Marin Shakespeare to Present Readings Butterworth & Kirkwood Plays By Actors' Reading Collective This Month

In July ACTORS' READING COLLECTIVE (ARC) is presenting two premiere play readings on July 10th and July 31st at Marin Shakespeare Company - 514 Fourth St., San Rafael, 94901. Both readings begin at 7 pm.  ARC's mission is to share the artistic, spiritual, and emotional passion uniquely inherent to theater and storytelling. ARC is moving out of its Zoom box origins and onto the Stage. Tickets: https://www.arcstream.org/showtime

On Monday July 10, ARC presents the play reading of The Ferryman by Jez Butterworth. An Irish family is haunted by its past. The Ferryman is directed by Robert Parsons and Anthony Fusco.

The concluding Monday July 31 play reading is The Children by Lucy Kirkwood, in which two scientists are forced into difficult decisions about the future. The Children is directed by Timothy Redmond.

Actors' Reading Collective (ARC) is actor-inspired, -shaped and -driven: a collective molded by mutual efforts and member input. ARC is deeply committed to changing the way BIPOC members are cast, and practice gender and age inclusion in an attempt to move our mutual humanity forward, to listen to what is needed, and what is lacking. ARC challenges communities to change. 

THE READINGS:

 

THE FERRYMAN by Jez Butterworth, Monday, July 10, 2023 at 7pm  

Directed by Robert Parsons and Anthony Fusco

A Bay Area premier reading

The Ferryman takes place in rural County Armagh, in Northern Ireland in 1981, during a rise of violence of the IRA, right in the middle of The Troubles, the decades-long fight for Irish independence from Great Britain. Butterworth brilliantly relates the tension, violence, and dread that rocked Ireland by focusing on a single, extended family, incisively using this domestic microcosm to illuminate the complexities of a society at war with itself.

Cast includes: Andre Amaratico*, Michael J. Asberry*, Mary Baird*, Tony Baldacci, Sylvia Burboeck*, James Carpenter*, Ron Chapman*, Daniel Chung, Sheila M. Devitt, Eddie Ewell*, John Flanagan*, Anthony Fusco*, Kina Kantor*, Julian Lopez-Morillas*, Susan Lynskey*, Leontyne Mbele-Mbong*, Davied Morales, Timothy Roy Redmond*, Cathleen Ridley*, Genevieve Schmidt

Jez Butterworth (Playwright and Screenwriter)

His stage plays include Mojo (1995); The Night Heron (2002), a gangster drama set around a club in 1950s Soho and Winterling (2006), both of which premiered at The Royal Court Theatre; Parlour Song (2009), which opened in New York in 2008; and the multi award-winning comedy, Jerusalem (2009), starring Mark Rylance as Johnny Byron. In 2009, it was named second in The Times Top Twenty Plays of the Decade, and opened on Broadway, New York in 2011. He also adapted the plays Mojo in 1997 and Huge in 1993 for the screen. Other screenplays are Night of the Golden Brain and Christmas, in 1993 and 1996 respectively, both written with his brother Tom Butterworth, and Birthday Girl (2001). The Ferryman play won the Critics Circle Theatre Award (2017), Laurence Olivier Award (2018) and the Tony Award for Best Play (2019).

THE CHILDREN By Lucy Kirkwood, Monday, July 31, 2023 at 7pm

Directed by Timothy Redmond

In a remote cottage two retired scientists, Robin and Hazel, live a quiet life in the wake of a catastrophe at a nearby nuclear plant. When Rose, a fellow nuclear physicist whom they haven't seen for years, suddenly turns up, their precariously ordered existence is disrupted. As the shocking reason for Rose's visit is gradually revealed, Robin and Hazel are forced to make a difficult choice about the future. Critics have called Lucy Kirkwood “the most rewarding dramatist of her generation.” And her Tony nominated play The Children “…a richly suggestive and beautifully written piece of work… tantalizingly hard to define… somewhat menacing, and often funny… What it is not is a polemic about the irresponsibility of baby boomers; instead it rather penetratingly asks what they owe younger generations, exactly.”

Cast includes: Mary Baird*, Luisa Sermol*

Lucy Kirkwood (Playwright and Screenwriter)

Plays by Lucy Kirkwood include: The Welkin (National Theatre, 2020); Mosquitoes (National Theatre, 2017); The Children (Royal Court Theatre, 2016); Chimerica (Almeida Theatre & West End, 2013; winner of the 2014 Olivier Award for Best New Play, the 2013 Evening Standard Best Play Award, the 2014 Critics' Circle Best New Play Award, and the Susan Smith Blackburn Award); NSFW (Royal Court, 2012); small hours (co-written with Ed Hime; Hampstead Theatre, 2011); Beauty and the Beast (with Katie Mitchell; National Theatre, 2010); Bloody Wimmin, as part of Women, Power and Politics (Tricycle Theatre, 2010); it felt empty when the heart went at first but it is alright now (Clean Break & Arcola Theatre, 2009; winner of the 2012 John Whiting Award); Hedda (Gate Theatre, London, 2008); and Tinderbox (Bush Theatre, 2008).

ORIGINS OF ACTORS' READING COLLECTIVE (ARC) 

When the Pandemic began and theaters shuttered in the San Francisco Bay Area, and closed all over the globe, artists worldwide lost in one stroke, their platforms, their stages. We lost our voices, identities and jobs overnight with no hope of potential stage work for an indeterminate amount of time. This group was born out of a reaction to that sudden silencing of our voices and our mutual need to tell stories, our mutual love of words, of Theatre and our need to gather and celebrate each other and the craft we love. It began as a small meeting of friends reading plays on Thursdays at Seven, and has since grown to many members boasting an impressive roster of new generation and well-known Bay Area actors committed to telling stories and to supporting our fellow professionals.

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