San Francisco Playhouse Stages SEMINAR, Now thru 6/14

San Francisco Playhouse (Artistic Director Bill English & Producing Director Susi Damilano) continues its provocative eleventh season with Seminar by recent Susan Blackburn Award nominee Theresa Rebeck (Smash, The Scene).

Five hundred dollars a week for all the abuse you can take. And maybe sex. That's what four aspiring novelists pay for a ten-week private writing class with legendary author Leonard. This biting Broadway comedy about power, sex, and art is a smorgasbord of vicious, hilarious wordplay examining the collision of innocence and experience.Seminar premiered on Broadway in 2011 leading with Alan Rickman and later Jeff Goldblum.

Amy Glazer, who directed Theresa Rebeck's The Scene as well as its film adaptation (Seducing Charlie Barker), will direct this production of Seminar for San Francisco Playhouse featuring a cast starring Charles Shaw Robinson* as Leonard with Lauren English*, Natalie Mitchell*, Patrick Russell* and James Wagner*.

Theresa Rebeck (Playwright) is a prolific playwright represented by multiple productions throughout the United States and abroad. New York theater audiences have seen her plays Dead Accounts, Seminar, Mauritius, The Scene, The Water's Edge, Loose Knit, The Family of Mann, Spike Heels, Bad Dates, The Butterfly Collection, Our House, The Understudy, View of the Dome and Omnium Gatherum. Ms. Rebeck has written two novels, Three Girls and Their Brother and Twelve Rooms with a View. For television, Ms. Rebeck has written for Dream On, Brooklyn Bridge, L.A. Law, American Dreamer, Maximum Bob, First Wave, and Third Watch. As well as creating the NBC hitSmash, Rebeck has written and produced for Canterbury's Law, Smith, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and NYPD Blue. Her feature films include Harriet the Spy, Gossip, and the independent features Sunday on the Rocks andSeducing Charlie Barker, an adaptation of The Scene. For NYPD Blue, Rebeck's awards include the Mystery Writer's of America's "Edgar Award," the Writer's Guild of America award for Episodic Drama, the Hispanic Images "Imagen Award," and the Peabody. She has won the National Theatre Conference Award (for The Family of Mann), and was awarded the William Inge "New Voices Playwriting Award" in 2003 for The Bells. Mauritius was originally produced at Boston's Huntington Theatre, where it received the 2007 IRNE Award for Best New Play as well as the Eliot Norton Award. Other awards include the PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award, the Athena Film Festival Award, an Alex Award, a Lilly Award and in 2011 she was named one of the 150 Fearless Women in the World by Newsweek. Ms. Rebeck is originally from Cincinnati and holds an MFA in Playwriting and a PhD. in Victorian Melodrama, both from Brandeis University. She is a proud board member of the Dramatists Guild, a Contributing Editor to the Harvard Review, an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre Company and instructor at Brandeis and Columbia Universities. Rebeck lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

Charles Shaw Robinson (Leonard) Favorite roles include Shag in Bill Cain's Equivocation (Marin Theatre Company); Milton in the West Coast premiere of Tony Kushner'sHomebody/Kabul (Berkeley Repertory Theatre); Iago in Othello (California Shakespeare Theatre); and Henri in Magic Fire, directed by Jack O'Brien (Berkeley Repertory Theatre/Old Globe). Regional Theatre credits include the title roles in Hamlet (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park), Pericles (Centerstage), and Scaramouche (The Empty Space Theatre). He was last seen in New York in the American premiere of Frank McGuinness's Gates of Gold at 59E59 Theaters, and before that at the Second Stage Theatre as the Father in Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice (a production that began its long life at Berkeley Repertory Theatre). Other New York work includes John Houseman's production of The Cradle Will Rock; The Common Pursuit, written and directed by Simon Gray; andBattery, directed by R. J. Cutler. He trained at Juilliard.

Amy Glazer (Director) is the Associate Artistic Director of the San Francisco Playhouse. She has directed numerous world, American, and West Coast premieres, most recently Abigail's Party, Becky Shaw, Animals Out of Paper, Harper Regan, Shining City and The Scene (SF Playhouse), The Couch (3Girls), The Model Apartment (TJT). For Magic Theatre, where Glazer was an associate artist for many years, her work included The God Of Hell, The Crowd You're In With, The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, Blue Surge and The American in Me, Drifting Elegant, Tape, and Wyoming. She has also directed at Marin Theater Company, Eureka Theatre, TheatreWorks, Glazer's short film, Ball Lightning, premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival, and her feature film, Drifting Elegant, premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival. Her latest feature film, Seducing Charlie Barker, adapted from Theresa Rebeck's The Scene has shown in film festivals throughout the country. Amy Glazer is a theatre and film professor at San Jose State University.

San Francisco Playhouse was founded by Susi Damilano and Bill English in 2003. Located in the heart of Union Square's Theater District, San Francisco Playhouse is the city's "Off-Broadway" company, a powerful intimate alternative to the larger, more traditional city venues. San Francisco Playhouse provides audiences with the opportunity to experience professional theater close up, produced by top-notch actors and with world-class design. The company has been awarded a range of accolades for acting, design, and production including the SF Weekly's Best Theatre Award and The Bay Guardian's Best Off-Broadway Theatre Award. Presenting a diverse array of plays and musicals, San Francisco Playhouse produces new works as well as re-imagined classics, "making the edgy accessible and the traditional edgy." The company's 2012-2013 Season marked its 10th anniversary and as it moved to a newly renovated venue,The San Francisco Chronicle raved that "the company that lived a hand-to-mouth existence for its first few years has become the little playhouse that could. It quickly established a reputation for attracting some of the Bay Area's best acting and directing talent, as well as for its exciting play choices. And with its bold Sandbox Series, it's become a player in developing new works as well." San Francisco Playhouse is committed to providing a creative home and inspiring environment where actors, designers, directors, theatergoers and writers converge to create works that celebrate the human spirit.

Seminar will run tonight, April 29 to June 14 with previews April 29 to May 2 at 8pm. Curtain times are Tuesday through Thursday at 7pm, Friday and Saturday at 8pm, Saturday at 3pm and select Sundays (5.18, 6.1 and 6.8) at 2pm.

For tickets ($30-$100) or more information, the public may contact The San Francisco Playhouse box office at 415-677-9596, or www.sfplayhouse.org.

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