Brown/Trinity Playwrights Repertory Theatre

Lowry Marshall, Artistic Director


For Immediate Release April 25, 2008
CONTACT: Brian Gaston, Director of Marketing and Publicity:
401.863.2730 - Brian_Gaston@brown.edu

For more details and photos: www.brown.edu/btprep/

Playwrights Rep Proudly Announces its

2008 Summer Season

July 9^th through August 2^nd in Stuart Theatre, Providence, RI

In Spite of the Devil 
by Andy Bragen

July 9, 10, 11, 12, and August 1 at 8:00 PM
August 2 at 1:00 PM


Directed by Andy Bragen and Ken Prestininzi

Girls on the Clock 
by Diana Fithian

July 16, 17, 18, 19, and 31 at 8:00 PM
August 2 at 4:00 PM


Directed by Mia Rovegno

Painting/Eating 
by Zoë Chao and Rachel Caris

July 23, 24, 25, 26, 30 and August 2 - All at 8:00 PM


Directed by Lowry Marshall

From July 9^th - August 2^nd, in Stuart Theatre, three outstanding new plays by three of America’s hottest young playwrights will be performed for the first time-- each for about the price of a movie. Festival Week, July 30^th-August 2^nd, will feature special performances by our Apprentice and TheatreBridge companies, plus all three professional plays in repertory!

The Brown/Trinity Playwrights Repertory Theatre is an extraordinary ensemble of young theatre professionals, augmented by seasoned alumni performers and supported by the young artists-in-training who make up the Apprentice and TheatreBridge Companies. Brown alumni playwrights and other established American dramatists gather at Brown each summer to share their experience and expertise with students and to showcase their new works.

Founded in 2005 by Artistic Director Lowry Marshall, the Playwrights Rep was established to meet the need of emerging playwrights to develop new work in a relaxed and creative atmosphere. Brilliant young writers who are already developing a national reputation are invited to Brown for six weeks each summer. Working with a carefully assembled company of gifted professional actors and directors, playwrights become deeply engaged in the production process — attending rehearsals daily, shaping and refining their texts as each new play is born.  The result is some of the most imaginative and adventurous theatre to be seen anywhere in America.

Plays developed at the Playwrights Rep continue to thrive on the national stage. Last year’s Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, by Jennifer Haley, premiered in March at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Last year’s Boom, by Peter Nachtrieb, opened in March to outstanding reviews at Ars Nova (NYC); Ben Brantley of The New York Times praised it for its “darkly funny dialogue” and for “speaking, quietly and piquantly, to our enduring fascination with and need for myths about the beginning of life as well as its end.” Boom will appear at Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, D.C. in November.

Stephen Karam’s Speech & Debate, which sold out in its Playwrights Rep debut in 2006, opened last fall at the new Roundabout Underground (NYC), twice extended its run, was named the year’s “Best Off-Broadway Play” by AM New York, was both a Readers’ Pick and Critic’s Pick in the New York Times, and is moving on to productions at major theatres in L.A., Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, and New Orleans. The Roundabout has commissioned Karam to write a new play, and Overture Films has commissioned Karam to create a screenplay of Speech & Debate.

Flushed with pride in this string of successes, the Playwrights Rep heads into Summer 2008 with three more remarkable new works for the American Theatre!

In Spite of the Devil

by Andy Bragen

July 9, 10, 11, 12, and August 1 at 8:00 PM
August 2 at 1:00 PM


Directed by Andy Bragen and Ken Prestininzi

The Playwrights Rep kicks off its fourth season with the story of an impossible love quadrangle: a boy from the Bronx, his aging father, a beautiful headstrong girl, and her jealous lover. Funny and sad, tuneful and discordant, ridiculous and sublime—like the skyline of New York City, this tale is spun from gossamer and steel.

Andy Bragen’s honors include a Tennessee Williams Fellowship from Sewanee: The University of the South, a Jerome Fellowship, a New Voices Fellowship from EST, a Dramatists Guild Fellowship, and residencies at Millay Colony and Blue Mountain Center. Andy’s plays and translations have been presented at numerous theatres across the country, including The Guthrie Theater, PS122, The Playwrights Center, Queens Theatre in the Park, Rattlestick, LAByrinth, EST, The Aurora Theatre, Repertorio Español, and the Lark. His translation of Vengeance Can Wait premieres at PS122's "Best of Boroughs" festival April 25-May 4, 2008. He is working on commissions for Clubbed Thumb and the University of Rochester. He has an MFA from Brown University. For more info: www.andybragen.com .

Ken Prestininzi, Director, In Spite of the Devil and Associate Artistic Director: Ken is a professional director, dramaturg, playwright, and theater producer and has created new work in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, England, Scotland and elsewhere. His new play As American As, developed at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in San Francisco, opens For more information: www.brown.edu/btprep in October in Washington, D.C. His plays AmeriKafka and Beholder were widely acclaimed in their runs in Chicago in July 2005 and 2008. Ken has programmed literary arts programs in Prague and Mexico and is also Artistic Director of the Apprentice Company. He first started teaching the art of ensemble theatre under Joseph Chaikin’s direction. He is the new Associate Chair of Playwriting at Yale University, where he will be working with new Chair Paula Vogel.

