Diana Sheehan, James Crawford Lead WaterTower Theatre's SHOOTING STAR

WaterTower Theatre Producing Artistic Director Terry Martin today announced casting details for Shooting Star which will be performed on the Main Stage May 27 - June 26, 2011. The cast stars Diana Sheehan as Elena and James Crawford as Reed. Mark Fleischer, Artistic Director of the Adirondack Theatre Festival, directs. Shooting Star is a co-production with the Adirondack Theatre Festival.

Steven Dietz's Shooting Star is a wistful two-character comedy aimed directly at the soft heart of the baby boomer generation. The two characters in the play were lovers in their early twenties in Madison, Wisconsin sometime in the 1970's, but they've long been out of touch, getting on with their lives. By chance they find themselves -- and one another -- in a snowed-in airport somewhere in the Midwest. Elena and Reed have decades of change and adventure to explore, as well as the delicate business of defining just who they are for each other right now.
About the Playwright:

Since 1983, Steven Dietz's twenty-plus plays have been seen at more than 100 regional theatres in the United States, as well as Off-Broadway. International productions have been seen in England, Japan, Germany, France, Australia, Sweden, Austria, Russia, Slovenia, Argentina, Peru, Singapore and South Africa. His work has been translated into seven languages.
Dietz is a two-time winner of the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, for Fiction (produced Off-Broadway by the Roundabout Theatre Company), and Still Life With Iris. He received the PEN USA West Award in Drama; the 2007 Edgar Award for Drama from the Mystery Writer's of America for his widely-produced Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure (adapted from William Gillette and Arthur Conan Doyle); and the 1995 Yomuiri Shimbun Award (the Japanese "Tony") for his adaptation of Shusaku Endo's novel Silence.
About the Director:

Mark Fleischer is starting his fourth season as Adirondack Theatre Festival's first producing artistic director. He quickly established himself as an artistic leader in the region prompting Metroland to name Mark the "Best Theatre Company Artistic Director" in its 2009 Best of the Capital District issue. In addition he was selected as one of the "20 under 40″ by the Post-Star. Mark is charged with charting the theatre's artistic vision and overseeing administrative operations. At ATF Mark directed the world premiere of HAl Corley's Brush the Summer By (2010), Ordinary Days by Adam Gwon (2009) and the reading of the new musical Loving Leo by Sara Cooper and Zach Redler. This coming summer he will direct a developmental reading of ATF's commission Dream Street by Sean Christopher Lewis.

Prior to ATF Mark served as the managing artistic director of Plano Repertory Theatre in suburban Dallas, Texas. During his eight year tenure, the Company moved from all volunteers to a professional theatre operating under an AEA SPT contract. Under Mark's leadership, PRT emerged as one of the leading theatre companies in the Dallas area with a subscription base of nearly 4,000 subscribers. At PRT Mark produced over 50 productions and his directing credits include new plays, classics, musicals and contemporary dramas.

Outside of ATF some of his recent directing credits include the regional premieres of Bash by Neil LaBute, Blackbird by David Horrower and My First Time by Ken Davenport all at WaterTower Theatre in Addison, TX as well as Alex Lewin's Water Street as part of the Bailiwick Directors' Fest and Stephen Cone's We Came Here Because It Was Beautiful and William Nedved's Kid as part of Collaboraction's Sketchbook in Chicago. In the fall he will direct Tracy Lett's Superiaor Donuts at Captial Repertory Theatre in Albany, NY.

Mark holds a BA in English Literature and Communication Arts from Austin College and an MFA in Directing from the Theatre School at DePaul University, formerly The Goodman School of Drama

About the Cast:

Diana Sheehan has appeared on WaterTower Theater's stage in Grey Gardens and Black Pearl Sings! She stood by for Betty Buckley and Tovah Feldshuh in the Dallas Theater Center's production of Arsenic and Old Lace, directed by Scott Schwartz and went on for Betty Buckley. Diana appeared as Elsa Schraeder in The Sound of Music at Casa Manana and with Liz Mikel in Black Pearl Sings! at WaterTower Theatre. For the roles of Edith and Little Edie Beale in Grey Gardens, she received the 2009 Dallas-Fort Worth Critics Forum Award and the 2009 Column Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Her Dallas-area debut in Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer at Lyric Stage also received the Dallas-Fort Worth Critics Forum Award for Best Ensemble.

Diana performed her cabaret pieces at New York's Triad, San Francisco's Plush Room and Boston's Club Cafe championing the American Songbook and featuring such composers as Jerome Kern, Cole Porter and George Gershwin. She starred in the off-Broadway hit, Forbidden Broadway in New York, Boston and on national tour. Regional credits include: San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, American Stage, North Shore Music Theatre, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Forum Theatre, and the Jewish Theatre of New England. Diana is a graduate of Smith College and the British-American Drama Academy.

