UW Drama Presents Karen Hartman's GOLDIE, MAX AND MILK

The final show in UW Drama's 2018-2019 mainstage season is Karen Hartman's hilarious, surprising, and deeply human comedy Goldie, Max and Milk.

The play begins in the chaotic postpartum world of Max, a newly-single lesbian mom. Max is unemployed, with a house that's falling apart, an ex on the loose, and no clue how to nurse her newborn. Enter Goldie, an Orthodox Jewish lactation consultant, whose attempts to guide Max into motherhood are complicated by conflicting family values, and her struggle to accept the identity of her own daughter, the teenaged Shayna.

Talking to Jewish in Seattle magazine's Tova Gannana, Hartman described the intersections of identity in her play like this, "'Jewish' and 'lesbian' are broad categories, with a lot of overlap. I was married to a woman before I married my husband, so the characters of Max and Lisa come deeply from my own experience. I would say that the cultures that meet in this play are more insulated subsets of those categories - Orthodox Jewish and coastal, left-wing lesbian. Max calls Goldie into her life to teach her to be a mother in a basic way - how to nurse - something that Max assumed would be easy and natural. Max learns much more than that from Goldie, and is deeply changed by her. Similarly, Goldie eventually relies on Max for guidance through a parenting crisis of her own. I wanted to create a story in which mothers learn from each other in a surprising way."

Hartman is known to Seattle audiences for her play Roz and Ray, a powerful story of the romance between an AIDS researcher and the father of twin hemophiliac sons, which ran at Seattle Repertory Theatre in 2016 to great acclaim. This season three of her plays continue around the country: Roz and Ray (2016 Edgerton New Play Prize) at San Diego Repertory Theater and Theater J in Washington DC, Project Dawn (NEA Art Works Grant, National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere) at Horizon Theater in Atlanta and Unicorn Theater in Kansas City, and The Book of Joseph at Everyman Theater in Baltimore. SuperTrue (Kilroy's List of top plays by women) premieres at Know Theater in Cincinnati.

A core member of the Playwright Center, Hartman held their 2014-2015 McKnight Residency and Commission for a nationally recognized playwright. Hartman's personal and political essays have been published in the New York Times and the Washington Post. In 2016 she co-founded the national project #TogetherForAbortion, a day of conversations in all fifty states about reproductive rights. She wrote an introduction for Double Exposure: Plays of the Jewish and Palestinian Diasporas, published in 2017 by Playwrights Canada Press. At the UW School of Drama, Hartman teaches playwriting and solo performance to undergraduate and graduate students. To learn more about Karen Hartman, visit http://www.karenhartman.org.

Director Allison Narver is an internationally acclaimed, Seattle-based director whose long list of local directing credits includes work at Seattle Repertory Theatre (Sherlock Holmes, Boeing Boeing, Three Tall Women), 5th Avenue Theatre (Man of La Mancha), and ACT Theatre (The Mystery of Love & Sex). Nationally, Allison has directed at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, RedCat, and Portland Center Stage, and at New York's Public Theatre, New Victory Theater, Ars Nova, Cherry Lane Theater, and others. She was the resident director of Julie Taymor's The Lion King, both on Broadway and in London, and is the former Artistic Director of Empty Space Theatre. Goldie, Max and Milk marks Narver's UW Drama debut.

The cast is comprised of graduate and undergraduate actors, and the designers are all members of UW Drama's MFA Design program. (See below for full artist list.)