Girls on the Clock

by Diana Fithian

July 16, 17, 18, 19, and 31 at 8:00 PM
August 2 at 4:00 PM


Directed by Mia Rovegno

Is “reality television” an oxymoron? Sneak a peek behind closed doors in the network's executive suite, where the girls are always working nights and the game is always on. Clocks tick, hearts break, and heads roll as reality is scribbled, revised and rehearsed. A comic cocktail, with a twist of lemon!

Diana Fithian’s one-act Take Care of Yourself was produced by manhattantheatresource. She co-wrote the short film Doorman, an official selection at both the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and 2007 Sundance Film Festival, and her feature-length screenplay The Young Dr. Jensen won a 2006 Sloan Screenwriting Grant. Diana earned a BA in Theatre and English with honors in Creative Writing from Brown and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, where she was the recipient of a Lew and Edie Wasserman Scholarship.

Director Mia Rovegno is the founding artistic director of HummingbirdWORKS Multimedia_Performance_Project and a company member with foolsFURY in San Francisco. She has directed and performed with The Bread and Puppet Theater, Redmoon Theater, Shadowlight Productions, Perishable Theater and Intersection for the Arts, among others. Her plays have been developed through the foolsFURY Incubator and the Page 73 Yale Summer Residency. In 2000, Mia was invited to La MaMa E.T.C.'s Director's Symposium in Spoleto, Italy. In 2004, she developed Chuck Mee's Hotel Cassiopeia with the SITI Company, with whom she trained intensively in Suzuki and Viewpoints at the Saratoga International Theater Institute. She has studied under the mentorship of Paula Vogel, Bonnie Metzgar, Kevin Moriarty, Anne Bogart, Mary Zimmerman, Loretta Greco, Stephen Wangh, and Curt Columbus, among others. Former adjunct faculty at New College of California's Experimental Performance Institute, she currently teaches acting and directing to undergraduates at Brown. She received her BS in Performance Studies from Northwestern, and is a candidate for the MFA in Directing at the Brown University/Trinity Rep Consortium.

Painting/Eating

By Zoë Chao and Rachel Caris

July 23, 24, 25, 26, 30 and August 2 - All at 8:00 PM


Directed by Lowry Marshall

A carefully calculated heist goes wrong and sends shockwaves through the international art world. A fractious fifties family goes underground and discovers secrets they never needed to know. This multilayered evening will stimulate your imagination, touch your heart, and tickle your funny bone.

Warning! “Eating” is an outrageous farce. It contains graphic language, sexual situations, and religious satire. Not for the faint of heart. Inappropriate for children and young teens.

Zoë Chao graduated from Brown with a BA in the History of Art of Architecture. Brown credits include Bobrasuschenbergamerica, 36 Views (Setsuko), Hair (Chrissie), and City of Angels (Alaura). She is also a member of the New Works/World Traditions Dance Company, which has recently been invited to perform at the September 2008 opening ceremonies of the National Biennale Festive of Art and Culture in Kaye, Mali. In the fall, she will begin her MFA in Acting at UCSD.

Rachel Caris Originally from Los Angeles, CA, Rachel is both a performer and writer. Favorite roles include Lynn McCarthy in Red Herring (Brown University), Scrawny Person in Peer Gynt (Brown University) and Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web (Acadia Repertory Theatre). She recently completed her first novel titled Lilly. Her piece “84 Indian Elephants, my Mom and her Spatula” was produced by The Vestige Group in Austin, TX as part of The Muses: Memories of a House. Rachel has a B.A. in Literary Arts (Honors) and Theatre Arts from Brown University. She has studied at the London Dramatic Academy and is certified in small-sword stage combat by the Society of American Fight Directors.

Artistic Director Lowry Marshall has taught acting/directing courses and directed plays at Brown since 1986. She's active as a freelance director, actor, voice-over artist, and coach. In addition to an MFA from the Professional Actor Training Program of the Asolo Conservatory, she holds degrees in directing and English literature. Lowry was artistic director of summer theatres in Michigan and North Carolina before coming to Rhode Island. She's served as director and/or dramaturg for more than two hundred plays and solo shows, including the national tour of El Grande De Coca-Cola and the world premier at the La Jolla Playhouse of the 2.5 Minute Ride, for which soloist Lisa Kron won an Obie Award. Lowry is a playwright, lyricist, and script consultant. She's been a guest artist at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the London Academy of Theatre, and the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. Filler Up, the solo show she co-wrote with Toronto performance artist Deb Filler, has toured all over the world and was nominated in 2005 for a Helen Hayes award. It will have an extended run at the Stage Door Theatre in Fort Lauderdale, FL this spring and summer. Her play Waiting for the Termite Man was awarded the Ruby Lloyd Apsey Playwriting Prize, and she wrote book and lyrics for The Musical Winter's Tale. For Brown, Marshall translated and adapted Beaumarchais's The Marriage of Figaro, with a musical score by Jack Eric Williams. "Solo Performance," a course Lowry has been developing at Brown over the last decade, serves as a capstone experience for Brown writer/performers. In 2006, she directed Stephen Karam’s Speech & Debate for the Playwrights Rep, and last summer, she commissioned and directed Steven Levenson and Andrew Hertz’s new musical Torah! Torah! Torah!

Details at a Glance

Performance Schedules