Yale Rep Opens 2009-2010 Season With THE MASTER BUILDER 9/18-10/10

Yale Repertory Theatre (James Bundy, Artistic Director; Victoria Nolan, Managing Director) opens its 2009-2010 season with THE MASTER BUILDER by Henrik Ibsen, translated by Paul Walsh, directed by Evan Yionoulis at the University Theatre (222 York Street), September 18-October 10. Opening night is Thursday, September 24.

The cast of THE MASTER BUILDER includes Bill Buell (Doctor Herdal), David Chandler (Halvard Solness), Susan Heyward (Hilda Wangel), Robert Hogan (Knut Brovik), Slate Holmgren (Ragnar Brovik), FeliciTy Jones (Aline Solness), and Irene Sofia Lucio (Kaja Fosli).

THE MASTER BUILDER features sets by Timothy Brown, costumes by Katherine Akiko Day, lighting by Paul Whitaker, sound and original music by Scott L. Nielsen, dramaturgy by Maya Cantu and Colin Mannex, and stage management by James Mountcastle.

ABOUT THE MASTER BUILDER

Halvard Solness, a brilliantly successful architect, has willed his unspoken desire into reality at every turn-but not without a price. Now he lives in fear that the next generation will rise up and cast him aside. When Hilda Wangel, a bewitching young woman, arrives to collect on a decade-old debt, she breathes new life into the Solness home but also rekindles painful memories. Will she help him reach the pinnacle, or will she be the one to finally knock the Master Builder from his tower?

ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM

PAUL WALSH (Translator) teaches in the Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism department of Yale School of Drama. He served for nine years as senior dramaturg at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater, which produced his translation of Ibsen's A Doll's House (2004) and Hedda Gabler (2007). He is currently preparing new translations of August Strindberg's Chamber Plays for production by San Francisco's Cutting Ball Theater in 2012. In addition, Walsh has worked as dramaturg, translator, and co-author with theatre companies across the country, including the dearly missed Theatre de la Jeune Lune, with whom he collaborated on such award-winning productions as Children of Paradise: Shooting a Dream, Don Juan Giovanni, Germinal, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Mr. Walsh is artistic director of the New Harmony Project, a new play development residency program in New Harmony, Indiana, dedicated to serving writers who celebrate hope and the resiliency of the human spirit.

Evan Yionoulis (Director) is a resident director at Yale Rep where her productions include Richard II, Black Snow, The People Next Door, The King Stag, Heaven, and Galileo. New York credits include Howard Brenton's Sore Throats, Adrienne Kennedy's Ohio State Murders (Lucille Lortel Award, Best Revival) at Theatre for a New Audience; Daisy Foote's Bhutan (Cherry Lane Theatre); as well as Richard Greenberg's The Violet Hour (Broadway), Everett Beekin (Lincoln Center Theatre), and Three Days of Rain (Manhattan Theatre Club, OBIE Award). With frequent collaborator, composer/lyricist Mike Yionoulis, she has written and directed the short film Lost and Found (Cleveland International Film Festival) and is currently developing their new musical, Redhand Guitar, at Arena Stage. Other credits include productions at such theatres as the Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Rep, Huntington Theatre Company, New York Shakespeare Festival, Vineyard Theatre, Second Stage, Dallas Theatre Center, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and Denver Center. She has directed presentations of the documentary play Seven, which tells the stories of seven extraordinary women who work for human rights, in New York, Boston, Washington, London, and Deauville, France. She is the recipient of a Princess Grace Foundation Fellowship and the Foundation's prestigious statuette. She is currently an associate professor in Yale School of Drama's Department of Acting (which she chaired from 1998 to 2003).

TIMOTHY BROWN (Scenic Designer) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where his credits include last season's Man=Man and Love's Labour's Lost. He received his BFA in scenic design from the University of Miami, where he designed sets and lights for productions of A New Brain, Electra, How I Learned to Drive, Falsettos, Kimberly Akimbo, Reckless, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. He is also a resident designer for Miami's Fresco Productions, where he designed world premieres of Reconstructing Mama and The Penguin Tango, presented as part of the 2006 New York International Fringe Festival and the Fringe Encore Series.

