Ray Dooley: Finding and Becoming Leonard in Seminar

Ray Dooley as Leonard

In Seminar, Ray Dooley plays the ruthless and frank character of Leonard, a writer/editor who conducts private seminars with young writers looking for both expert criticism and connections to the field of publishing. "Leonard's brain moves so quickly that one sentence can last the better part of a minute. His mind is continually turning over new images and thoughts, and new thoughts are pushing the previous thought out of the way as he strives to make his point the most effective way he can," says Ray, describing how Leonard's grammar is connective and that learning it requires intuitive leaps, one of the largest challenges of playing the role.

With a cast of five, the play "adheres to the unities of time, space and action" more closely than some other productions. The scenes lead to a final showdown, which creates a tighter and smaller canvas. Leonard is moving on a straight line towards an climactic encounter, which is easier to get one's mind around, "but just as a sonata or a quartet, it's not necessarily easier to play." Ray says that although it's different, it's more focused, and in some ways more demanding.

Through a series of metaphorical exercises led by director Michael Dove, Ray was able to uncover the underpinnings of each scene and the skeleton beneath the surface which provided structure to the action.

"Near the end of the play, I have a long speech where I am including one of the young writers in a pointed and emphatic critique of his life, my life and the writing profession. Myles [Bullock], the actor playing the young writer, in order to 'protect' himself, started building a wall around me with chairs. It became that he was putting me in a prison so that I couldn’t get to him with my critique and attack. At the end of the speech, what happens in the play is that my character leaves his character in a very exposed and bleak position. As I got near the end of that speech, I walked around, took him by the hand, walked him into the prison he had created, and as I finished the speech, I close the door on him. We had a visual metaphor of what my character had, in essence, done to his character, leaving him locked in a prison of his own creation. It was a beautiful visualization of that moment."

The four actors playing the writing students in PlayMakers' production are actually Ray's students in UNC's Professional Actor Training Program. "There's always extra pressure when you are working without a net with your own students." He describes the pressure to practice what he preaches, as they can see whether or not he's applying the things taught in the studio. "It's also a great joy when I see these early career professionals doing so well," says Ray.

When creating the wardrobe for Leonard, Ray and Jade Bettin, costume designer for Seminar, drew closely from real life models. "There's an actor in New York I admire greatly, who has some similarities to Leonard." To some degree, they based the wardrobe on that real life person's clothing choices, found in professional and candid photos. "When an actor is building belief in a character, it's a great help to know that these are looks that actually work in real life." The duo also considered where Leonard had just come from and where he is going. In doing that, Ray is able to build a backstory for the earlier portion of the day, which may or may not have gone well.

In terms of set, scenic designer Robin Vest has built a sunken living room downstage, close to the audience, where the first two seminar sessions take place. This allows for a more personal, intimate setting, whereas if the play were upstage, "we would have to try to open it out to the audience, almost as if we were playing in a proscenium house, and probably not able to play quite so intimately." Ray says that playing downstage allows the cast to "paint with fine brushes" rather than having to be sure the audience can hear and see them, allowing the cast more flexibility.

Ray feels it has been a rare privilege to be a part of PlayMakers for so long. Being at PlayMakers is the job Ray says he trained for in the 1970s at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. "Among the greatest joys are my colleagues." Ray describes the role of Leonard as a parting gift from former Producing Artistic Director Joseph Haj and calls working with director Michael Dove "a joy." "It's an extraordinary company of people, and in many ways, a family. We have become the fabric of each other's lives and it shows in the work on stage."

"I certainly get inspiration from the audience here; the audience and I have a 26-year relationship now-and that’s a great privilege. I try to live up to that every time I step on stage and try to live up to the responsibility and the implicit promise every time." 

- Ray Dooley

Seminar takes the stage October 14th through November 1st.

Click here or call our Box Office at 919-962-7529 for tickets.

2015/16 Season Preview and Q&A with Joseph Haj

On June 11th at 6:30pm we’re hosting a special preview of the upcoming season including a Q&A with Producing Artistic Director Joseph Haj. WUNC’s Frank Stasio will join Joe onstage to discuss the 2015/16 lineup and what’s ahead for PlayMakers. It will be an evening of celebration for our PlayMakers family and the community.

