First Nighters Love "Trudy and Max in Love"

There was lots of love to go around on January 10, as the First Nights crowd joined artists and underwriters at the Cast Party for Trudy and Max in Love.  Everyone was there: Playwright Zoe Kazan, Zoe’s parents Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord, Director Lila Neugebauer, the cast, designers and Honorary Producers—Pam and Jim Muzzy, celebrating their eighth outing as underwriters.

And what a great scene for sharing all that affection—Silver Trumpet Restaurant at Avenue of the Arts Wyndham Hotel, newly (and beautifully) decorated.  It was the perfect setting for a party right out of New York City—young and fresh (and swanky/glam!)—with refreshments to match, including a Chinese food station, hot dog cart, hand-made pretzels, Reuben sandwiches and, of course, a New York cheesecake bar.

As party-goers munched and sipped (including the signature cocktail, Manhattan Iced Tea) Pam Muzzy echoed the buzz in the room with her critique of Trudy and Max in Love: “A smartly written play with great actors!”



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All You Need is Love

by Kimberly Colburn

TRUDY AND MAX: Michael Weston and Aya Cash

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Zoe Kazan

In a sense, SCR’s history with Zoe Kazan began before she was born, when SCR awarded one of its earliest commissions to her mother, Robin Swicord. Read more about the Kazan family here. Many years later, Kazan began her own theatrical career. She has already turned heads as a both a writer and actress in theatre and film.

Zoe Kazan at the Pacific Playwrights Festival reading of Trudy and Max in Love.

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Kazan made her professional acting debut off-Broadway in 2006 with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, with Cynthia Nixon, and appeared on Broadway twice in 2008 in Come Back Little Sheba and The Seagull. However, Kazan already had been flirting with playwriting, having started a play—eventually titled Absalom—in Donald Margulies’ class while she was an undergraduate at Yale. She continued to hone the piece for several years, and finally submitted it to the Humana Festival at the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville. The family drama was accepted for the festival and was produced to great acclaim in 2009. Her second play, We Live Here, was commissioned and produced off-Broadway by the Manhattan Theatre Club in the fall of 2011. On the strength of her first two plays SCR commissioned Kazan to write a play for SCR, which yielded Trudy and Max in Love.

Kazan also has a successful career in film. She wrote, produced and starred in Ruby Sparks (2012) and appeared in Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road and Nancy Meyers’ It’s Complicated. Since wrapping Ruby Sparks, she has had starring roles in the independent films In Your Eyes, written and produced by Joss Whedon, and The Pretty One, written and directed by Jenee Lamarque. She recently completed filming The F Word, in which she stars opposite Daniel Radcliffe.

Trudy and Max first meet in a writer’s room in Brooklyn. Trudy is working on her second novel in her young adult series and Max, something of a celebrity writer, is new in town.

There’s nothing remarkable about their first conversation; they’re whispering to keep from disturbing the other writers as she tries to tell him how to get some coffee. Yet this brief encounter sparks a connection, and as their paths begin to cross repeatedly at the writer’s room, a friendship forms. Trudy is clear at the outset—she’s a happily married woman, and this relationship is platonic. In fact, Trudy can think of plenty of women she can set Max up with. But their chemistry and connection are undeniable; and what starts innocently enough sets an epic affair in motion.

At first glance, Trudy and Max in Love might sound like a conventional romantic comedy, but this play transcends its genre to subvert traditional notions of courting, love, and marriage in the modern world. How much is love a product of physical attraction, how much does it stem from a human need for stability—and what happens to the rest of your life once you’ve made a commitment? What does betrayal mean in a relationship that is itself a betrayal? What are the rules when you start out by breaking them?

Playwright Zoe Kazan has constructed Trudy and Max in Love as a series of seemingly innocuous scenes, weaving the fabric of a relationship with threads of the quotidian. The play is evocative of how someone might remember the events that comprise the story of a relationship, recalling pieces of conversations or fragments of a shared moment.

The two central characters are flanked by “The Other Man” and “The Other Woman,” who play a multitude of roles to fill in and flesh out the impact of other people’s lives on Trudy and Max’s affair—and vice versa. As a sort of memory play, the action is presented to the audience with no attempt to disguise the nature of the theatrical event we’re witnessing. We see the actors change costumes, shift furniture, and otherwise behaving as hired hands performing a job in between the scenes. Kazan is interested in the theatricality of these choices, exposing the artifice of the theatre construct to parallel the artifice of the world Trudy and Max have constructed for themselves. Kazan says her approach to the play was not to write the beginning or ends of scenes in a neat, concrete fashion, but instead to “write the most interesting part” of each scene and let audiences piece together the events of the affair and draw their own conclusions.