KATHERINE AKIKO DAY (Costume Designer) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include the set for last season's The Robbers and costumes for The Tempest. She received a BA in art history and film studies from Dartmouth College in 2007. At Dartmouth, she designed sets for The Imaginary Invalid, The Distance from Here, A Number, The Lover, and sets and costumes for Betrayal.

Paul Whitaker (Lighting Designer) New York credits include Durango (The Public Theater); The Wooden Breeks (MCC Theater); Manic Flight Reaction, BFE (Playwrights Horizons); Swimming in the Shallows (Second Stage Theatre); Points of Departure, Tight Embrace. Kissing Fidel (INTAR Theatre); Guinea Pig Solo (The Public Theater/LAByrinth Theater Company); Get What You Need (Atlantic Theater Company); The Last Sunday in June (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater); American Hwangap (The Play Company/Ma-Yi Theater Company); Smashing, Lovely Day (The Play Company), among others. Regional theatre credits Serious Money and It Pays to Advertise at Yale Rep, as well as productions at Long Wharf Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, CENTERSTAGE, American Conservatory Theater, Children's Theater Company, Hartford Stage, Alley Theatre, George Street Playhouse, and Dallas Theater Center, among others. Paul received his BA from Macalester College and his MFA from Yale School of Drama. He has taught at Amherst College and is a Lighting Designer/Theatre Consultant for Schuler Shook.

SCOTT L. NIELSEN (Sound Designer) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama. He received his BA with a double major in sociology and theatre from the University of California, San Diego in 2007. His sound design and original music composition credits include The Robbers, Hamlet (Yale School of Drama); Waiting for Lefty, Second Sites: Tales of Alternate Routes, and Red State Bluegrass (UCSD); Moms in America (Guise Gallery); Pacific Tales: Santiago vs. the Seven-Legged Squid Monster (Marie Hitchcock Puppet Theater); Be Aggressive (Yale Cabaret). Aside from his theatrical endeavors, Scott has worked as a musician and sound artist creating, composing, recording, and performing experimental music and sonic art for more than 18 years.

ABOUT THE CAST

Bill Buell (Doctor Herdal) has appeared on Broadway in Equus, The History Boys, Inherit the Wind, Urinetown, 42nd Street, Titanic, Tommy, Taking Steps, Big River, Annie, Once a Catholic, The First, Welcome to the Club, The Miser, and Anna Karenina. His Off-Broadway credits include The Fourth Sister, Eight Days Backwards (Vineyard Theatre); Andorra, Waste (Theatre for a New Audience); Bad Habits, Aristocrats (Manhattan Theatre Club);Queens Boulevard (Signature Theatre Company); On the Bum, Violet -concert (Playwrights Horizons); Picasso at the Lapine Agile, The Common Pursuit, The Mysteries, and The False Servant (Classic Stage Company). With the Public's Shakespeare in the Park: Tartuffe, The Winter's Tale, and Twelfth Night. He last appeared at Yale Rep in Much Ado About Nothing. Film and television credits include Across the Universe, Spy Game, Welcome to the Dollhouse, The Love Letter, Requiem for a Dream, Quiz Show, Palindromes, Kinsey, Dark Water, and upcoming, The Box; The Bronx is Burning, John Adams, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Jamie Kennedy Experience, Law & Order, Ed, 100 Centre Street, and Cosby.

David Chandler (Halvard Solness) previously appeared at Yale Rep in Pentecost, St. Joan of the Stockyards, and Wall of Water. His New York credits include the Broadway productions of Lost in Yonkers, Death of a Salesman, and The American Clock; and Off-Broadway: Underneath the Lintel (Soho Playhouse); Private Jokes, Public Places (La MaMa); The Swan (The Public Theater); Slavs! (New York Theatre Workshop), Phaedra (Vineyard Theatre); Black Sea Follies and Doris to Darlene (Playwrights Horizons); The Grey Zone (Manhattan Class Company); and Cellini (Second Stage Theatre). Regionally, Mr. Chandler has worked at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Guthrie Theater, Long Wharf Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Wilma Theater, and Williamstown Theatre Festival, among others. Mr. Chandler appeared at London's Bush Theatre in A Question of Mercy. Film and television credits include The Grey Zone, Hide and Seek, The Undeserved, Death of a Salesman, Upheaval, The Portrait, Her Alibi, Seinfeld, Third Rock from the Sun, Arliss, and numerous Law & Order episodes.

