Brown/Trinity Rep to Present MUD and A MAP OF VIRTUE in Rep

The Brown/Trinity Rep MFA Program presents two riveting dramatic works. Under the direction of Mauricio Salgado '18, María Irene Fornés' Mud begins performances on May 5. Erin Courtney's A Map of Virtue, directed by Kate Bergstrom, begins May 6.

In this compelling and gritty drama, Mae and Lloyd live in near destitution with only each other for company. When their literate neighbor Henry is invited into their home, his education and experiences shake the very foundation of their lives. In Mud, the Obie award-winning playwright María Irene Fornés offers audiences a glimpse into poverty's effect on the human condition.

"My reason to direct this play was to meet María Irene Fornés and these characters in the mud - the sloppy, discomforting and seeming valueless mix of dirt and water. The murky mix of our morals and biases, desires and limitations," said director Mauricio Salgado '18. "This is a play about seeing the strike of a match for the first time and realizing that you've been living in a fog. Every time you strike that match you get a glimpse of what is around you. It is a play about a young woman who's discovered a box of matches and is so obsessed with the light of the flame that she is willing to burn to make sure the light endures."

Performing at the same time in repertory is A Map of Virtue. Drawn together time and time again by a very tiny bird statue, Mark and Sarah's chance meetings catapult them into an unpredictable chain of events that leaves them both forever changed. A Map of Virtue is a fresh, eerie thriller full of unexpected twists that will have audiences asking - who is really in control of our lives and what does it mean to be inexplicably, dangerously linked by fate?

"The play was haunting me - like it was stuck in my gut, for a long time. I described it to my friends as a lover and a kidney stone," said director Kate Bergstrom '18. "America is full of unresolved, chilling-horribly traumatic events happening all of the time and people are finding themselves unable to effectively act on or talk about them- myself included. I think A Map of Virtue speaks to me because it deeply, personally holds a kind of love mixed with a loss of innocence, a kind of secret, childlike belief in fate and also a sense of needing to and being unable to talk about trauma."

Mauricio Tafur Salgado belongs to mischief makers, sus antepasados and the everglades watershed. He is in his second year of training in the Brown/Trinity MFA in Directing program. Within the graduate program he has directed Angelina Weld Grimke's Rachel and William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. He has also directed events in New York City, Edinburgh, Bangalore, and throughout Peru and South Africa. In 2006 he co-founded Artists Striving to End Poverty. He received a BFA in Acting from the Juilliard School. He likes a good early morning slow dance with his beloved Cindy.

Kate Bergstrom is in her second year pursuing her MFA in Directing at Brown/Trinity Rep. Her directorial work - described as colorfully ruptured hauntings- centers around the inherent queerness of performativity and the blurred lines between the self and other in relationship to gender, politics and socioeconomic identities. Brown/Trinity Directing credits include Taming of the Shrew and The Children's Hour. Her recent assistantships include Richard and ShaRon Jenkins for Trinity Repertory Company's Oklahoma! Kate serves as artistic director of On The Verge Summer Repertory Festival. She also served as the head of Drama at Laguna Blanca School from 2012-2015, Artistic Director of Stripped Scripts and co-founder of the GSF feminist performance collective.

Mud runs May 5-20, 2017 and A Map of Virtue runs May 6-21, 2017. All performances will take place at the Pell Chafee Performance Center, 87 Empire Street, Providence, RI. General admission is $12 with a discounted price of $8 for seniors and $6 for students. Tickets are on sale now at Trinity Rep's box office, by calling (401) 351-4242 or online at www.trinityrep.com.

Brown University/Trinity Rep MFA Programs provide a three-year professional training program for eighteen students under the auspices of an Ivy League University and Rhode Island's Tony Award-winning theater company. Brown University's Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies is internationally recognized for the quality of its faculty and instruction. Trinity Rep, with its deep tradition of resident artists, provides powerful artistic assets and creates a firm foundation for a new generation of theater artists.