James Crawford has acted in theatres across the country. In 2007, James was named Best Actor by D Magazine, the Dallas Observer and the Dallas Voice. For his performances as George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (WaterTower Theatre) and as C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands (Contemporary Theatre of Dallas), he also received the Leon Rabin Award and a Dallas/Fort Worth Critics Forum Award. Since moving to Dallas ten years ago, James has appeared in a dozen productions at the Dallas Theater Center, including Pride & Prejudice, Joe Egg, The Real Thing, Twelfth Night, The Importance of Being Earnest, Our Town, The Night of the Iguana, A Christmas Carol, and the American premiere of Inexpressible Island. In addition, James has performed at Theatre Three (Stones in his Pockets, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, As Bees in Honey Drown), Stage West (Angels in America, Man of the Moment), Fort Worth Shakespeare in the Park (Hamlet, The Tempest), the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas (Romeo and Juliet, The Merry Wives of Windsor), WaterTower Theatre (Holiday Memories), Echo Theatre (Cloud Nine, Off the Map) and Theatre Britain (Betrayal).

James has worked with such nationally acclaimed directors as Des McAnuff, Tina Landau, Stan Wojewodski, and RoBert Woodruff. He appeared Off-Broadway in En Garde Arts' Obie-winning production of The Trojan Women, A Love Story, in The Great Brain at the Promenade Theatre, and in The Kafka Project at the Ohio Theatre. He has worked with New York Theatre Workshop, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Theatreworks/USA and Circle Rep Lab. He has acted at such regional theatres as the La Jolla Playhouse (Elmer Gantry, and the premiere of Lee Blessing's Fortinbras), and North Carolina's Triad Stage (Art, Picnic, and A Streetcar Named Desire).

James is a member of Actors' Equity and AFTRA, and has appeared on television in All My Children, As the World Turns and One Life to Live. A graduate oF Brown University, he received his M.F.A. from the University of California at San Diego. James has previously taught at Muhlenberg College and the University of North Texas. James currently teaches acting in the Division of Theatre at the Meadows School of the Arts at SMU, where he has directed productions of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest, and Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband.
About WaterTower Theatre

WaterTower Theatre is celebrating its 15th anniversary with its 2010-2011 season. The Company is one of the leading regional theatres in North Dallas and Texas. It is consistently recognized for its artistic excellence by the Dallas Theatre League, Dallas/Fort Worth Theatre Critics Forum, The Dallas Morning News, The Dallas Observer, D Magazine and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, among others. WaterTower Theatre has a subscription base of more than 2,100 subscribers and serves an audience of over 35,000 patrons annually.

WaterTower Theatre gratefully acknowledges the support of The Town of Addison, TACA, Texas Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. WaterTower Theatre is supported, in part, through the generosity of The 500 Inc., Ackley Financial Group, Inc., Atmos Energy, AT&T Yellow Pages, Liberty Capital Bank, Rainmaker Advertising, Target, The Shubert Foundation, and Media Sponsors the Dallas Voice, KERA's Art and Seek, The Dallas Observer, the Senior Voice WFAA and Addison - the Magazine of the North Dallas Corridor.

About Terry Martin
Terry Martin is WaterTower Theatre's Producing Artistic Director, a position he has held for 13 years. Terry has directed 38 productions for WaterTower Theatre. Some of his directing credits at WTT include Our Town, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Man of La Mancha, Humble Boy, The Crucible, Take Me Out, A Country Life (which he adapted from Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and which won the 2005 Rabin Award - Best New Play), Cabaret, It Ain't Nothin' But The Blues, Company, An Inspector Calls, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Laramie Project, You Can't Take It With You, Book of Days, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (2002 Rabin Award - Director of a Play), Sweeney Todd (2002 Rabin Award Nomination - Director of a Musical), Desire Under the Elms, Ravenscroft, Rockin' Christmas Party (2000, 2001), Enter the Guardsman (2001 Rabin Award Nomination - Director of a Musical), Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill and Little Shop of Horrors (2000 Rabin Award Nomination - Director of a Musical) among others. For Plano Repertory Theatre, he has directed Journey's End (2000 Rabin Award - Director of a Play), Dracula, La Bête, Little Shop of Horrors and Pump Boys and Dinettes.

Shooting Star
Written by Steven Dietz
Director, Mark Fleischer
Set Designer, Michael Sullivan
Lighting Designer, Jeff Stover
Costume Designer, Terry Martin
Props Designer, Georgana Jinks
Sound Designer, Scott Guenther
Stage Manager, Heidi Shen

Performances:
May 27 - June 26, 2011
Previews: May 27, 28 @ 8:00 pm
Sunday, May 29 @ 7:30 pm Pay What You Can Performance

Opening night: Monday, May 30 @ 7:30 pm
Performances: May 27, 28, 29, 30, June 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26.

7:30 PM Monday, Wednesday & Thursday
8:00 PM Friday & Saturday
2:00 PM Saturday (June 25 only) & Sunday

Tickets: www.watertowertheatre.org or 972-450-6232
WaterTower Theatre
Addison Theatre Centre
15650 Addison Road
Addison, Texas 75001

 

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