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.
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
ARTISTS
PLAYWRIGHT: Karen HartmanMax 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)
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 DRAMAKaneza Schaal in conversation with Daniel Alexander JonesVideos