SUSAN HEYWARD (Hilda Wangel) just completed her run in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined at Manhattan Theatre Club. Other New York credits include The Oedipus Cycle, Nathan the Wise (The Pearl Theatre Company); I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document (Phoenix Theatre Ensemble); Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, As You Like It, Pericles (American Shakespeare Center); The Snow Queen (Urban Stages); and You Can't Take It With You (Peterborough Players). She can currently be seen in the hit Comedy Central series Michael and Michael Have Issues starring Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter. Film work includes the upcoming feature film A Ticket for Hope. Ms. Heyward received her BFA in Drama from Carnegie Mellon University.

Robert Hogan (Knut Brovik) most recently appeared in The New Group production of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra. He has appeared on Broadway in Aaron Sorkin's A Few Good Men, in which he originated the role of Matthew Markinson, and in the Roundabout Theatre Company production of Hamlet. Other New York credits include Accomplices, Rainbow Kiss, Boy, What Didn't Happen, Further Than the Furthest Thing, Romania Kiss Me, Baby Dance, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, Waiting for Lefty (directed by JoAnne Woodward), Major Crimes, Lighting Up the Two-Year-Old, Rutherford and Son, In the Western Garden, On the Bum, and Never the Sinner, for which he received the Outer Critics Circle Award for his portrayal of Clarence Darrow. His regional credits include A Moon for the Misbegotten (Helen Hayes Award nomination, Arena Stage), as well as productions at Williamstown Theatre Festival and Long Wharf Theatre. He has appeared in over 150 primetime television shows, including Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, HBO's The Wire, Third Watch, Ed, Cosby, Deadline, Hill Street Blues, and M*A*S*H.

SLATE HOLMGREN (Ragnar Brovik) previously appeared in the Yale Rep productions of Passion Play and Trouble in Mind. A third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, he has appeared there in the Carlotta Festival of New Plays production of Grace, or the Art of Climbing and Learning Russian. His other credits include Bone Songs at Yale Cabaret; the title role in Macbeth at Actors' Repertory Theatre Ensemble; The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, The Little Foxes, and Angels Unaware at Brigham Young University, where he received his BFA. Television and film credits include Everwood and Dragonhunter. Slate recently completed the British American Dramatic Academy's Midsummer in Oxford program at Balliol College.

FeliciTy Jones (Aline Solness) previously appeared in the Yale Rep productions of A Woman of No Importance, Lulu, and The Ladies of the Camellias. Her New York credits include Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses on Broadway and Athol Fugard's The Captain's Tiger (Manhattan Theatre Club), Measure for Measure (The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival), and As You Like It (The Acting Company). Her regional credits include 'Tis Pity She's a Whore and Lady Windermere's Fan (CENTERSTAGE), Enrico IV (American Conservatory Theater), The Odyssey (The Goodman Theatre), and Cymbeline (Hartford Stage, McCarter Theatre Center). She was an Artistic Associate at Theatre de la Jeune Lune for ten seasons, where she appeared in such works as Crusoe, Friday and the Island of Hope, The Green Bird, and Children of Paradise: Shooting a Dream (also co-author, 1993 American Theater Critics Association Award). Ms. Jones's film and television appearances include Julie & Julia, Wonderland, Deadline, Ed, and Law & Order.

IRENE SOFIA LUCIO (Kaja Fosli) is a second-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama where she most recently appeared as Becca in The Bedtrick (Carlotta Festival of New Plays, 2009) and Viola in Jelly's Last Jam. Her other theatre credits include After the Revolution, Golden Gate (Williamstown Theatre Festival Fellowship Projects); the title role in Hedda Gabler; Laughing Wild; and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. She also appeared in the HBO Latino movie Casi Casi. Irene graduated from Princeton University with a degree in comparative literature.

TICKET INFORMATION AND PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

Tickets for THE MASTER BUILDER range from $35-67, and are available beginning August 31 online at www.yalerep.org, by phone at (203) 432-1234, and in person at the Yale Rep Box Office (1120 Chapel Street, at York Street). Student, senior, and group rates are also available.