Act II Playhouse's IRON KISSES Begins Rehearsals On 2/17

Act II Playhouse is set to begin rehearsals on Feb. 17 for the third show in its 10th Anniversary Season, James Still's family-themed play, Iron Kisses. Associate Artistic Director Harriet Power directs this highly theatrical drama, in which a brother and sister play themselves and, at various times, both of their parents.
Iron Kisses is a heartfelt and often funny exploration of the relationships between parents and children: how our families shape us to be both what we are and what we don't want to be. Billy and Barbara-brother and sister-are nearing middle age, but still have trouble finding common ground with their retired Midwestern parents.

Act II's production-which opens for previews on March 10-will star Tony Braithwaite as Billy, in a rare dramatic role, and Kathryn Petersen as Barbara, for whom Still originally wrote the role.

"I am so happy that Act II is doing Iron Kisses," says Still, "and over the moon that Harriet has cast Kathryn, who is one of my most favorite actors (and people) in the country. I wrote Barbara with her in my head-so it is a perfect full circle that she will do the play."

Petersen herself describes the structure of the piece as a circle and notes that she has not yet completed the circle. "I've been in a relationship with Iron Kisses since 2005 and with playwright James Still since 1996. I had the privilege of playing Barbara in an early workshop with James. The following summer, I performed the first two of the three sections of the play in a festival [at People's Light & Theatre Company in Malvern, PA, where she is an Artistic Associate and resident company member]. I need to finish telling Barbara's story. I never got to do the last scene, in workshop or performance.

"I love this play and the characters in it," Petersen adds. "I think of this play as a valentine to the complicated and hard love between adult children and their parents-the kind of love that makes you want to move as far away as possible and stay home at the very same time."

The play-in strikingly original fashion-tells the story of an American family: a son who made up for being gay by being perfect; a daughter who finds she can't help treating her own daughter the way her mother treated her; a mother who struggles to love her two children equally; and a father who marvels at what he and his wife couldn't quite see.

"I relate very much to Billy's need to please, to be perfect in his parents' eyes," says Braithwaite. "I was very much a Type A personality growing up-perhaps I still am-and much of it was in an earnest desire to make my parents proud." Braithwaite has performed at Act II Playhouse numerous times over the years-mostly recently in the fall 2008 Irish comedy Stones in His Pockets by Marie Jones and in his December one-man comic remembrance, Look Mom, I'm Swell!. Braithwaite last worked with Petersen at Act II in 2002, in Matthew Wells' Schrodinger's Girlfriend.
Along with her actors, director Power has also formed a deep and personal connection to Iron Kisses. "Still's capacity to make Billy's and Barbara's, and their Mom's and Dad's, stories speak for and about all of us brings me to stillness every time I re-read the play," says Power. "The way Still fuses form and content-giving us the living experience of how differently siblings experience, and remember, their parents-is unlike any playtext I've encountered.

"It's funny and eerie, too, how fully he captures the reality of a brother and sister trading ‘black sheep status' in their family," adds Power. "My brother - who's 14 years older than me - and I did this throughout our childhoods....and still do!"

Press Opening for Iron Kisses is Friday, March 13 at 8 p.m., and the show runs on the Act II stage through April 5. For more information on the play as well as performance dates and times, visit www.act2.org or call the Act II Box Office at (215) 654-0200.
Iron Kisses had its world premiere in 2006 at the Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, NY, three years before Act II's production, and has been a hit at theatres around the U.S. including Indiana Rep, The Illusion Theatre of Minneapolis, and Portland Stage Company.

Act II Playhouse, celebrating 10 years of professional theatre in the Philadelphia suburb of Ambler, PA, is committed to creating world-class theatre in a 130-seat venue whose intimacy draws audiences and actors into dynamic interrelation. Act II produces new, classic, and contemporary plays and musicals under the direction of Bud Martin (Producing Artistic Director) and Harriet Power (Associate Artistic Director).

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