IRON, INISHMORE Highlight Theatre Exile's 14th Season

Theatre Exile announces our fearless 14th season, with four Philadelphia premieres as part of our season and an expanded schedule of events in our Studio X performance space, including our first full production in Studio X as part of the Philly Fringe. Get on board with Exile's gutsiest season that lays bare the naked truth behind the perils of sex and the price of love.

Theater Exile kicks off the year with the Philadelphia premiere of Iron by Rona Munro--the inaugural production in Theatre Exile's intimate new Studio X performance space at 13th and Reed Streets. Iron will open as part of the Philly Fringe, marking Exile's exciting return to our Festival roots after a five-year hiatus. Also returning is our co-artistic director and Philadelphia's own Fringe maven, Deborah Block. Deborah was an original organizing founder and the program director for a decade, before joining Theatre Exile in 2006. This highly anticipated event will be her first foray back into the festival that changed the artistic landscape of an entire city.

Iron goes behind the walls of a women's prison to find Fay and Josie, a mother and her visiting daughter struggling to reconnect 15 years after a brutal murder. This taut mystery shows us how we condemn ourselves to a life sentence of isolation with literal bars and figurative walls. Exile brings together for the first time two of Philadelphia's most applauded leading ladies, Catharine Slusar and Kim Carson, to portray these complex women. With its director, cast, and a star-studded design team featuring Merion, PA-born, New York Times-lauded set designer Laura Jellinek, Opera Company of Philadelphia lighting designer Drew Billiau and prolific Philadelphia sound designer Christopher Colucci, Iron will shine as the must-see ticket of the Fringe.

Theatre Exile will thrill you with the first production of our subscription season, the Philadelphia premiere of That Pretty Pretty; or, the Rape Play by nationally emerging talent Sheila Callaghan. That Pretty Pretty is a wild, no-holds-barred romp through the stereotypes and truisms of sexual identity. When two ex-strippers go on a road-trip of revenge, Jane Fonda steps in to help guide the women as the patron saint of misogyny and feminism. Worlds, identities and fantasies peel away scene after scene in a striptease of revelations.

Theatre Exile's Joe Canuso will direct That Pretty Pretty at the newly renovated Christ Church Neighborhood House, now more audience-friendly with air conditioning and elevators! Exile eagerly welcomes back Charlotte Ford as the dangerously alluring Agnes, after her Barrymore Award nominated performances in Red Light Winter and Mr. Marmalade. Amy Smith, founder of Headlong Dance Company and star of Exile's Princess Ivona, joins Charlotte as the iconic Jane Fonda. Allen Radway and Jered McLenigan team up as the bevy of soldiers, right-wingers, doctors and jello-wrestling judges who litter the roadside of this "ribald, shameless and exuberant ride" (Curtain Up Review). Jorge Cousineau, the production's video and set designer, will create a world that travels from hotels to battlefields. With Joe combining the exhilarating pulp of his Killer Joe with the frankness of his Red Light Winter, Pretty Pretty is sure to be the most provocative production of the season.

Excitement is building for Exile's long-awaited Philadelphia premiere of The Lieutenant of Inishmore by Martin McDonagh. Meet Mad Padraic, the most lethal soldier of the Irish National Liberation Army. When Padraic is called home to the small town of Inishmore to find that his only true friend, Wee Thomas the cat, has been assassinated, there will be blood. With 60 rounds of ammunition, gallons of blood, exploding cats and one very Irish "Mexican standoff," Lieutenant is a gleeful and gruesome roller coaster ride through the absurdities of violence and political causes left unchecked.

Associate Artistic Director Matt Pfeiffer brings to life a cast of unforgettable characters with Philadelphia's most explosive actors. Pearce Bunting, last seen in Exile's powerful Blackbird, returns as the affable Donny, who sits at the eye of the bloody tornado. Exile audience favorites Brian McCann and Robert Daponte join newcomers Melissa Lynch and Andrew Kane, along with Paul Felder as the dangerous and dashing Padraic with double pistols blazing. Packed with powerful performers and eye-popping spectacle created by Waldo Warsaw, the special effects designer for the original Broadway run, Lieutenant promises to be the biggest theatrical event in Philadelphia this year.

Theatre Exile will close our 14th subscription season with Saturn Returns by Noah Haidle. A man in the twilight of his life sits alone in his house. Around him orbit The Shadows of his wife, his daughter, his caretaker and his former selves, as the pinnacle moments of his life play out with heartbreaking simplicity. From the writer who penned our delightfully disturbing Mr. Marmalade, Saturn Returns promises to bring audiences the same quirky, off-beat, savagely funny exploration of loneliness that made Mr. Marmalade an audience favorite.

Our own artistic associate Brenna Geffers makes her Exile directorial debut with Saturn Returns. Brenna has assembled a cast of all-star Exile veterans, with Harry Philibosian starring as the sharp-tongued 88-year-old Gustin. Joe Canuso takes on the widowed but unwilting 58-year-old incarnation of Gustin, with Davy Raphaely as the newly married 28-year-old Gustin. Amanda Schoonover returns as the perfect Haidle heroine, playing Gustin's wife, daughter and caretaker who whirl in and out of his memories. Among them, the cast has performed in over two dozen of Exile's most memorable shows. From the Belmont Avenue Social Club to Killer Joe to GlenGarry Glenn Ross to Hunter Gatherers, these are the actors who have taken Theater Exile from our first production in 1997 to our current reign as the "go-to company for fierce, sexy theatre."

Collaborating with Brenna on the set design of Saturn Returns is renowned theatre artist Thaddeus Phillips, the imaginative mind who brought to life The Tempest in a kiddie pool and King Lear on a golf course, as well as Festival favorites MICROWORLD(s) Part #1 and THE MeLTiNG BRiDgE. Thaddeus will create a world where metaphor and reality meet.

In addition to our expanded four-production season, Theatre Exile will continue to broaden our X-hibition Series. Following our standing-room-only readings of Philadelphia playwrights last season, Exile plans to present more fully developed workshop versions of cutting-edge works from local playwrights. Combined with our Meet the Artists receptions, "Exiled In..." theme parties and another fabulous Cabaret of the Exiled, 2010-2011 will give our audiences more events, more readings, more productions, more parties and more Philadelphia premieres than any season before.

www.theatreexile.org

 

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