As a prelude to our June 11th event, Joe sat down for an interview with PlayMakers dramaturg Jacqueline Lawton to discuss how he selects a season and what excites him about our new slate of plays. He also shares a few thoughts on his time at PlayMakers.

Read on for highlights from their conversation; then we hope you’ll join us on June 11th for more of Joe’s insider look at the road ahead and the chance to pose some of your own questions.

This event is FREE, but reservations are required, first come, first served, as space is limited. Please contact the Box Office at 919.962.7529 to reserve your spot today!

Click here for June 11th event details.

A conversation with Producing Artistic Director Joseph Haj & Dramaturg Jacqueline Lawton

Jacqueline Lawton (JL): What guides you when selecting a season? 

Joseph Haj (JH): A season ought to feel like a multi-course meal. If it’s all dessert, that’s no good. If it’s all meat, that’s no good either. Like any good meal, there’s a salad, a first course, an entrée, and, of course, dessert and coffee. We proportion the menu with a variety of dishes - larger to smaller cast shows, larger to smaller productions. We also want to give ample opportunities to our company – our resident acting company as well as the graduate students in technical and costume production. So, for instance, we ask - is there a play in period in the season? The students can’t just put jeans and t-shirts on characters all season long. There must be a variety of styles and approaches for educational purposes, along with providing variety onstage. So you see many factors are involved. But to answer the question narrowly, we choose a pattern of plays that make us sit up and say “THIS … this is the season we want to make.”

JL: The 2015/16 Mainstage Season opener is Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar. Why did you want to produce this play?

JH: I went with my family to visit my wife’s parents in South Carolina and Disgraced was one of several scripts I read over the weekend. I finished reading and was so disturbed by it. And all the other plays all kind of vanished. All I could think about was this complicated, atypical, challenging play. It caused me to think about ideas around, not just racial prejudice, but cultural assimilation. Anything that had me thinking for so long and so deeply about these important questions had to be a part of the season.

JL: Next in the lineup is Seminar by Theresa Rebeck. Why do you feel Seminar will resonate so well here? 

JH: I love this play particularly in our world here, as a professional theatre on a university campus. The play deals with the dynamic of a brilliant, complicated teacher and four students, who pay a fair amount of money to be close to his genius and learn about writing. It says an awful lot about the dynamic between teachers and students, and the way we make heroes and knock them down. It also lines up beautifully for the magnificent actor, Ray Dooley, in the central role of the teacher, and four members of our acting company as the students.

JL: Then you selected Peter and the Starcatcher for the holidays. 

JH: I wanted a family show for the holiday season, but the challenge is to find something that’s thrilling, fun, beautifully crafted, and not just for kids. So, I’m very excited about Peter and the Starcatcher because it truly resonates on an adult level as well as with young people. It’s an absolute delight, filled with invention and will feature 13-14 members of our acting company. Brendon Fox, who led terrific productions of Opus and Angels in America at PlayMakers, will be directing for us.

JL: Following that, we have the world premiere of a new adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters. 

JH: Libby Appel, former artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is one of our great Chekhov scholars, translators, adaptors, and I love her new version of Three Sisters. I love her point of view. It’s smart and muscular. It’s not pulled out of period in any way, yet it feels contemporary in a way that feels close to us. To see Anton Chekhov’s great text through the lens of Libby’s expertise made me excited to do this play. And with a wonderful director like Vivienne Benesch, who’s been with us on multiple occasions (Red, In the Next Room, Love Alone), it will be in good hands.

JL: From there, we have We Are Proud to Present… by Jackie Sibblies Drury. What draws you to this play? 

JH: I love this play. I love it formally. I love it aesthetically. I love its politics. A group of well-minded, well-intentioned folks get together to try to put on a play - which is something ludicrously hard to do under the best of circumstances. Then, in their exploration of the topics in the play, the wheels come off, which ends up being terrifically revealing about the undercurrents of prejudice that reside even in those of us who consider ourselves progressive. The play illuminates these ideas in insightful ways in the form of a very exciting piece of theatre. We Are Proud to Present… will be directed by Desdemona Chiang, who so beautifully helmed this season’s Mainstage finale, 4000 Miles.

JL: Tell us about the Mainstage Season finale, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. 

