UW Drama presents TROJAN WOMEN: A LOVE STORY by Charles L. Mee

In the spring of 1996, director Tina Landau developed a new play by her longtime collaborator Charles L. Mee with students at the UW School of Drama. The play was Trojan Women: A Love Story, and it premiered in New York that same summer.

This winter, Mee's brutal, lusty collage-rummaged and remade from ancient and contemporary texts-will once again be animated by UW Drama students. And, once again, there will be a hot tub.

Charles L. Mee is a historian-turned-playwright who builds plays from "found" texts and songs-that is, he makes new work from existing work, "[pillaging] the structures and contents of the plays of Euripides and Brecht and stuff out of Soap Opera Digest and the evening news and the internet."1 Through his (re)making project, he encourages other artists to do the same with his plays.

The source material for Trojan Women: A Love Story is Euripides' play The Trojan Women and Hector Berlioz's 1859 opera Les Troyens, which in turn retells the story of Aeneas and Queen Dido of Carthage from Virgil's epic, The Aeneid. Act 1, The Prologue, takes place outside the smoking ruins of Troy in the immediate aftermath of the Trojan War. Act II, The Play, takes place in Carthage, reimagined in this production as a dream pool, complete with water ballets.

Second-year MFA director Cody Holliday Haefner directs a cast of MFA actors from UW Drama's Professional Actor Training Program (plus one undergraduate!) The designers are all MFA design students, and the production is costume designer Emily Woods Hogue's master's thesis.

PERFORMANCES
Tuesday, January 16th at 7:30 PM (PREVIEW)
Thursday, January 18th at 7:30 PM (PREVIEW)
Friday, January 19th at 7:30 PM (OPENING NIGHT)
Saturday, January 20th at 7:30 PM
Sunday, January 21st at 2:00 PM (plus pre-show lobby talk at 1:00 PM)
Wednesday, January 24th at 7:30 PM (Pay-What-You-Can, day of show only)
Thursday, January 25th at 7:30 PM
Friday, January 26th at7:30 PM
Saturday, January 27th at 7:30 PM
Sunday, January 28th at 2:00 PM

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 December January 24th at 7:30
Available at drama.uw.edu or by calling the ArtsUW ticket office at 206.543.4880

LOCATION
Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse
4045 University Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105
Google Map: https://goo.gl/maps/yUbevun1LKB2

ARTISTS

PLAYWRIGHT: Charles L. Mee
DIRECTOR: Cody Holliday Haefner (2nd year MFA director)

CAST (PATP = Professional Actor Training Program, MFA in Acting)
Hecuba Bridget McKevitt (3rd year PATP)
Andromache/2nd Act Chorus Alyssa Franks (1st year PATP)
Cassandra/Valerie/2nd Act Chorus Allyson Brown (2nd year PATP)
Polyxena Annie Willis (undergraduate)
Talthybius/2nd Act Veteran Taylor Jones (2nd year PATP)
Bill/2nd Act Veteran Phillip Ray Guevara (2nd year PATP)
Ray Bob/Menelaus/2nd Act Veteran Allen Miller (3rd year PATP)
Helen/Sei/2nd Act Chorus Alana Chesire (2nd year PATP)
Chea/2nd Act Chorus Tricia Castañeda-Gonzales (2nd year PATP)
Eisa/2nd Act Chorus Jessica Thorne (2nd year PATP)
Aimable/Dido Bria Henderson (3rd year PATP)
Aeneas Adrian Tafesh (2nd year PATP)

DESIGNERS
Costume Designer Emily Woods Hogue (3rd year MFA designer)
Lighting Designer Amber Parker (3rd year MFA designer)
Set Designer Shin-yi Lin (2nd year MFA designer)

MORE ABOUT CODY HOLLIDAY HAEFNER
Director Cody Holliday Haefner is in his second year of UW Drama's MFA Directing program. Trojan Women: A Love Story will be his first mainstage show at UW. He directed Mike Bartlett's Cock as a lab project last March. He holds a BA in Drama and Theatre Arts from Columbia University, and was a co-founder of New York Theatre Company The Brewing Department (T.B.D.) where he directed productions of HamletGhosts, The Living Room, and The Lady from the Sea.

MORE ABOUT Charles L. Mee
Charles L. Mee has written Big Love and True Love and First Love, bobrauschenbergamerica and Limonade tous les Jours, Orestes 2.0 and Iphigenia 2.0, and Summertime and Wintertime among other plays. He is the recipient of the lifetime achievement award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an Obie award for Big Love. He is a frequent collaborator of directors Tina Landau and Anne Bogart, among others, and his plays have been performed at the Wilma Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Actors' Theatre of Louisville, BAM, The Public Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Guthrie Theater, Seattle Repertory Theatre, ACT Theatre, and many others.

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 UW DRAMA MAINSTAGE PRODUCTIONS

12 Ophelias (a play with broken songs)
By Caridad Svich
Directed by Amanda Friou

In a neo-Elizabethan Appalachia, Ophelia rises out of the water, dreaming of Pop-Tarts and imagining how things might have gone differently for her. Hamlet is here, as Rude Boy. Gertrude is a brothel madam, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern her androgynous helpers. Playwright Caridad Svich constructs a beguiling lyrical landscape out of broken desires and repaired ambitions.

Dates: February 16 - 25 (Previews February 13 & 15)
Location: Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre
Tickets: $5 - $20
More info and tickets: https://drama.washington.edu/events/2018-02-13/12-ophelias-play-broken-songs
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Angels in America Part 2: Perestroika
By Tony Kushner
Directed by Marc Valdez

Part two of Tony Kushner's epic tale of AIDS in 1980s America begins in a ruined place where the old orders are splintering and everything-and everyone-has come apart. Prior Walter is a prophet, and now the "great work" of rebuilding this devastated world can begin. We meet characters who, having faced annihilation, must now confront their own stubborn indestructability. Profoundly funny, magnificently theatrical, and startlingly timely, Perestroika is a story about locating hope in the midst of chaos. The New York Times called it "a true millennial work of art, uplifting, hugely comic and pantheistically religious in a very American style."

Dates: April 27 - May 6 (Previews April 24 & 26)
Location: Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse Theatre, University of Washington
Tickets: $5 - $20
More info and tickets: https://drama.washington.edu/events/2018-04-24/angels-america-part-two-perestroika
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Goldie, Max and Milk
By Karen Hartman
Directed by Allison Narver

Max, a single lesbian, just gave birth. She's unemployed, with a house that's falling apart, an ex on the loose, and no clue how to nurse her newborn. Can Goldie, an Orthodox Jewish lactation consultant, guide Max into motherhood? Or will conflicting family values get the better of them both? Playwright and UW Drama Senior Artist-in-Residence Karen Hartman makes her UW Drama debut with this hilarious, surprising, and deeply human play. The Palm Beach New Times says, "No synopsis could adequately preview playwright Karen Hartman's wicked gift for language."

Dates: May 25 - June 3 (Previews May 22 & 24)
Location: Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre, University of Washington
Tickets: $5 - $20
More info and tickets: https://drama.washington.edu/events/2018-05-22/goldie-max-and-milk

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