News of Associate Artists

News of Associate Artists
Besides the staff members who work on-site, and the directors, actors and other artists who join the company for specific shows, SCR is home-away-from-home to six Associate Artists.  Here’s what they’re up to these days...

• Kate Whoriskey (Intimate Apparel, Antigone, The Clean House, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Life is a Dream, The Piano Teacher) was recently named the new artistic director of Seattle’s Intiman Theatre. Last season Kate directed the world premiere of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and the Manhattan Theatre Club. In between the two productions of Ruined, she gave birth to her first child, Rory, with her husband, actor Daniel Breaker.


• Bill Rauch nears the end of his second full season as artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. This season Bill directed The Music Man and the world premiere of Bill Cain’s Equivocation, both of which have been big hits for the company. Taking advantage of a brief lull at the end of his season, Bill has just directed a new adaptation of Aristophanes’ Peace, co-authored by Culture Clash and SCR’s John Glore. Culture Clash performs the play with actors John Fleck and Amy Hill at the Getty Villa running through the first weekend in October.
  


• Octavio Solis’ Lydia, after its premiere at the Denver Center Theatre, went on to productions at Yale Rep, the Mark Taper Forum and Marin Theatre Company. All but the last were directed by Juliette Carrillo, longtime director of SCR’s Hispanic Playwrights Project. Solis recently accepted a commission from SCR to write a musical with composer Adam Gwon (whose Ordinary Days will appear this season on the Argyros Stage).


• Craig Lucas is about to workshop an opera for the Met (Two Boys) with composer Nico Muhly and director Bartlett Sher, in conjunction with the English National Opera. Productions are slated for 2011 in England and 2012 in New York. Lucas and Sher are also working on a stage musical version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Disney.  And he’s writing a play for the Greenfield Prize and spending most of the fall at their artists retreat, The Hermitage, near Sarasota, Florida. 


• Mark Rucker is staging shows from coast to coast, most recently at Asolo Repertory Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and Oregon Shakespeare Festival, ACT and California Shakespeare Theater.


• And, we're happy to let his fans know that Richard Greenberg is busy writing a new plays.

The Happy Ones

In the world premiere of Julie Marie Myatt's "The Happy Ones," Gary (Geoffrey Lower, left, seated) and Mary-Ellen (Nike Doukas) attempt to cheer up their friend, Walter (Raphael Sbarge, right, seated), as Bao (Greg Watanabe) watches. http://bit.ly/sshcR

New Date and Time for SCR Prop & Costume Sale

If you’ve ever sat in the audience at South Coast Repertory (SCR) coveting a golden-legged bench, ornate clock or a humorous horse costume, then save Saturday, Aug. 22 for the SCR Prop and Costume Sale.

SCR is cleaning out its storage facility to make room for the upcoming 2009-10 season and is selling selected stage props, furniture, costumes and other items. The sale will be held from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on South Coast Repertory’s loading dock, located at 655 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa.

All items will be sold on a first-come, first-served, cash-only basis.

Tickets for 2009-10 Productions Now on Sale

Tickets for South Coast Repertory’s (SCR) 2009-10 productions go on sale Monday, Aug. 10. Tickets can be purchased in person at the SCR Box Office, online at http://www.scr.org/, and over the phone by calling 714-708-5555.

Online ticket buyers can now choose their seats from the comfort of their computer, as well as preview the view of the stage from that seat with SCR’s new Select-A-Seat feature. The online box office is available around the clock.

To read SCR’s 2009-10 season lineup, go to http://ping.fm/H3ymr

Tickets for the 30th annual production of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol go on sale Sunday Aug. 23 at 10 a.m.

Box Office hours are Mondays and non-performance days from10am to 6pm; Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10am to show time; and Sundays from noon to show time.

Playwright on Playwriting

Cecilia Fannon’s playwriting philosophy tells as much about her personality (fabulous) as about her talent (ditto).

“What I have discovered in my career is that storytelling is the cornerstone of great playwriting. But people aren't born telling stories. They need to learn how, even the phenom 19 or 20-year-olds who are hailed as overnight successes. I might have been pretty good, telling a story a dozen years ago, but I'm better now. It takes practice. That's what I teach in my playwriting workshops. How to tell stories. Eventually, those stories turn into plays, even plays where people ask for your autograph.”

She illustrates that with—what else?—a story; in fact, two stories:

“One of the worst theatrical experiences of my life was nearly a dozen years ago—a play I'd written for "Star Trek" went up live before 1,000 slavishly adoring Trekkies, dressed in flowing cloaks and phrenologically bumpy masks.

Leonard Nimoy played Spock, and I was in the audience, nauseated, because I knew jack about science fiction, and even less about "Star Trek." Trekkies know everything about characters, from Klingon dental work to Vulcan hammer toes. Blood thundered through my cranium for about one and a half hours.

One of the best theatrical experiences happened before a small audience, a play I wrote about the World War I flu, about which I knew jack, despite research. Both performances received standing ovations, and people asked for my autograph. (Clearly the "Star Trek" occurrence was more a bouquet for Spock than for me.)”

Well, maybe and maybe not. But one thing is clear: students in Cecilia’s All-day Playwriting Workshop will bring away a theatrical experience of their own, and we predict it will be one of the best.