JH: Sondheim is hands-down one of our great playwrights; and Sweeney Todd, which is almost entirely sung, is a masterpiece. A revenge story, it’s set against the meat grinder of the Industrial Revolution. This idea of the meat grinder – in the story there are people ground into pies – is a metaphor for a society grinding its own citizens into the dust. With themes of economic disparity, it speaks to our current moment in a lot of ways. I’m thrilled to have it in the season as another look at the masterworks of Stephen Sondheim, as last season featured Into the Woods.

JL: Why did you chose Uncle Ho to Uncle Sam and Highway 47 for the PRC² second stage series?

JH: Uncle Ho to Uncle Sam follows the harrowing journey of Trieu Tran and his family from Vietnam to the United States. It’s a profound immigrant story. KJ Sanchez’s Highway 47 is another story about the American experience. KJ can track her ancestry in New Mexico back at least a dozen generations through the land given to her family through Spanish land grants. The play is about enormous battles in her family for the rights to that land. KJ is both writer and performer; as is Trieu Tran of his play.

JL: Being located in the Triangle area of North Carolina and based on a university campus, there’s a wide range of cultures, racial and gender identities, religions in our community. Can you talk about the efforts that go into making sure those communities are represented onstage in the plays and off stage in the audience? 

JH: It’s an enormous challenge. Universities are often seen as ivory towers in their broader community. And theatres, institutional theatres, are often thought of in the same way. So when you’re a professional theatre housed on a university campus, you’re talking about an ivory tower inside an ivory tower in terms of perception. We’ve worked very, very, very hard over these last nine years to make the walls of the building more porous. To offer a broader sense of invitation – to really make clear that all of our community is welcome and desired to be part of our theatre.

JL: Share with us how you work to bring greater inclusion to theatre. 

JH: The leader of an organization needs to determine whether diversity is a priority. And if it is, then you must be intentional about what you’re doing, at least some of the time. We work hard to make sure there’s inclusion of a diversity of voices across the season in terms of the work that we do. It’s a challenge when you’re a theatre dedicated to the classics, but there are ways, such as determining who gets to tell those stories, who are the directors and do you have gender and ethnic balance amongst those directors and who will design the plays. We’re very intentional about having a plurality of voices; different points of view. And not as a matter of checking boxes, but because we believe it actually makes the art better.

JL: Allow me to express a heartfelt congrats from all of us at PlayMakers on your appointment as the Guthrie Theater’s next Artistic Director. You’ve achieved so much during your tenure here. What do you feel most proud of? 

JH: Thank you. It has been an honor to serve this community. I’m proud that we’ve built an audience, a community of people, who are interested in their own growth through participation in the life of a professional theatre. That’s a beautiful gift, and I’ll miss that entirely. We have an audience who comes not only to be entertained, to have a laugh or see a show that may be forgotten by morning. Our audience members are also interested in testing themselves … testing their ideas and their ideas about themselves. And that’s been built over time. When I came here nine years ago, we were a theatre making five plays a year. And I thought of something Ben Cameron, head of TCG [Theatre Communications Group], used to say. Ben said, “A good question for an arts organization to ask itself is what would be lost from the community if it were to shutter its doors?” I firmly held that question in mind when I started here. I remember thinking, if the answer is only five well-made plays a year, then that wouldn’t be nearly enough. That’s not nearly an important enough role for a regional theatre. I think PlayMakers has become an important part of the cultural fabric of this community. And for that, I’m very proud.

JL: And finally, what do you think you’ll miss the most? 

JH: The greatest gift an artistic director can be given is the opportunity to make work for smart people; and we have an incredibly smart community here. Many patrons come to us as sophisticated theatre-goers and many more have become sophisticated theatre-goers by virtue of participating in our work. I’ll miss that a lot. Fortunately I’m going to the Guthrie, and the Twin Cities, an area also noted for supporting of the arts. I’m incredibly grateful for the support of this community and for what we’ve achieved at PlayMakers.

Join us on June 11th for our FREE 2015/16 Season Preview event and Q&A with Joseph Haj. Reservations are required as space is limited, so call our Box Office at 919.962.7529 to reserve your spot!

Creating a Dialogue with Wrestling Jerusalem

Wrestling Jerusalem is a piece Aaron Davidman has been working on for a long time. The idea was first sparked when he visited Israel for the first time in 1992. In the decades since, the central idea has had several incarnations, but after repeated trips to the Middle East, Aaron found that there were many stories to be told.

