The REP Announces New Season; Begins With A Child’s Guide to Heresy

The REP, Point Park University's professional theatre company, will produce four works, including three world premieres and one Pittsburgh premiere, in the 2011-2012 season, which opens September 9, 2011 and runs through April 7, 2012 at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. The REP welcomes a host of nationally accomplished writers and directors, furthering its position as a laboratory for developing and presenting new works.

World Premiere: A Child's Guide to Heresy
By Kendrew Lascelles
Directed by Robert A. Miller (Point Park University 2011 Distinguished Master Artist in Residence)
September 9, 2011 - September 25, 2011

A Child's Guide to Heresy is adapted from the novel of the same title, also by Kendrew Lascelles. Set in the 1200s, the play follows the story of Tom, a nine year old boy, who is lured by Constantus, a powerful bishop, to complete a trio imposed by Mikael, a sorcerer, to raise the Angel Uriel. Constantus becomes entangled in a diabolical set of circumstances as he solicits both Mikael and Tom in a fatal web of heretic intrigue, pursuing his evil designs to eliminate Tom and Mikael, along with Tom's love interest Katerina and her mother, a said witch. A Child's Guide to Heresy brims with unforgettable characters in a lusty, mystical struggle in the pursuit of good and evil.

Pittsburgh Premiere: Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods

By Tammy Ryan

Directed by Sheila McKenna

September 30, 2011 - October 16, 2011

In the early 90's in Sudan after civil war destroyed their villages, an exodus of boys trekked eight hundred miles across Africa before making it to refugee camps in Kenya where they lived on a bowl of grain a day for ten years. In 2001, the U.S. resettled 3,600 of these "Lost Boys" in cities across America. Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods tells the story of Christine, a middle-aged, middle class white woman who meets Gabriel, a former "Lost Boy" working in the produce section of Whole Foods in Pittsburgh. Moved by the story of the trauma he survived as a child, she invites him to live with her and her teenage daughter. The play explores what can happen when one opens him or herself up to another human being.

Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods received its premiere with a co-production at Premiere Stages and Playwrights Theater of New Jersey, and was a featured play in the National New Play Networks 2009 National Showcase of Plays. Following its premiere, Anita Gates of the New York Times wrote, "Remarkably touching," and Peter Filichia said for The New Jersey Star Ledger, "Stirring new play...a most potent play."

World Premiere: Mid-Strut

By Eric Burns

Director TBD

February 3, 2012 - February 19, 2012

Jack Allison is in his mid-fifties. He is charming, eccentric, intelligent and witty. And he has less than a year to live. Advised by his oncologist to use his time wisely, he decides to pay a visit to Wendy, a former high school classmate and majorette, whom he adored as a teenager, with a most interesting and intimate request. Upon his arrival, Wendy is faced with another big decision. She has recently discovered that her husband, also named Jack, has had an affair. She is distraught. Jack Allison appears in her life just as Jack McGruder has broken her heart. A humorous, heartbreaking and thought-provoking story, Mid-Strut raises many questions about love, life, and living for today.

Mid-Strut was the winner of the prestigious Eudora Welty Emerging Playwrights' Award in 2010.

World Premiere: MIA
By Bruce J. Robinson

Directed by John Amplas

March 23, 2012 - April 7, 2012

MIA takes place in present-day rural Ohio. It's the weekend in which well-respected insurance salesman and pillar of the community Frank Schooler is to be named the VFW's Committee on MIAs "Man of the Year." Schooler's oldest son, Michael, was MIA in Operation Desert Shield (1991). Coincidently, Mike would have celebrated his 40th birthday on this weekend. To Frank's profound ambivalence, his younger son is considering enlisting. Frank is torn between supporting his son's desire to serve and his paternal dread at losing another child, haunted by the son he lost and the one he might lose. This world premiere by prize-winning playwright Bruce J. Robinson is a spectacularly theatrical blend of drama and comedy about real people pursuing human needs - and about that fine balance between those needs and what we owe. MIA asks questions we're often forced to ask - and offers compelling, thoughtful, engaging answers.

