CLYBOURNE PARK Opens Maryland Ensemble Theatre's 17th Season Tonight

Maryland Ensemble Theatre (MET) will present the first play in its seventeenth Mainstage season, "Clybourne Park". Bruce Norris' satirical comedy won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize Award and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play. "Clybourne Park" will be directed by Peter Wray and will run every Thursday through Sunday at Maryland Ensemble Theatre from tonight, September 12 through October 5.

"Clybourne Park" premiered in New York in 2010 to great acclaim with The New York Times praising the play as "ferociously smart" and Variety calling it, "pulverizingly funny". The play was written in response to Lorraine Hansberry's play "A Raisin in the Sun" (1959). The action in Act 1 and Act 2 takes place fifty years apart both prior to and following the action in the Hansberry play and addresses race and upward mobility through the gentrification of a Chicago neighborhood.

The playwright, Bruce Norris, has been widely produced but is most closely associated with Steppenwolf Theatre where his previous plays, "The Infidel", "Purple Heart", "We All Went Down to Amsterdam", "The Pain and the Itch", and "The Unmentionables" all premiered. "Clybourne Park" is the only play other than Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross" to win the Pulitzer, Tony and Olivier Award.

The show's director Peter Wray, is an Associate Artist at MET where he has directed "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", "The Glass Menagerie", "American Buffalo", "Dead Man's Cell Phone", "Almost Maine", and "Macbeth" among others. Regionally, he has worked at Everyman Theatre, Rep Stage, The Bay Theatre Company, Generous Company, WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory and Maryland Institute College of Art. Peter is an Associate Professor of theater at Towson University.

Wray will direct a talented cast of actors that will feature many familiar faces to MET audiences including MET company members Rona Mensah, Julie Herber, Brian Irons, Shea-Mikal Green and Jack Evans. They will be joined on stage by DC Cathro in his seventh MET show and a newcomer to the MET stage, Brandon Scott Boyd.

Wray and his cast will be ably assisted by a design team featuring Eric Berninghausen (set), Tad Janes (lights), Kirk Bowers (costumes), James McGarvey (properties), and Tom Majarov (sound).

"Clybourne Park" will run every Thursday through Sunday from September 12 through October 5 at MET, located in the historic FSK Hotel at 31 W Patrick Street. Thursday, September 11 there will be preview performance at 8pm and tickets to that show are $5 (cash only at door/no reservations). The first Sunday performance will be preceded by a reception hosted by MET Board Members Suzanne Beal and Judy Rice and sponsored by Giant Eagle.

Tickets to "Clybourne Park" are $16.50 (Thursdays) through $25.50 and can be purchased at 301.694.4744, marylandensemble.org or in person at the Maryland Ensemble Theatre box office. This show is made possible in part through the support of MET's season sponsors including Comcast, The Frederick Gorilla, Key 103, Eagle 106.9, Ausherman Family Trust, Mark A Pitts Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, The Frederick News Post and both the Frederick and Maryland Arts Councils.

For more information on the MET's production of "Clybourne Park" or any of their other programs including The Ensemble School, The Fun Company or The Comedy Pigs you can visit marylandensemble.org or call 301-694-4744.

Photo Credit: Spence Photographics

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