“It feels to me that the Israeli/Palestinian story is the most important story for Jews to understand, and as an American Jewish theatre artist I felt compelled to go deeply into the material to see how I could make sense of this very troubling and often confusing conflict,” Aaron explains. “I was inspired to reach beyond the headlines, beyond polemic, and understand the complexity and nuance, the history and current events, the mythology and the real politik of the ‘situation’ as they call it in Israel.”

The result is a one-man show with 18 different characters (including himself), each with a very different, but very real perspective on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The characters are directly inspired from his interviews of people living on all sides of the dispute and coming to an understanding of it from their unique perspectives.

Aaron Davidman in Wrestling Jerusalem

Though the problem has been there for generations, the “situation” is still actively smoldering, flaring up dramatically on many occasions. As it all develops, so too does the play. Since premiering in San Francisco last spring, the terrible war in Gaza over the summer brought Aaron to do a major rewrite.

“I don’t rewrite the play to speak to current events, but rather, I have to be sure that the tone of the piece remains connected to where our world is—in my subjective opinion of course—in relation to this continually evolving conflict."

It is this immediate relevancy, of course, that draws us here at PlayMakers. The mission of our PRC² series is to bring these hot issues in front of us and our community to engage us all as part of the dialogue. Producing Artistic Director Joe Haj explains, 

“In the first season that I programmed at PlayMakers (2007/08) we included When the Bulbul Stopped Singing, a solo piece that I acted in. That play was an examination of the Palestinian/Israeli divide as viewed from the perspective of a progressive Palestinian civil/human rights lawyer, Raja Shehadeh. Now, in 2015, especially given the recent events in Gaza, it is important to once again look at this area of the world, this time through the lens of a progressive Jewish artist and activist.

“As with Rodney King, which we presented only a few weeks after the events in Ferguson, Missouri, it is my hope that the theatre can be a place for community dialogue, for increased tolerance, and for healing; a safe environment in which to have difficult conversations.”

Discussion will certainly be sparked as a result of Aaron’s provocative piece, and we give our audience a forum in which to participate and process questions raised during the show. Gathering a variety of panelists ready to engage with you, we think of this post-show conversation as our “second act.”

Aaron says, “I hope my audiences come with an open heart. People are very divisive about this issue, understandably. I think we are capable of holding vast complexity and even contradiction. I think we are more connected to our own humanity when we are generous with each other, when we remain curious about the ‘other.’”

Joe is confident that Aaron’s vision will be achieved in the setting of our theatre. “I have known Aaron Davidman for many years, and his deep thinking, his honest, personal and rigorous attempt to understand the situation, gives another voice and another perspective to one of the world’s thorniest issues.”

There are only six performances of Wrestling Jerusalem, January 7-11. Call our Box Office at 919.962.PLAY (7529) or Click Here to buy tickets and find out more.

Becoming the Witch in Into the Woods

By Lisa Brescia, The Witch, Into the Woods

After appearing as Sally Bowles in Cabaret at PlayMakers, I was eager to return to work with Joe Haj again, as he is one of the finest directors I’ve ever worked with. When he invited me to come back and play the Witch in Into the Woods, I felt excited to collaborate with him again.


Photo by Jenny Graham

The chance to play two sides of the same character was very intriguing to me. Before her transformation in Into the Woods (spoiler alert here), the Witch is a decrepit, old crone with supernatural powers who was robbed of her youth and beauty due to someone else’s deceit and thievery. Like all fairy tale characters, she has a wish. She longs for her former body back, and sets in motion the plot which can grant her wish. But, like all wishes which come true, these things can sometimes backfire. Sondheim and Lapine have written a brilliant show which asks the question: is there really “happily ever after?” And at what cost?

Photo by Jon Gardiner

The costume and mask/wig designers deserve a standing ovation for their work on the Witch (along with every other character in the show). Looking at my reflection before making my first entrance in Into the Woods, I no longer see Lisa at all…the image looking back at me makes me laugh, and breaks my heart, which is exactly where I like to live most as an artist.

PlayMakers adds Nov. 29 performance of ‘Into the Woods’

Photo by Jon Gardiner

PlayMakers Repertory Company announces that due to popular demand the theater has added a holiday performance to the schedule of its hit production “Into the Woods.” The Thanksgiving Weekend performance will be on Saturday, Nov. 29 at 7:30 p.m.

