MTC Presents SUNLIGHT 1/21/2010-2/14/2010

Marin Theatre Company will produce the world premiere of its 2009 Sky Cooper New American Play Prize winner, Sunlight by Sharr White, January 21 through February 14, 2010. In addition to the Sky Cooper Prize, Sunlight has garnered substantial national recognition. Following MTC's premiere, this searing political thriller will be produced at three other theaters as part of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere-Arts West in Seattle, Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, and New Jersey Rep. The Edgerton Foundation has also awarded it a New American Play Award.

In Sunlight, Matthew Gibbon, liberal lion and university president, may have finally gone too far in his battle against the conservative dean of the law school-his son-in-law and former protégé. His daughter is caught between them and the entire university community is up in arms. The personal and political collide in this stunning new play about loyalty, power, and torture memos.

Sunlight's stellar cast features stage veteran Charles Dean (Communicating Doors, Misalliance) as the university dean Matthew Gibbon. MTC welcomes back Wanda McCaddon (The Subject Tonight is Love) as Matthew's long-time personal assistant Maryanne, Carrie Paff (A Streetcar Named Desire) as his daughter Charlotte, and Kevin Rolston (What the Butler Saw) as his son-in-law Vincent.

"We are delighted to introduce the Bay Area to Sharr White and his politically-charged thriller Sunlight," said MTC Artistic Director and Sunlight director, Jasson Minadakis. "When Sharr began writing the play two years ago, questions were beginning to surface about the infamous ‘torture memos.' His insightful imagination leapt to the future and the fallout from a new administration ripping off the wall of secrecy around those fateful decisions. The play uses the backdrop of a family in crisis to engage in a debate on politics and morality, poignant and viciously relevant today. It is a debate that rages over dinner tables, in town halls, on campuses and in courtrooms. Sunlight presents those debates, distilled and overlapping in a complicated real-time situation, pitting old guard against new blood and fracturing once intimate relationships through differences of opinion and a changing national and international political landscape."

Sharr White's play Six Years premiered at Actor's Theatre of Louisville's 30th Anniversary Humana Festival of New American Plays. Other plays include The Dream Canvas, Safe from the Future, and The Last Orange Dying, each produced off-Broadway. Sharr is a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, a winner of the Dr. Henry and Lillian Nesburn Award as part of the Julie Harris Award in Playwriting, and a two-time finalist for the Princess Grace Award. He is a member of the Playwrights Unitat at the Ensemble Studio Theatre and a member of Los Angeles' Apartment A Productions. He lives in New York.

Last season, MTC Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis directed Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, The Seafarer, and Lydia at MTC, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at Georgia Shakespeare Festival. He will direct Bill Cain's Equivocation this coming spring.

For more information visit www.marintheatre.org or call 415.388.5208.
Marin Theatre Company is located at 397 Miller Ave, Mill Valley CA 94941.