response. Buying tickets online at http://www.dragonproductions.net is the very best way to reserve a ticket in advance, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

TIX & MORE INFO: http://dragonproductions.net/

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