The Stephen Sondheim musical has received audience and critical acclaim calling the PlayMakers’ production “oh-so-right” “outshines the original” (The News & Observer), “fantastical, fabulous and foreboding fun” (Triangle Arts & Entertainment), “a wonder” (The Daily Tar Heel) and “in a word, enchanting” (The Five Points Star).


“Into the Woods” is a multiple Tony Award-winning musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. The show was originally directed on Broadway by James Lapine with orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick.


Beginning with a childless couple, a witch and a curse, “Into the Woods” reveals the shadow side of classic fairytales by the Brothers Grimm in a funny and poignant exploration of the wishes we make, and what happens when they really do come true.

Producing Artistic Director Joseph Haj directs. He has directed some of PlayMakers’ most popular entertainments including musicals “Cabaret” and “Big River.”

“Into the Woods” is presented through Dec. 7 in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s beloved romantic comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Tickets are still available to both shows individually or as part of PlayMakers’ 2014/15 subscription packages. For a complete schedule, more information and to purchase tickets, call the PlayMakers Box Office at (919) 962-PLAY (7529) or visit www.playmakersrep.org.

Performances are in the Paul Green Theatre in UNC’s Department for Dramatic Art on Country Club Road, Chapel Hill. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays and 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.

Scenic Design for the Rep

Marion Williams at work. Photo by Laura Pates.

Marion Williams is the scenic designer for Into the Woods and A Midsummer Night's Dream. She was last at PlayMakers for Cabaret, when she brought 1930's Berlin and The Kit Kat Klub to life. For the Rep, Marion was tasked with creating designs that captured director Joe Haj's vision for Into the Woods and director Shana Cooper's vision for A Midsummer Night's Dream. These have been brought together in designs that mix forest and library, and will captures the sense of imagination that permeates these productions.

Here are a few of Marion's design models for the Rep:












Come see Into the Woods and A Midsummer Night's Dream at PlayMakers November 1 - December 7. For tickets, call 919.962.PLAY (7529) or visit our website.

Joseph Haj Makes the Case for Co-Directing

PlayMakers' own Joseph Haj recently published an article in American Theatre discussing co-directing. Over the past few years, Joseph has co-directed a number of PlayMakers productions, including: Nicholas Nickleby with Tom Quaintance,  Henry IV, Parts I and II and Henry V with Mike Donahue, and The Tempest and Metamorphoses with Dominique Serrand, during last year's Rep.

PlayMakers'  "Henry V," co-directed by Joseph Haj and Mike Donahue. (Photo by Jon Gardiner)

To read Joe's article, visit American Theatre's website.


Make sure to see 2014/15 Season's repertory performances of Into the Woods and A Midsummer Night's Dream at PlayMakers November 1 - December 7. For tickets, call 919.962.PLAY (7529) or visit our website.

Meet the Creatives: "Into the Woods"

If you have not heard, anything can happen in the woods. Magic, mischief and mayhem take over at PlayMakers during our 2014/15 Mainstage repertory shows, Into the Woods and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The first is the modern classic Into the Woods, from the mind of Stephen Sondheim. This whimsical tale weaves together classic fairy tales, with a twist, and garnered multiple Tony Awards.

Joe Haj

We have put together a fantastic creative team for our production of Into the Woods, to bring to life this fairytale world.

PlayMakers own Joe Haj will direct Into the Woods. Last season Joe co-directed both Metamorphoses and The Tempest, bringing these mythological and mystical tales to life for one of PlayMakers most memorable rotating repertory events ever. After all, who can forget the 4000 gallon pool built in the middle of the Paul Green Theatre! Joe will bring his considerable creative vision to Stephen Sondheim's beloved musical, and it’s sure to be an enchanting evening.

Marion Williams is returning to PlayMakers to bring some magic to the stage as the scenic designer for Into the Woods and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Marion is a longtime collaborator with PlayMakers. Her work was last here in 2013, when she brought to life the tantalizing world of The Kit Kat Klub for Cabaret. She has designed sets and costumes for a number of PlayMakers' past productions, and we are thrilled to have her back.

