'Memory House' begins Nov. 30th at Trinity Rep

Trinity Rep presents Kathleen Tolan's drama Memory House, directed by Curt Columbus, beginning on November 30 and running through January 6 in the Dowling Theater.

The essay question, "What's in your memory house?" sparks the play. This innocuous question for a college entrance essay prompts a free-spirited 18-year-old to question everything - especially her adoption from Russia.  The play unfolds in real time, as one woman struggles to bake a pie while another races to meet a looming deadline.

Commissioned by Trinity Rep, Kathleen Tolan's play was originally written with the theater's audience in mind. The idea for the two-person piece came when she was working as a freelance writer. "I interviewed a woman who had decided to adopt a child from Eastern Europe. This six-year-old girl arrived in New York from a town where no building was taller than 2 stories. I thought her story was so rich and complicated: this passionate need to have a child magnified the issues of parenting.", Tolan said in recent press notes.

The production features company member Anne Scurria as Maggie. Recent Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium MFA graduate Susannah Flood will be playing her teenage daughter Katia.

Each night during the play, Scurria will bake a blueberry pie from scratch during the course of the evening - with an actual working oven as part of the set design. Tolan says "It makes me so happy that you can actually smell the pie baking. The whole audience doesn't realize it at once, but there's this moment when people realize the pie is actually baking now."

The set and lighting will be designed by Eugene Lee, with costumes by Marilyn Salvatore and sound design by Peter Sasha Hurowitz.

The November 30th performance of Memory House is Pay What You Can (PWYC). PWYC tickets go on sale at 7:00 pm, limit one per person.

Regular performances start at 7:00 pm on Sundays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and at 8:00 pm on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays with selected Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday Matinees at 2pm.

Regular tickets range from $20-$60 and are on sale now at the Trinity Rep box office, 201 Washington Street, Providence, RI; by phone at (401) 351-4242; and online at www.trinityrep.com.

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