UW School Of Drama Presents 12 OPHELIAS

What if, instead of drowning, Shakespeare's Ophelia had splashed through the brook water and found a parallel universe on the other side?

In playwright Caridad Svich's lyrical deconstruction of Hamlet, Ophelia cuts a new path for herself through a neo-Elizabethan Appalachia. In this world, Hamlet is known as Rude Boy, Gertrude is a brothel madam, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are her androgynous helpers.

This show is second-year MFA directing student Amanda Friou's UW Drama mainstage debut. She directed a workshop production of Sheila Callaghan's Crumble (Lay Me Down Justin Timberlake) in the Hughes Penthouse last spring.

The show includes Svich's lyrics set to original songs composed by Kat Sherrell, whose resume as a music director and arranger includes Broadway shows In the Heights, Bring it On, and The Book of Mormon. The show band includes musicians Ligia Pucci De Carvalho on piano and Linda Snyder on guitar.

The production is the master's thesis for scenic designer Isabel Le. Le's ambitious, immersive design-inspired by the innumerable depictions of Ophelia's water death in art and popular culture-spills out of the main playing space and into the Hughes Penthouse lobby. The theatre itself has been significantly reconfigured to accommodate musicians and scenic elements. Le has previously designed UW Drama productions Iphigenia and Other Daughters and Skies Over Seattle, and the UW Musical Theater Program's 2017 production of Pippin.

The Lighting Designer is second-year MFA design student Ranleigh Starling (By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Sueño). The Costume Designer is second-year MFA design student Jordan Fell (By the Way, Meet Vera Stark). The cast is comprised of first- and third-year members of the Professional Actor Training Program (MFA Acting), Porscha Shaw, Tamsen Glaser, Xavier Bleuel, Brandon Pascal, André Brown, Semaj Miller, and Hailey Henderson.

12 Ophelias (a play with broken songs) is part of Seattle Celebrates Shakespeare, a year-long series of events in which dozens of Seattle-area arts groups are joining together to celebrate the works of playwright William Shakespeare through theatre, dance, music, poetry, and film. To learn more about Seattle Celebrates Shakespeare, visit www.seattlecelebrates.org. UW Drama's second contribution to the festival will come June 5th and 6th with An Evening of Sonnets directed by faculty member Bridget Connors and featuring song, dance, and poetry performed by members of the Professional Actor Training Program.

PERFORMANCES
Tuesday, February 13th at 7:30 PM (PREVIEW)
Thursday, February 15th at 7:30 PM (PREVIEW)
Friday, February 16th at 7:30 PM (OPENING NIGHT)
Saturday, February 17th at 7:30 PM
Sunday, February 18th at 2:00 PM (plus pre-show lobby talk at 1:00 PM)
Wednesday, February 21st at 7:30 PM (Pay-What-You-Can, day of show only)
Thursday, February 22nd at 7:30 PM
Friday, February 23rd at 7:30 PM
Saturday, February 24th at 7:30 PM
Sunday, February 25th 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 February 21st 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

Caridad Svich is a playwright/text-builder, theatre-maker, translator, lyricist, editor, and educator. She received a 2012 OBIE Award for Lifetime Achievement in the theatre, a 2012 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award and National New Play Network rolling world premiere for her play Guapa, and the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize for her play The House of the Spirits, based on Isabel Allende's novel. She has won the National Latino Playwriting Award (sponsored by Arizona Theatre Company) twice, including in the year 2013 for her play Spark. She has been short-listed for the PEN Award in Drama four times, including in the year 2012 for her play Magnificent Waste. Her works in English and Spanish have been seen at venues across the US and abroad, among them Arena Stage's Kogod Cradle Series, Denver Center Theatre, 59E59, The Women's Project, Woodshed Collective @ McCarren Park Pool, Repertorio Espanol, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Lighthouse Poole UK, Teatro Mori (Chile), Artheater-Cologne (Germany), Ilkhom Theater (Uzbekistan), Teatro Espressivo (Costa Rica), Welsh Fargo Stage (Wales), Homotopia Festival UK, SummerWorks festival in Toronto, and Edinburgh Fringe Festival/UK.

Key works in her repertoire include 12 Ophelias, Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart, The Booth Variations, Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man's Blues, Any Place But Here, Archipelago, The Way of Water and JARMAN (all this maddening beauty). She has also adapted for the stage novels by Mario Vargas Llosa, Julia Alvarez and Jose Leon Sanchez, and has radically reconfigured works from Wedekind, Euripides, Sophocles, and Shakespeare. Her plays have been directed by Annie Castledine, Maria Irene Fornes, Lisa Peterson, Neel Keller, William Carden, Nick Philippou, Annie Dorsen, Katie Pearl, Stephen Wrentmore, Daniella Topol and Jose Zayas, among many others.

To learn more about Caridad Svich, visit http://caridadsvich.com

Amanda Friou is a director and multidisciplinary artist who joined the Professional Director Training Program (PDTP) at UW Drama after over a decade working in NYC. She has worked nationally at ART, La Jolla Playhouse, Center Theatre Group, The Guthrie, Asolo Rep, and Geva Theatre Center, and in NYC at Ars Nova, NYU, Dixon Place, St. Ann's Warehouse, HERE, and Second Stage. She has assisted directors Jo Bonney, Will Pomerantz, Henry Wishcamper, and Warren Caryle. Favorite projects include the NY premiere of Naomi Wallace's No Such Cold Thing and a site specific production of Martha Boesing's Pimp. Amanda has also built puppets for Basil Twist, Hudson Vagabond Puppets, and Das Puppenspiel Puppet Theatre, where she was also a puppeteer. Friou is a proud graduate of Macalester College, a 2015 Drama League Resident Artist, 2011 Drama League Fellow, and a Member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

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.

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