The costume designer for Into the Woods is Bill Brewer. This will be Bill's first time working with PlayMaker. Bill has designed for theatre, ballet, opera, film and television, both nationally and internationally. He is on the costume design faculty of the University of North Carolina School for the Arts. In addition to his numerous theatre and ballet projects, he has designed numerous projects for PBS and worked as an assistant designer for Lucas Film.

Josh Epstein is the lighting designer for Into the Woods. We last saw Josh's lighting design at PlayMakers in the 2013 production Cabaret. Josh designs lighting for theater, opera and dance as well as environmental and event spaces. Josh will be doing the lighting design for both of our rep shows this season, and we are looking forward to seeing his take on these productions.

If you are looking for the choreographer behind the fantastic cake walks of Assassins or the raucous dance numbers from Cabaret, then Casey Sams is your woman. She will be choreographing Into the Woods. Casey Sams is a resident artist at the Clarence Brown Theater, where she works as a director and choreographer. She is also head of undergraduate studies and an associate professor of theatre at University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Rounding out our creative team is puppet designer Donovan Zimmerman. Donovan is the co-founder of Paperhand Puppet Intervention. He brings his creations to life using cardboard, corn starch, bamboo, old house paints, and other assorted odds and ends. We are excited to have him as part of our Into the Woods creative team.

Into the Woods and A Midsummer Night's Dream will be performed in repertory at PlayMakers November 1 through December 7. Subscriptions for the 2014/2015 Mainstage Season are on sale now and single tickets will be available in July.

More On What We Have In Store Next Season

By Joseph Haj, Producing Artistic Director

Joseph Haj

We are excited to open the Mainstage Season with the brilliant new comedy by Christopher Durang, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Three siblings collide. Vanya and Sonia, who have spent their lives caring for the estate of their late parents, and movie star sister Masha who comes swanning back in true Chekhovian fashion. If you enjoy Chekhov, you’ll love it. If you hate Chekhov, you’ll love it even more. And if you don’t know a thing about Chekhov, nothing bad happens...it’s a hysterical ride.

Then our rotating repertory moves from the metaphor of the sea in The Tempest and Metamorphoses to that of the forest with Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Characters enter the woods pursuing their ambitions—and reckon with forces they never imagined and beyond their control in magical and dangerous circumstances, before coming out of the forest forever changed.  

Midsummer, one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies, is the theatre’s first “fairy tale” following lovers who escape to the woods and encounter a Faerie King and Queen, in a tale rich in music, magic and comedy. Sondheim’s musical masterpiece Into the Woods brilliantly imagines the lives of classic fairytale characters – Cinderella, Rapunzel, witches and giants – reminding us we need to be careful what we wish for. Performing them in rotation, sharing a scenic world, allows us to explore two plays, written 400 years apart, that use the forest as metaphor in similar ways, describing how we sometimes need to get lost in order to find ourselves.

Then we turn to Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind. Written in 1955, it’s the story of a racially mixed cast rehearsing a new play with hopes of taking it to Broadway. Misperceptions and stereotypes abound as a veteran African American actress grapples with choosing between her chance to play the lead in a Broadway show, and the cost of compromising her principles. Crackling with the wit and daring of Clybourne Park, Trouble in Mind is an ‘edge of your seat’ comedy that asks hard questions and offers no easy answers.

Next, a classic from two master playwrights. Arthur Miller’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. It’s bracing, electric and incredibly current. Set in a small Norwegian town where the town leaders have invested a significant amount of money developing public baths in hopes of drawing tourists to the area, a doctor discovers the waters of the baths have been contaminated by textile mills further up the river, and must be shut down. Expecting to be hailed as a hero, instead he and his family are ostracized for threatening the town’s economic viability. This play, originally penned in the 1880s by Ibsen, and re-told in the 1950s by Arthur Miller, still rings true today. 2015 is the centennial of Miller’s birth, so this production celebrates one of our major American playwrights with one of his rarely seen works.

And we’ll close our Mainstage Season with the Pulitzer Prize-nominated 4000 Miles. When 21 year-old Leo suffers a major loss, he seeks solace with his feisty 91 year-old grandmother. They infuriate, bewilder, and ultimately reach each other in this unsentimental look at the funny, frustrating, life-changing relationship between a grandson facing the rest of his life and a grandmother slowly forgetting hers. A keenly observed look at the sort of inter-generational relationship we rarely see onstage.

See you in September for this exciting season!

Joe Haj