Zoe Kazan and Lila Neugebauer on the first day of rehearsal.

Director Lila Neugebauer, who skillfully directed the Pacific Playwrights Festival reading of Trudy and Max in Love in last year’s festival, has returned to stage the full production. Neugebauer is a fast-rising, young theatre artist who has directed the work of many of the hottest young playwrights in the nation.

Neugebauer and Kazan have a history of collaboration that dates back to their college days at Yale. Their friendship has set a particularly convivial tone to the rehearsal room, and the cast has developed a quick camaraderie (they’ve bonded over the fact that all four actors are happily married). The cast includes Aya Cash, Michael Weston, Celeste Den and Tate Ellington. Cash commented recently that the work they’ve been doing on the play feels so intimate, it was startling the first time the design team came in to watch rehearsal—she’d nearly forgotten that an audience was imminent.

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Look Who’s Featured in Zoe Kazan’s New Play

THE CAST:  Tate Ellington, Celeste Den, Michael Weston and Aya Cash

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Trudy is a young adult fiction writer living in Brooklyn with her husband; Max is a famous writer just in from Los Angeles. When they meet at a writers’ room, the chemistry and connection are instant and soon the pair has to wrestle with what that friendship means and whether it’s possible to love two people, completely. That’s a quick overview of Zoe Kazan’s new play, Trudy and Max in Love.

The tight-knit cast is excited to create the roles in this production—four actors create the characters of Trudy and Max and all of the people who inhabit their world. You’ll see both familiar and new faces in the cast:

Aya Cash (Trudy) makes her SCR debut with this production. She is a New York-based actress last seen on the west coast in Seminar at the Ahmanson Theatre. Her New York theatre credits include shows at Playwrights Horizons (The Pain and the Itch, Three Changes), Atlantic Theater Company (Happy Hour, Offices), Manhattan Theatre Club (From Up Here), Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (Killers and Other Family), Ars Nova (Playlist, Missed Connections) MCC Theater (The Other Place) and SPF (Whore, Not Waving). Her film credits include Sleepwalk With Me, The Oranges, The Bits In Between, Deception, Off Jackson Avenue, Winter of Frozen Dreams, The Happy House, the upcoming, Can A Song Save Your Life? and Why Now? Cash was a series regular on the Fox series “Traffic Light” and has filmed pilots for NBC, FOX, CW and FX, as well as guest-starred on many New York-based shows. She recently recurred on “The Newsroom” and “We are Men” and can currently be seen in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street.



Celete Den (Other Woman) returns after appearing in this season’s Death of a Salesman and last season’s international tour of Chinglish at SCR, Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the 2013 Hong Kong Arts Festival. Her other theatre credits include the world premieres of Wild Swans at American Repertory Theatre and Young Vic in London; Between Two Friends and Island at Actors Theatre of Louisville; 11 Septembre 2001 and Peach Blossom Fan with Center for New Performance; Spit, Shine, Glisten with Cotsen Center for Puppetry; and Laws of Sympathy with Playwrights’ Arena. Regional credits include King Lear with Center for New Performance; Conjunto at Borderlands Theatre; Othello at The Theatre @ Boston Court; The Joy Luck Club at East West Players; The Merchant of Venice with LA Women’s Shakespeare; and Attrapee with Poor Dog Group. Her film and television credits include “Dumb American Family,” “Castle,” “Criminal Minds,” “The Doctor” and “Larry Crowne.” Den received her BFA from the University of Florida and MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

Tate Ellington (Other Man) is making his SCR debut and is thrilled to be part of this production. His previous theatre credits include the Broadway production of The Philanthropist and off-off Broadway in Dog Sees God (original cast) and The Shape of Things. He has appeared on television in “The Good Wife,” “The Walking Dead,” “Psych,” “Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23,” “Wolfpack of Reseda” and “Rescue Me.” His film credits include The Elephant King, The Kitchen, Remember Me, Breaking Upwards, The Invention of Lying. He earned his BFA at the University of Mississippi. Tate also is an accomplished visual artist.

