THE 2008 Pacific Playwrights Festival

South Coast Repertory’s Pacific Playwrights Festival (PPF) celebrates its 11th annual outing with a lineup of longtime collaborators and new theatrical voices. Since its creation in 1998, PPF has grown into one of the most important festivals of new scripts in the United States. Well known as SCR’s premiere showcase for introducing new plays and writers to the national stage, PPF also serves as a gathering place for writers and theatre leaders from across the country to meet and share ideas and interests.

This year’s Festival will take place from May 2 through May 4 and features seven plays during an action-packed weekend:  a workshop production, four staged readings and two fully-staged World Premieres on SCR’s two major stages.

All seven plays in the Festival were commissioned by SCR, including new plays by preeminent American playwrights Richard Greenberg, Amy Freed and Lynn Nottage, and by newcomers John Kolvenbach, Sharr White and Lauren Gunderson. The Festival’s seventh offering was contributed by Los Angeles writer Kate Robin.

“Nationally recognized as an incubator of major talent,” recently stated The New York Times, “South Coast has mounted an impressive list of acclaimed plays, long before the East Coast establishment got wind of them.” SCR’s ten previous Festivals have introduced 57 new plays to the national stage including Amy Freed’s The Beard of Avon, Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel, Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics, Rolin Jones’ The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow and David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Hole.

READINGS

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark
by Lynn Nottage
directed by Mark Rucker
Cast: Sarah Avery, Susan Dalian, Kevin Daniels, Preston Maybank, Leo Marks, Toi Perkins and Erica Tazel
Friday, May 2 at 1:00 p.m. on the Segerstrom Stage

“Each Nottage play is richer and more incisive than the one before,” said American Theatre Magazine about the playwright whose latest work recalls Hollywood in the 1930s. As African-Americans began to break into film, most were relegated to "shucking and jiving."  But Vera, personal maid to the mega star Gloria Mitchell, goes after a meatier role in Gloria’s big budget movie The Belle of New Orleans. Nottage pursues the complicated relationship of these two women into the 1970s and then the present day, revealing much that was hidden about the roles they played and the lives they led.

EMILIE
The Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life
At the Petit Théâtre at Cirey Tonight
by Lauren Gunderson
directed by Kate Whoriskey
Cast: Emily Bergl, Daniel Blinkoff, Linda Gehringer, Nathan Baesel and Katrina Lenk
Friday, May 2 at 3:30 p.m. on the Argyros Stage

Passionate. Independent. A great beauty. A prodigious scientific intellect. Those are the qualities that inspired Gunderson’s story of 18th century Parisian noblewoman Emilie du Châtelet—all that, and Emilie’s lifelong affair with the Enlightenment superstar Voltaire! “The moment I go to live with him in the country, that’s when I switch from eccentric to rebel overnight.” Of course she goes, and in this highly theatrical rediscovery of one of history’s great women, eventually must defend her life by tallying her achievements in Love and Philosophy—looking for a formula that will convince the world of her worth.

Goldfish
by John Kolvenbach
directed by Loretta Greco
Cast: Bradford Anderson, Kathy Baker, Graham Beckel, Jessi Campbell
Saturday, May 3 at 10:30 a.m. on the Argyros Stage

A playwright with “robust humor” (London Evening Standard) more than lives up to his raves with a bittersweet comedy about two college students who fall quirkily in love. She’s loquacious. He’s solitary. But she persists, and—to his amazement—sweeps him off his feet. Then problems develop:  namely,  her mother and his father. In this wistful romance, dealing with eccentric parents stretches the power of love to its limits and sends Albert and Lucy on an imaginative search for a happy ending.

You, Nero
by Amy Freed
directed by Sharon Ott
Cast: Richard Doyle, Mark Harelik, Hal Landon Jr, Lori Larson, Danny Scheie, Susannah Schulman and Erik Sorensen
Sunday, May 4 at 10:30 a.m. on the Segerstrom Stage

Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but who could have imagined the back story? Only Pulitzer Prize finalist Amy Freed, whose comic take on historical events is nothing short of inspired. Nero decides to add a little fun to bleak times by commissioning a play. The Story of Me (or I, Nero) could be the Colosseum’s biggest hit ever—if its hapless author lives to tell the tale. Working furiously, the put-upon scribe shuffles all the familiar characters, and Freed adds a few extras—for our entertainment.

WORKSHOP PRODUCTION

Sunlight
by Sharr White
directed by David Emmes
Cast: Robert Curtis Brown, Robert Foxworth, Sarah Rafferty and Barbara Tarbuck
Friday, May 2 at 7:45; Saturday May 3, at 2:30 and 7:45; and Sunday, May 4 at 2:30 in the Nicholas Studio
(No Late Seating)

Accumulating honors and awards along the way, this playwright-on-the-rise is a storyteller with uncommon insight into his characters—none more compelling than Matthew Gibbon, a charismatic college president who thrives on controversy. On one fearless night, he wreaks havoc upon his own campus and then sits back to watch as those around him try to survive the chaos. But this time he may have gone too far. Will his unprincipled pursuit of his own deepest principles finally bring him down?

FULL PRODUCTIONS

What They Have
World Premiere
by Kate Robin
directed by Chris Fields
Cast: Nancy Bell, Marin Hinkle, Matt Letscher and Kevin Rahm
April 4 - May 4, 2008

Hollywood and the L.A. scene are backdrops for this poignant and funny new play about two industry couples whose lives—and lifestyles—converge in surprising ways.

The Injured Party
World Premiere
by Richard Greenberg
directed by Trip Cullman
T. Scott Cunningham, Cynthia Harris, Marin Ireland, Caroline Lagerfelt, Lorenzo Pisoni and Reg Rogers
April 20 - May 11, 2008

A new comedy about family, love, art, money and ambition by Tony Award winner Richard Greenberg.

INFORMATION

Theater professionals interested in attending the festival should contact Kristina Leach at (714) 708-5841 or kristina@scr.org. A special Festival Package consisting of one ticket to each of the seven events is available.

The Honorary Producers of the 2008 Pacific Playwrights Festival are Bette & Wylie Aitken, Pamela & Curtis Reis, Jean & Tim Weiss and Linda & Tod White. Special thanks to The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust for supporting the Pacific Playwrights Festival and to The Shubert Foundation, whose generous grant supports all of SCR’s play development efforts.

Coast Magazine is the Media Partner and The Wyndham Orange County Hotel is the Official Hotel of the Pacific Playwrights Festival.

Read more about the Pacific Playwrights Festival.

See the list of play titles presented during previous Pacific Playwrights Festivals.