SCR Announces PPF Directors

As the 15th Annual Pacific Playwrights Festival draws near, South Coast Repertory announces the directors for this years' staged readings. They include Evan Cabnet (Warrior Class), Matt Shakman (You Are Here), Meredith McDonough (I And You), Casey Stangl (The Few) and Anne Kauffman (Smokefall).

These readings will be seen by representatives from many of the country's most prominent theatres, including Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage, Roundabout Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Denver Center Theatre Company and The Sundance Institute.

"The playwrights and their plays are the backbone of the festival, of course. But the talented artists we bring in to support and interpret the work are crucial to the success of the enterprise," said festival co-director John Glore. "The five directors joining us this year to direct our PPF readings are among the best in the nation, and we can rest assured they'll show these plays off in the best possible light for our colleagues traveling here from across the country. We hope to see every play in this 15th festival move on to productions at theatres all over the U.S. That's one of the primary objectives of SCR's Pacific Playwrights Festival."

Also on hand to toast the occasion are special guests including Mark Harelik (The Immigrant, Drama Desk Award winner 2005), Julia Cho, whose hit The Language Archive received its world premiere here in 2010, Richard Montoya and Herbert Siguenza of Culture Clash, Kate Robin (What They Have), Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Pulitzer Prize finalist), Michael Golamco (Year Zero, Build) and many more.

Anchoring the Festival, which runs April 27 – 29, are the world premiere productions of Steven Drukman's The Prince of Atlantis, a tender and hilarious play about family, loyalty and love, and Adam Gwon and Octavio Solis' musical Cloudlands, a moving drama about a teenage girl who discovers her mother's secret life.

The festival kicks off Friday afternoon with Kenneth Lin's Warrior Class, a suspenseful political drama about an ambitious congressman whose past comes back to haunt him, directed by Evan Cabnet. Cabnet's directorial resume includes the world premiere of The Dream of the Burning Boy (Roundabout Underground) and the east coast premiere of Donald Margulies' Shipwrecked! An Entertainment. Assisting on the development of the reading is dramaturg Amy Levinson of the Geffen Playhouse.

Following that is the comic drama You Are Here from Melissa Ross. Matt Shakman, founder and artistic director of the Black Dahlia Theatre, will direct this story about six (mostly) thirtysomethings wrestling with issues of love, work, parenthood and friendship. SCR Assistant Literary Manager Kimberly Colburn will serve as dramaturg.

Beginning Friday night, festival-goers will have three chances to see Lauren Gunderson's I and You, in which two young people spend a night unraveling the mysteries of Walt Whitman-and their own lives-as they work on a class assignment. This SCR commission will be directed by Meredith McDonough, who received a Bay Area Theatre Critics Award for Best Director for Opus (TheatreWorks, Palo Alto). Dramaturg is Danielle Mages Amato of The Old Globe.

Saturday morning brings a new play from 2011 OBIE Award-winner Samuel D. Hunter. The Few, set in Hunter's home state of Idaho, finds a trucker-turned-newspaperman returning to the woman he loved and left four years earlier. SCR regular Casey Stangl, who directed last season's In The Next Room or the vibrator play will serve as director, and SCR Literary Manager and PPF co-director Kelly Miller is the dramaturg.

The festival wraps up Sunday with Noah Haidle's wildly imaginative Smokefall, a portrait of three generations of a Michigan family. This time-bending tale will be directed by Obie Award winner Anne Kauffman, and Tanya Palmer of the Goodman Theatre will serve as dramaturg.

TICKET PRICES for the 15^th Pacific Playwrights Festival are $14 per individual reading, and $32-$68 for The Prince of Atlantis and Cloudlands. Tickets can be purchased online at www.scr.org, by phone at (714) 708-5555 or in person at the SCR box office.  

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