The REP 2011 - 2012 season subscriptions-which save patrons up to 35% off single ticket prices-are available now. Subscribers are invited to Point Park University's exclusive season-opening party. Those who purchase three subscriptions get the fourth free. To order a season subscription, contact the Pittsburgh Playhouse box office by phone 412-392-8000 or online www.pittsburghplayhouse.com.

2011 - 2012 Guest Artists
Kendrew Lascelles co-authored the musical revue Wait A Minim and following a near two year run at Golden Theater Broadway, he later wrote for The Smothers Brothers Summer Show (where he first recited his poem, The Box). He then wrote for the The Dean Martin Show and The Gold Diggers. His two one act plays, Trophy Hunters and Tigers, the former published in Best Short Plays of 1970, (the latter in the best of 1973). Tigers, first produced for NET, Owings Mills, Md., was subsequently produced by Jerry de Wilde and Bill Snell at the Company Of Angels (Los Angeles) in conjunction with Trophy Hunters; both were directed by Robert A. Miller. Trophy Hunters was extended to two acts and was later produced at the Denver Center Theater Company. Waterhole (Blood Oasis) was produced under the title: Legends at the Mark Taper Forum, directed by Robert Egan, and at Humana Festival, Louisville Actor's Theater. Exclusive Circles was produced by Denver Center Theater Company. SCREENPLAYS: The Aryan Couple, roughly based on Eichmann Interrogated by Jochen von Lang & Claus Sibyll, wherein Eichmann recounts his meeting with Heinrich Himmler, concerning the ManFred Weiss case. Lascelles changed the name of ManFred Weiss to Krauzenberg. Produced, rewritten and directed by John Daly, the film starrEd Martin Landau and Judy Parfitt, Kenny Doughty, Caroline Carver and Danny Webb. Focus; screenplay based on the novel by Arthur Miller. Produced by Robert A. Miller and Michael R. Bloomberg, released by Paramount Classics, was directed by Neal Slavin and starred William H. Macy, Laura Dern, David Paymer, and Meat Loaf Aday. A Child's Guide To Heresy, based on the novel, receives its world premiere at the prestigious Pittsburgh Playhouse and is produced by Ronald Allan-Lindblom (Artistic Director) and directed by Robert A. Miller. Three of five novels by Lascelles - Tamara Hunney, A Child's Guide To Heresy, and Blood Oasis, are available at Blurb.com

Robert A. Miller (Point Park University 2011 Distinguished Master Artist in Residence) is an acclaimed Hollywood producer, director and screenwriter, probably best known for producing the film The Crucible, nominated for two Academy Awards and featuring actors Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, Joan Allen and Paul Scofield. Having produced TV commercials for more than 20 years, his list of clients includes products as diverse as Coca Cola, Jaguar, Bank of America, Michelob, Visa and McDonald's. He produced music videos by Huey Lewis and the News, Lou Reed, Don Felder, Randy Newman and ZZ-Top. His directorial credits include the Company of Angels in Hollywood; Bend In the River, a live PBS broadcast featuring Ken Kesey; documentaries, commercial and educational films. Miller is the co-writer of three original screenplays with Stephen Blom-Cooper: Milking Spinoza, Déjà vu and Steel Drums. More recently, Mr. Miller produced the film Focus, starring William H. Macy, Laura Dern, David Paymer and Meat Loaf. Miller was also the co-producer/director and cameraman on Sunshine Daydreams, a Grateful Dead performance movie.

