Winter Quarter at UW Drama To Include RUTHERFORD AND SON & IN THE HEART OF AMERICA

This winter, the University of Washington School of Drama will present two works by eminent female dramatists, Rutherford and Son by Githa Sowerby, and In the Heart of America by Naomi Wallace. The productions are master's theses for our graduating MFA directors, Cody Holliday Haefner and Amanda Friou.

Rutherford and Son
By Githa Sowerby
Directed by Cody Holliday Haefner

In 1912, a new play by an unknown playwright, "G.K. Sowerby," took London by storm. Originally scheduled for only four performances at London's Royal Court Theatre, Rutherford and Son quickly transferred to the West End, receiving its New York premiere within the same year, with critics comparing Sowerby's writing to that of Henrik Ibsen. When it was revealed that Sowerby was a woman, she became an overnight celebrity. Her play, however, fared much worse.

Despite its initial success, Sowerby's shattering drama of family business soon faded into an obscurity driven by a sexist industry, and more than half a century passed before it was produced again. UW Drama will only be the third company in the United States to ever present this transformational work of contemporary drama. But time has only sharpened Sowerby's withering, feminist excoriation of the golden age of patriarchy, and the scheming, backstabbing family life that one patriarch wrought-The New York Post called a 2001 production "alive with human passions and tyrannies." Rutherford and Son is included in the Royal National Theatre's List, 100 Most Significant Plays of the 20th Century.

The play is set in industrial northern England at the end of the 19th century, and tells the story of the family of John Rutherford, a glassmaking factory owner and intractable capitalist who believes that life is work. Rutherford alienates each of his children in turn, until he finally meets his match in daughter-in-law Mary, whom The Guardian called "a north country Nora," in reference to the character Nora Helmer in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House.

DATES & LOCATION
January 23 - Feb 3, 2019
Wednesday - Saturday at 7:30
Sunday at 2:00
DATES TO NOTE:
Previews January 19 & 22 at 7:30 PM
Opening night: Wednesday, January 23rd at 7:30 PM
Pre-Show Lobby Talk (speaker TBA), Sunday, January 27th at 1:00 PM
Pay-What-You-Can Wednesday January 30th (day-of-show only, $1 minimum)
Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse
4045 University Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105

ARTISTS

Director Cody Holliday Haefner (pictured, left) is a third-year MFA directing candidate at the UW School of Drama. Previous UW Drama productions: Trojan Women: A Love Story, Cock, For Nigel, The One and Only Seabird of Mana Island. Haefner 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.

CREATIVE TEAM:

Costume Designer: Chanté Hamann (2nd year MFA designer)
Lighting Designer: Ranleigh Starling (3rd year MFA designer)
Set Designer: Adair MacCormack (2nd year MFA designer)
Dramaturg: Shelby Lunderman (PhD student)
Stage Manager: Grecia Leal Pardo (undergraduate Drama major)

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

John Rutherford: Brace Evans (guest actor)
Ann Rutherford: Angie Bolton (guest actor)
John: AJ Friday (3rd year PATP)
Janet: Allyson Lee Brown (3rd year PATP)
Richard: Semaj Miller (3rd year PATP)
Mary: Alyssa Franks (2nd year PATP)
Martin: Phillip Ray Guevara (3rd year PATP)
Mrs. Henderson: Alana Cheshire (3rd year PATP)

In the Heart of America
By Naomi Wallace
Directed by Amanda Friou (3rd year MFA director)

In the shadow of the Gulf War, a young Palestinian woman's quest to learn what happened to her brother, Remzi, a U.S. Army soldier, leads her to a Kentuckian soldier named Craver. Through a poetic web of time leaps and apparitions, we see the two men fall in love while war rages. Woven into that story, the ghost of a Vietnamese mother, Lu Ming, seeks justice for her infant daughter, a victim of the 1968 massacre at My Lai. Playwright Naomi Wallace, known for her signature blend of politics, eroticism, and lyricism, here masterfully rings the gong of histories that still reverberate through our national body.

