Trinity Rep Presents Obie-Award Winning Dark Comedy APPROPRIATE

Trinity Repertory Company continues season 53, Ghosts of the Past, Dreams of the Future with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' gripping play, Appropriate, directed by Brian Mertes. Performances run October 6 - November 6, 2016 in Trinity Rep's Dowling Theater. Tickets are available at www.trinityrep.com, by calling (401) 351-4242 or at the theater's box office at 201 Washington St., Providence.

In this biting comic-drama, the estranged members of the Lafayette family return home to their run-down Arkansas estate after the passing of the family patriarch. As they sort through a lifetime of mementos, they discover a gruesome relic that turns their reunion into an escalating series of shocks, showdowns and revelations. Winner of the 2014-2015 Obie Award for Best New American Play,Appropriate is-on the surface-an homage to the classics of the American theater canon. Look deeper into Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' "remarkable and devious" (The New York Times) new play, though, and discover what familial ghosts await.

"I found myself turning the page as fast as I could read it, it's truly funny and it's filled with anger" remarked Director Brian Mertes on Jacobs-Jenkins' award-winning script. "This is a play about whiteness, misbehavior, privilege, subjugation, and power. It is an attempt to set the record straight, to make a sound every night in the theater that echoes through our community."

Appropriate features resident Acting Company members Angela Brazil, Mauro Hantman, Phyllis Kay, and FrEd Sullivan, Jr., withEmeline Easton and Ronin W. Scott and Brown/Trinity Rep actors Marina Morrissey and Alec Weinberg.

The creative team includes Sara Brown (set design), Olivera Gajic (costume design), Dan Scully (lighting design), Broken Chord/Dan Baker (sound design) and Rick Sordelet (fight choreography) with stage manager Sara Sheets.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' plays include Neighbors (Public Theater), Appropriate (Actors Theatre of Louisville, Victory Gardens Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, and Signature Theatre), An Octoroon (Soho Rep), and War. He is a Residency Five playwright at Signature Theatre and a Lila Acheson Wallace Fellow at the Juilliard School. Additionally, his work has been seen at the Vineyard Theatre, the Matrix Theatre in Los Angeles, Company One in Boston, and the HighTide Festival in the United Kingdom. He has taught at New York University and Queens University of Charlotte, and his honors include the Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams Award. He holds an MA in Performance Studies.

Brian Mertes (director) is Head of the Brown/Trinity Rep MFA Directing Program, and an Associate Director at Trinity Rep, where he directed Steel Magnolias, Clybourne Park, Crime and Punishment, A Lie of the Mind and The Glass Menagerie. He has taught directing for both Columbia and NYU film programs, and has been a guest director at North Carolina School of the Arts, SUNY Purchase, NYU Grad, UT Austin, and Yale. Brian has directed many world premieres, including working with Christine Jones and Theater One and David Greenspan's The Myopia for the Foundry Theater at the Atlantic and Jose Rivera's Massacre at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in NYC. He has developed new work at Ensemble Studio Theater, Manhattan Class Company, Naked Angels, Manhattan Theater Club, The Public, PS 122, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Playwrights Center Minneapolis, New Dramatists, Ars Nova, PlayPenn, and BACA. Mertes regularly directs at Juilliard where he created a multimedia theater work based on Sam Shepard's Paris, Texas with alt-country rocker, Jim White. Brian has directed for ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, garnering three Emmy and three DGA nominations, and an Emmy for directing. Each summer he and Melissa Kievman produce and direct Lake Lucille Chekhov in Rockland County, NY and are currently in postproduction of a documentary feature on the Seagull. Co-directing with Julian Crouch, he will be remounting their production of Jedermann 2013 for the Salzburg Festival the summer of 2017 through 2019.

Appropriate is sponsored by Taco/The White Family Foundation and season sponsors Ocean State Job Lot and RISCA.

Trinity Repertory Company

The State Theater of Rhode Island, Trinity Repertory Company is now in its 53rd season. Since its founding in 1963, Trinity Repertory Company has been one of the most respected regional theaters in the country. Featuring the last permanent resident Acting Company in America, Trinity Rep presents a balance of world premiere, contemporary, and classic works for an estimated annual audience of approximately 145,000. Since 1963, the theater has produced 66 world premieres, mounted national and international tours, and, through its MFA program, trained hundreds of new actors and directors.

Subscriptions for the 2016-2017 season Ghosts of the Past, Dreams of the Future are now on sale. The remainder of Trinity Rep's season include The Mountaintop by Katori Hall, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Faithful Cheaters by Deborah Salem Smith andFuente Ovejuna (The Sheep's Well) by Lope De Vega Carpio. For more information and to purchase tickets, call the box office at (401) 351-4242 or visit Trinity Rep's website at www.trinityrep.com.