SF Playhouse Announces 'DEAD MAN'S CELL PHONE' To Open 5/9

The SF Playhouse (Bill English, Artistic Director; Susi Damilano, Producing Director) is pleased to announce that the Bay Area Premiere of Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone will fill the previously unannounced 5th slot in its 2008-09 season line up.

An incessantly ringing cell phone in a quiet café. A stranger at the next table who has had enough. And a dead man-with a lot of loose ends. So begins Dead Man's Cell Phone, a wildly imaginative new comedy by playwright Sarah Ruhl, recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant and Pulitzer Prize finalist for her play The Clean House. Dead Man's Cell Phone, is an odyssey of a woman forced to confront her own assumptions about morality, redemption, and the need to connect in a technologically obsessed world.

Sarah Ruhl's plays have been produced at theaters around the country, including Lincoln Center Theater, the Goodman Theatre, Arena Stage, South Coast Repertory, Yale Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, among others, and internationally. She is the recipient of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (for The Clean House, 2004), the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award, and the Whiting Writers' Award. The Clean House was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005. She is a member of 13P and New Dramatists.

The play will be directed by Susi Damilano and feature Joan Mankin* who appeared in the title role of last season's Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge (courtesy of Actors Equity). Further casting to be announced.
About The SF Playhouse
Founded by Bill English and Susi Damilano in 2003, The SF Playhouse is Union Square's intimate, professional theatre. Using professional actors and world class design, The SF Playhouse, which won the Bay Guardian's 2006 Best Off Broadway Theatre Award and about which the San Francisco Chronicle raved, "San Francisco's newest theatre isn't just another tiny stage carved out of a storefront . . . its an enticing introduction to a new company," has become an intimate theatre alternative to the traditional Union Square theatre fare, garnering multiple Bay Area Theatre Critic nominations and awards. Providing a creative home and inspiring environment where actors, directors, writers, designers, and theatre lovers converge, The SF Playhouse, hailed as a "small delicacy" by SF Weekly and "eclectic" by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and "local theater's best kept secret" by San Francisco Magazine, strives to create works that celebrate the human spirit.

DATES: Previews: May 6, 7 and 8, 2009
Open: May 9, 2009
Close: June 13, 2009

SHOWS: Tuesday 7pm, Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m., plus Saturdays 3p.m. NEW: Thursdays are now "Talkback" night.

WHERE: The SF Playhouse
533 Sutter Street (one block off Union Square, b/n Powell & Mason)

TICKETS: For tickets ($20 previews, $40 regular) or more information, the public may contact The SF Playhouse box office at 415-677-9596, or www.sfplayhouse.org.

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