A NUMBER to Open at Ancram Center for the Arts
Drew Ledbetter and John Wojda star in Churchill's exploration of nature, nurture, and fatherhood.
Ancram Center for the Arts will present Caryl Churchill's A Number, a taut and haunting drama exploring cloning, identity, and the bonds between fathers and sons, running October 1–4 and October 8–11.
Churchill's play centers on the standoff between an aging father, Salter, and his three grown sons, two of whom are clones of the first. Across a series of charged confrontations, the play unravels questions of nature versus nurture and the ethics of scientific ambition. With all three sons portrayed by the same actor, the play's inquiry about the uniqueness of an individual's identity is dramatically rendered. First produced at London's Royal Court Theatre in 2002, A Number has since become one of the most acclaimed and frequently produced works of contemporary theater, prized for its spare, incisive dialogue and its enduring relevance in an age of genetic engineering and artificial replication.
“Ferociously inventive. It is hard to think of another contemporary playwright who combines such economy of means and breadth of imagination.” --NY Times
“Magnificent.... Contains more drama, and more ideas, than most manage in a dozen full-length works.... It combines elegant structural simplicity with an astonishing intellectual and emotional depth.... What a tremendous play this is, moving, thought-provoking and dramatically thrilling.'' – Daily Telegraph
The production stars Drew Ledbetter and John Wojda and is directed by Jeffrey Mousseau, with scenic design by Sarah Edkins, lighting design by Matthew Adelson, costume design by Alicia Austin, and sound design by Liam Bellman-Sharpe.
Drew Ledbetter: Off-Broadway: Williston (Miranda Theater Company), A Persistent Memory (Theater Row), Richard 2x1 (Red Bull Theater) Regional: Constellations (Ancram Center for the Arts), Hamlet (Pittsburgh Public Theater), Fly (Alabama Shakespeare Festival), King Lear (Trinity Rep), Melena (B/T Playwright's Rep), She-Wolf (Amphibian Stage Company, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company). Numerous workshops with New York Theater Workshop, New Georges, New Dramatists, Chautauqua Theater Company, The Drama League, and Red Bull Theater. Film: Love and Everything In Between; WordPlay Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (The New Book Press). TV: The Blacklist (NBC), Succession (HBO) MFA: Brown University/Trinity Rep.
John Wojda has performed on Broadway in The Nap, Present Laughter, Two Shakespearean Actors, The Merchant of Venice, and MacBeth, and his extensive off-Broadway credits include an ensemble Obie award for Ecstacy at The New Group. He's toured nationally in Spring Awakening, internationally in West Side Story, and played dozens of leading roles in resident repertories including four seasons at Canada's Stratford Festival. No stranger to the Berkshires, John was seen in the 2022 East Coast premiere of Things I Know to be True at Great Barrington Public Theater. His television credits include Dr. Death, FBI Most Wanted, Manifest, Madam Secretary, The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, Mr. Robot and all of the Law and Order shows, and on film he played the lead in Amir Naderi's Manhattan by Numbers.
Jeffrey Mousseau is a theatre director, producer, and educator. For Ancram Center he has directed Constellations (two Berkshire Theatre Critics nominations), Invasion! (Berkshire Theatre Critics Award, Outstanding Ensemble), An Iliad with Maconnia Chesser which was remounted at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, MA (Berkshire Theatre Critics Award, Outstanding Solo Performance), Homebody by Tony Kushner (Berkshire Theatre Critics Award, Outstanding Solo Performance); Young Jean Lee's We're Gonna Die; the American premiere of In Praise of Elephants by Kevin Dyer; a site-specific new work, Performing Olana, on the grounds of Olana, Hudson River School painter Frederic Church's historic home near Hudson, NY; and two Barbara Wiechmann plays, Aunt Leaf which also toured to Aguascalientes, Mexico, and the premiere of a music-theatre adaptation of The Snow Queen.
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