Tammy Ryan's plays have been produced and developed across the country at such theaters as The Alliance Theater Company, Florida Stage, The Marin Theater Company, People's Light and Theater Company, Premiere Stages, Playwrights Theater of New Jersey, City Theater Company, the Pittsburgh Playhouse, and 29th Street Rep. Plays include Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods, (Premiere Stages/Playwrights Theater of New Jersey) developed at the New Harmony Project and a featured play at the National New Play Network's 2009 National Showcase of Plays; A Confluence of Dreaming, (The Pittsburgh Playhouse); Dark Part of the Forest (Premiere Stages); and Lindsey's Oyster, commissioned by International Culture Lab and scheduled for production at The Kitchen Theater, Irondale Ensemble Project and garajistanbul, Istanbul, Turkey in 2011. Her writing for young audiences has twice won the National Playwriting for Youth Bonderman Award for The Gift of the Pirate Queen (Playhouse Jr.) and The Music Lesson (Florida Stage), which also received the American Alliance of Theater in Education's Distinguished Play Award. Other honors include the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's Creative Achievement Award, The Heinz Endowment's Creative Heights Residency and fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Sewanee Writer's Conference. Ryan lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and two daughters, where is she is a Dramatists Guild representative for the Pittsburgh region.

 

Eric Burns National television & writing experience: author of Darling Father, Blessed Son, a tale about the relationship between Theodore Roosevelt and his favorite son, Quentin, who was killed in World War I; host of Fox News Watch, a weekly media review program and one of the top-rated weekend shows on all-news cable; host of CNBC's Talk Live!; host of A&E's Arts & Entertainment Revue; host of PBS's By the Year 2000; host of E! Entertainment's Word of Mouth with Eric Burns; commentator for Entertainment Tonight; writer, producer and host of Old Habits (PBS); essayist for The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour; correspondent, substitute anchor and originator of "Cross-Country" segment on Today show, NBC News. Awards and honors: named one of the best writers in the history of broadcast journalism by Washington Journalism Review; cited by Vanity Fair for excellence of Fox News Watch; Emmy winner for media analysis (1986). Newspaper and magazine articles for Reader's Digest, Weekly Standard, Family Circle, TV Guide, Delta Airlines' Sky magazine, the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Huffington Post, among others. Books: Broadcast Blues: Dispatches From the Twenty-Year War Between a Television Reporter and His Medium (1993); The Joy of Books: Confessions of a Lifelong Reader (1995); The Autograph: A Modern Fable of a Father and Daughter (1997); The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol (2003) (American Library Association "Best of the Best" winner); Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism (2006) (the best-selling public affairs book of 2007); The Smoke of Gods: A Social History of Tobacco (2007) (American Library Association "Best of the Best" winner); Virtue, Valor and Vanity: The Founding Fathers and the Pursuit of Fame (2007); All the News Unfit to Print: How Things Were...and How They Were Reported (2009); Invasion of the Mind-Snatchers: Television's Conquest of America in the Fifties (2010).

 

Bruce J. Robinson writes mainly for theatre and television. His play Byrd's Boy ran off-Broadway at Primary Stages starring David McCallum. Theatres that have subsequently produced the show include the Detroit Rep (nominated as "Best Play" - Detroit Free Press's Award for Theatre Excellence). Robinson's Another Vermeer was instrumental in his winning a Berrilla Kerr Award. The play opened at the Abingdon Theatre - starring Austin Pendleton - where it garnered enthusiastic reviews and won the theatre's "Abby Award" as "Best Play of the Season." Other plays include (Sacco-Vanzetti) Vince, Al & Teddy - given readings at the E.S.T and the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival - and Rare Indulgence - an O'Neill Conference finalist. Robinson wrote the book for the revue The Broadway Kids Sing Broadway (featuring Jesse Eisenberg). It ran for two years at the Fairbanks Theatre. Among the TV shows on which he's worked are Gary Goldberg's Brooklyn Bridge and Glenn Caron's Showroom. In what seems another life, Bruce performed at theatres including the MTC and Goodspeed. A graduate of Franklin & Marshall College, he's happily a New Yorker and even happier to be married to actress/tycoon Donna Robinson - Point Park alumna! (For more information, see brucejrobinson.com)

 

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