PERFORMANCES
Tuesday, May 22nd at 7:30 PM (PREVIEW)
Thursday, May 24th at 7:30 PM (PREVIEW)
Friday, May 25th at 7:30 PM (OPENING NIGHT)
Saturday, May 26th at 7:30 PM
Sunday, May 27th at 2:00 PM
Wednesday, May 30th at 7:30 PM (Pay-What-You-Can, day of show only)
Thursday, May 31st at 7:30 PM
Friday, June 1st at 7:30 PM (UW Drama alumni night)
Saturday, June 2nd at 7:30 PM
Sunday, June 3rd at 2:00 PM (Post-play discussion: Please Discuss, with Karen Hartman; Emily Alhadeff, editor-in-chief, Jewish in Seattle magazine; and Rabbi Dana Benson, Assistant Director, UW Hillel)

DATES TO NOTE:

Opening Night: Friday, May 25th at 7:30 PM
Pay-What-You-Can: Wednesday, May 30th at 7:30 (PWYC tickets available day-of-show only, $1 minimum)
UW Drama alumni night: Friday, June 1st at 7:30 PM (pre-show reception at 6:30 PM)
Please Discuss: A Goldie, Max and Milk post-play discussion with playwright Karen Hartman; Emily Alhadeff, editor-in-chief, Jewish in Seattle magazine; and Rabbi Dana Benson, Assistant Director, UW Hillel): Sunday, June 3rd following the 2:00 PM matinee performance

TICKETS
$20 Regular
$14 UW employee or retiree, senior (62+), UWAA member
$10 Student
$5 TeenTix
Pay-What-You-Can, day of show only, Wednesday, May 2nd at 7:30
Available at drama.uw.edu or by calling the ArtsUW ticket office at 206.543.4880

LOCATION
Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre
University of Washington, northeast campus
Near entrance at NE 45th St. and 17th Ave NE, adjacent to N-4 parking lot
Google Map: https://goo.gl/maps/yUbevun1LKB2

ARTISTS

PLAYWRIGHT: Karen Hartman
DIRECTOR: Allison Narver

CAST (PATP = Professional Actor Training Program, MFA in Acting)

Max Tricia Castañeda-Gonzales (2nd year PATP)
Goldie Jessica Thorne (1st year PATP)
Mike Adrian Tafesh (2nd year PATP)
Lisa Alana Cheshire (2nd year PATP)
Shayna Miranda White (undergraduate)

DESIGNERS
Costume Designer Jordan Fell (2nd year MFA designer)
Lighting Designer Chun Yen Huang (1st year MFA designer)
Set Designer Wenzheng Zhang (2nd year MFA designer)
Sound Designer Brian Dang (undergraduate)

GRAPHIC DESIGN by Melanie Wang

ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF DRAMA
The UW School of Drama develops innovative and courageous artists and scholars poised to be the creative leaders of tomorrow.

For 76 years it has served as one of this country's leading training institutions for theatre artists and scholars. The School of Drama offers MFA degrees in acting, design, and directing, a four-year undergraduate liberal arts education in Drama, and a PhD in theatre history and criticism. Faculty and alumni have founded theatres such as ACT Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Empty Space Theatre, Jet City Improv, and more recently, the Washington Ensemble Theatre, Azeotrope, and The Horse in Motion. The School of Drama is a laboratory for leading-edge performance research, attracting internationally renowned guest artists like Anne Washburn, Daniel Alexander Jones, Erik Ehn, Meiyin Wang, Chay Yew, Whit MacLaughlin, and PearlDamour, offering students the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from masters in their field and forge critical connections to the world of professional theatre.

UPCOMING EVENTS AT UW DRAMA

Kaneza Schaal in conversation with Daniel Alexander Jones
Kaneza Schaal, creator of JACK & (at On the Boards May 10 - 13) talks with UW Drama Mellon Creative Fellow Daniel Alexander Jones, whose show Night Flowers showed at On the Boards in October, 2017.
Monday, May 14, 2018, 6 PM, Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse
More info: https://drama.washington.edu/events/2018-05-14/kaneza-schaal-conversation-daniel-alexander-jones

An Evening of Shakespeare
Faculty member Bridget Connors and UW Drama student actors celebrate the start of summer with an evening of Shakespearean scenes, monologues, and sonnets, all on the theme of love. Expect music, dancing, and merriment!
Tuesday & Wednesday June 5 & 6, 2018, 7:30 PM, Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse
More info: https://drama.washington.edu/events/2018-06-05/evening-shakespeare

We will announce our 2018-2019 season on Thursday, May 17th!

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