Photo Flash: First Look at Chester Theatre's ANNAPURNA

Chester Theatre Company will continue its 25th Anniversary Season with Sharr White's ANNAPURNA. The production, which runs now through July 20th at the Chester Town Hall in Chester, MA, will feature CTC newcomers: Westfield-native Michelle Joyner, Daniel Riordan and director Robert Egan. Scroll down for a first look at the cast in action!

ANNAPURNA is a "comic and gripping duet" (San Francisco Chronicle) on the persistence of love. Twenty years ago, in the middle of the night, Emma (Michelle Joyner) walked out on Ulysses (Daniel Riordan), her cowboy-poet husband. Now, hearing he's in dire straits, she tracks him down to a trailer park in the wilds of Colorado where she finds him hooked to an oxygen tank and cooking sausages in the buff. Their reunion, alternately comic and conflicted, is full of razor sharp wit and brutal honesty. To their surprise, the more they understand what drove them apart, the more they are drawn together.

ANNAPURNA premiered at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco and was a finalist for the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award. The play made its Off Broadway premiere with New Group in NYC, featuring Los Angeles cast members Megan Mulally and Nick Offerman.

Robert Egan will be making his directing debut at CTC with ANNAPURNA. Egan is the Founding Artistic Director/Producer of the Ojai Playwright's Conference (OPC), one of the most prestigious summer new play development conferences in America. Before OPC, he served for twenty years as the Producing Artistic Director of the Mark Taper Forum, one of the country's leading theatre companies.

Sharr White's (Playwright) play The Other Place was an Outer Critics Circle Award nominee for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play. White's newest play, The Snow Geese, premiered on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman theatre this October. Other plays include Sunlight, Six Years, and Achilles in Sparta.

Set Design by Vicki Davis, Lighting Design by Lara Dubin, Costume Design by Charles Schoonmaker, and Sound Design by Tom Shread.

Tickets are available on CTC's website: www.chestertheatre.org, or by phone at 1-800-595-4TIX. To receive a brochure, contact the CTC office at 413-354-7770. CTC performances take place at Chester's Historic Town Hall, 15 Middlefield Road, Chester, MA. Performances are Wednesday through Saturday at 8:00pm, with matinees Thursdays and Sundays at 2:00pm. There will be no performance on July 4th. Tickets are $30 for weekday performances (Wed-Fri), $35 for weekend (Sat & Sun). Student, Chester Resident, and Saturday Night Rush tickets available; group rates for 10 or more are also available.

Photo Credit: Rick Teller