Kentucky-born Wallace is author of Night is a Room, One Flea Spare, Slaughter City, and The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, among numerous others. She is a two-time recipient of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the winner of an Obie Award and MacArthur Fellowship. A human rights activist, she is known for work for that is political in content and radical in form. Tony Kushner has said, "Naomi Wallace commits the unpardonable sin of being partisan, and, the darkness and harshness of her work notwithstanding, outrageously optimistic. She seems to believe the world can change. She certainly writes as if she intends to set it on fire." In 2009, Wallace's play One Flea Spare was added to the permanent repertoire of the French National Theater, the Comédie-Francaise, making her only the second American ever to have a play included in that prestigious, 300-year-old collection.

DATES & LOCATION
March 6 - 17, 2019
Wednesday - Saturday at 7:30
Sunday at 2:00
Previews March 2 & 5 at 7:30 PM
Pre-Show Lobby Talk (speaker TBA) Sunday March 10th at 1:00 PM
Pay-What-You-Can Wednesday March 13th (day-of-show only, $1 minimum)
Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse
4045 University Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105

ARTISTS

Director: Amanda Friou (3rd year MFA director)
Director Amanda Friou (pictured, b) is a third-year MFA directing candidate at the UW School of Drama. Previous UW Drama productions: 12 Ophelias (a play with broken songs), Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake), and Cripple Can't Dance. Friou came to UW after a decade working in New York City. 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.

CREATIVE TEAM:

Costume Designer: Jordan Fell (3rd year MFA designer)
Lighting Designer: Chun Yen Huang (3rd year MFA designer)
Set Designer: Shin-yi Lin (3rd year MFA designer)

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

Remzi: Adrian Tafesh (3rd year PATP)
Fairouz: Tricia Castañeda-Gonzales (3rd year PATP)
Lue Ming: Asialani Holman (1st year PATP)
Craver: Jon Díaz (1st year PATP)
Boxler: Greg Lyle-Newton (guest actor)

TICKET PRICES

Access for students continues to be a top priority. Student ticket prices, which were lowered last year, will remain $10 for regular performances and $8 for previews. We will host a community Pay-What-You-Can the second Wednesday of each run.

Ticket prices for all UW Drama mainstage shows:

$20 - Regular
$14 - UWAA, UW Employee or Retiree, Senior
$10 - Student
$5 - TeenTix
Previews: $10 - Regular / $8 - Student

Tickets can be purchased at drama.uw.edu or through the ArtsUW Ticket Office: 206-543-4880, ticket@uw.edu.

SPRING MAINSTAGE PROGRAMMING
Check drama.uw.edu for full details

SPRING QUARTER

Romeo and Jules
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Geoff Korf
Text and acting coaching by Amy Thone
April 17 - 28, 2019
Previews April 13 & 16
Pre-Show Lobby Talk Sunday, April 21st
Pay-What-You-Can Wednesday April 24th
Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse

The Learned Ladies
By Molière, Translated by Richard Wilbur
Directed by Jane Nichols
May 22 - June 2, 2019
Previews May 18 & 21
Pay-What-You-Can Wednesday May 29th
Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre

ABOUT THE UW SCHOOL OF DRAMA

Led by Interim Executive Director Lynn Thomas and Associate Director Geoff Korf, the UW School of Drama is consistently ranked among the top theatre training programs in the country. Emerging actors, directors, and designers come from all over the world to study with our world-class faculty and prominent guest artists, such as Erik Ehn, Anne Washburn, Daniel Alexander Jones, and Meiyin Wang. Our audiences are adventurous theatre-goers who want the opportunity to see engaging, provocative, and beautiful work.

As an educational institution, UW Drama is able to produce the types of plays that are harder and harder to find on professional stages: large-cast shows with highly diverse casting, period pieces with opulent, detailed designs, and boundary-pushing plays that test form and style. We produce in three intimate, comfortable spaces on the UW Seattle campus: The Hughes Penthouse Theatre (the first purpose-built theatre-in-the-round in the U.S.), the Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse, and the Meany Studio Theater.