Michael Weston (Max) is making his SCR debut. His theatre credits include the off-Broadway productions of Extinction and Snakebit; regionally he appeared in Dead End, Matchmaker, Johnny on the Spot and Misha’s Party (all at Williamstown Theatre Festival); in the Los Angeles productions of Other Desert Cities (Center Theatre Group) and Waverly Gallery (Pasadena Playhouse). His films include Expecting, Quad, Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best, State of Play, Last Kiss, Love Wedding Marriage, Wedding Daze, Garden State, Pathology, Dukes of Hazzard, Harts War, Lucky Numbers, Wishcraft, Getting to Know You and Coyote Ugly, among others, as well as the upcoming Wish I Was Here, Gravy and See You in Valhalla. He has done large recurring arcs on several television shows including  “House,” “Six Feet Under,” “Psych,” “Scrubs,” “Law & Order: SVU,” and the upcoming “Those Who Kill.” His other television work includes Coma (mini-series), “The Office,” “White Collar,” “CSI: N.Y.,” “The Good Guys” and “NCIS: L.A.” and yes, “Burn Notice,” among others.

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Keeping Up with the Kazans

Zoe Kazan, center, with her parents Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord.

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The Kazan Family at a Glance

Elia Kazan (1909-2003)
Molly Day Thatcher (1906-63)

Nicholas Kazan (b. 1950)
Robin Swicord (b. 1952)

Zoe Kazan (b. 1983)
Maya Kazan (b.1985)

Actress, screenwriter and playwright Zoe Kazan is no stranger to the world of entertainment.

South Coast Repertory’s world premiere of Trudy and Max in Love is Zoe’s third produced play and is another example of the family legacy she represents. Her roots are deep in the worlds of stage and screen—Zoe is the daughter of Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord and granddaughter of Elia Kazan and Molly Day Thatcher. A family of writers, performers, directors and producers, their collective credits are impressive.

The family’s legacy begins with its most recognized family member: Elia Kazan. He made his mark in both the theatrical world and in Hollywood. An award-winning director, Elia attended Yale University’s School of Drama and joined Lee Strasberg’s Group Theatre in New York. With Group Theatre, Elia began as an actor, performing in multiple plays under Group, including Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty.

Elia Kazan

Elia began directing during this time as well, including A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, All My Sons and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. He joined again with Lee Strasberg, Robert Lewis, Anna Sokolow and Cheryl Crawford to establish the Actors Studio, renowned for its teaching of method acting. Elia continued to direct plays and eventually transitioned to film, with feature films such as Viva Zapata!, Gentleman’s Agreement and the film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Elia left the stage behind, found success on screen and helped to launch the careers of stars like Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Natalie Wood. His success came with some controversy: at a hearing before Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s House Committee of Un-American Activities in 1952, Elia named multiple colleagues as communists or communist sympathizers.  Despite his committee testimony, Elia still maintained an active film career. He also wrote and directed the film On the Waterfront, which focused on informants and the choices they made. During the remainder of his career, Elia continued directing films such as East of Eden, The Last Tycoon and America, America. He wrote four best-selling novels and, in 1999, received the Academy Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The second generation of Kazans includes Elia’s son, Nicholas Kazan. Nicholas has penned the screenplays for Bicentennial Man, Patty Hearst, co-wrote Matilda with wife Robin Swicord, and many more. Outside of film, Nicholas has written two plays, Mile. God and Blood Moon.

Robin Swicord, Zoe’s mother, is an accomplished screenwriter; she wrote screenplays for Memoirs of a Geisha, Practical Magic and collaborated on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Her plays include Criminal Minds and Last Days at the Dixie Girl Café. Robin crossed paths with South Coast Repertory during the 1980s, when she was a commissioned SCR playwright. One of her plays had a staged reading at SCR; at the time, Robin was pregnant with Zoe.

The third generation of Kazans is early in their careers, but the family’s legacy continues. Zoe’s younger sister, Maya, has stage credits that include David Ives’ adaptation The Liar and Michael Rabe’s The Future is Not What It Was. On screen, Maya’s credits include numerous short films, a role in her father’s screen adaptation of his play Blood Moon, as well as writing and directing her own two short films Lulu at the Ace Hotel and I Bit My Lip So Hard It Bled.

Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan in Ruby Spark.

Zoe’s works span theatre and film as both an actress and writer. Like her grandfather, she studied at Yale University’s School of Drama and began her career in acting. Performing both on and off-Broadway, her credits include the plays The Seagull, 100 Saints You Should Know, Come Back, Little Sheba and Angels in America. On screen, Zoe has performed for both film and television. Her film credits include The F Word, Happythankyoumoreplease, It’s Complicated and Revolutionary Road. She wrote and starred in the 2012 indie film hit, Ruby Sparks, and wrote the play We Live Here, Absalom.

Multiple generations of artists, and a family with numerous credits and success, the Kazan name continues to be a fixture in the worlds of theatre and film. The world premiere of Zoe’s Trudy and Max in Love is just another accomplishment to add to this family’s long list.

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