WOOLLY TO REUNITE THE ORIGINAL CAST
AND CREATIVE TEAM FOR REMOUNT OF
STUPID FUCKING BIRD
AARON POSNER’S HELEN HAYES AWARD-WINNING PLAY TO PRECEDE WOOLLY’S 35TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON
(Washington, DC) Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company is bringing back the bird and reuniting the entire cast and creative team of Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird after its runaway success in the summer of 2013. Nominated for eight Helen Hayes Awards and winner for Outstanding Resident Play and Outstanding New Play or Musical, Stupid Fucking Bird is directed by Woolly Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz and runs for three weeks: July 28, 2014 through August 17, 2014.
In this irreverent, contemporary, and very funny remix of Chekhov’s The Seagull, award-winning playwright Aaron Posner wages a timeless battle between young and old, past and present, in search of the true meaning of it all. An aspiring young director rampages against the art created by his mother’s generation. A nubile young actress wrestles with an aging Hollywood star for the affection of a renowned novelist. And everyone discovers just how disappointing love, art, and growing up can be.
“I am thrilled by the reception Stupid Fucking Bird has received—not just here in DC with the Helen Hayes Awards—but also elsewhere,” says playwright Aaron Posner. “The production running in LA currently at The Theatre @ Boston Court is receiving rave reviews and there are about a dozen productions in place all across the country next season. All this for a play I never really thought anyone would do…except maybe someone as crazy as Woolly Mammoth! It is very gratifying.”
Woolly has reassembled the entire original cast including Woolly Company Members Rick Foucheux* (R.U.R., The Choir, Dead Man’s Cell Phone), Kimberly Gilbert* (You for Me for You, A Bright New Boise, In the Next Room or the vibrator play, Clybourne Park, Boom), and Kate Eastwood Norris* (Full Circle, Fever/Dream, She Stoops To Comedy) as well as noted actors and Woolly favorites Katie DeBuys*, Brad Koed*, Cody Nickell*, and Darius Pierce*.
“It’s a thrill to return to one of our audience’s favorite productions ever, and one of the first plays to be created through Woolly’s innovative ‘Free the Beast!’ fund,” says Woolly Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz. “In Chekhov’s original, which premiered in Russia in 1896, a young playwright calls for ‘new forms’ as he imagines a kind of love and art that will affirm his independence from his famous mother. In Aaron’s radically new version, the story is roughly the same, but the language and the world are right here, right now, in this very theatre tonight.”
The summer remount of Stupid Fucking Bird will serve as a precursor to Woolly’s 35th Anniversary season, “Let Them Eat…,” whetting appetites and setting the table for the theatre’s most deliciously decadent season yet. Like Aaron Posner’s struggling protagonists, Season 35’s cast of characters are under attack from outside and inside forces—breaking down, breaking out, and groping toward new solutions.
More information about Stupid Fucking Bird and Woolly’s 35th Anniversary Season is available at woollymammoth.net.
ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM
Aaron Posner (playwright) is a freelance director and playwright, an Associate Artist at the Folger Theatre and Milwaukee Rep, and was a founding Artistic Director of Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre. His plays and productions have been seen at more than a third of the LORT theatres in the country. Aaron has been a fan of Woolly since the early 90’s and directed In the Next Room or the vibrator play at Woolly in 2011. He has won Barrymore Awards as both a director and playwright and Helen Hayes Awards for Best Director three times in the last eight years. His published and produced adaptations include The Chosen, My Name Is Asher Lev (currently in an open-ended run Off-Broadway), Sometimes A Great Notion, Mark Twain’s A Murder, A Mystery & A Marriage (with James Sugg), and many more. Aaron is an Eisenhower Fellow and a graduate of Northwestern University. He is originally from Eugene, Oregon, and lives just outside DC with his wife, actress Erin Weaver, and his tiny daughter, Maisie.
Howard Shalwitz (director) has been the visionary force behind Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company for 35 seasons. Howard received the 2011 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Director for Clybourne Park, and has received multiple Helen Hayes nominations as both a director and an actor. In recent seasons, he directed the world premieres of Civilization, Fever/Dream and Big Death and Little Death, along with She Stoops to Comedy, Measure for Pleasure, and The Faculty Room. Howard has directed for leading New York and regional companies including New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, and Arena Stage. In 2012 he was recognized as Distinguished Finalist for the Zelda Fichandler Award for Outstanding Regional Director and in 2013 he was awarded the Margo Jones Medal for his contributions to American playwriting.
The Stupid Fucking Bird creative team also includes the Set Designer and Woolly Company Member Misha Kachman, Costume Designer Laree Lentz, Lighting Designer and Woolly Company Member Colin K. Bills, and sound design and original music by James Sugg. Woolly Mammoth’s Associate Artistic Director Miriam Weisfeld serves as the Production Dramaturg and Kristy Matero* as the Production Stage Manager.
*Member, Actors’ Equity Association
THE STUPID FUCKING LOBBY
Patrons will have the opportunity to once again engage with the Stupid Fucking Bird Lobby Experience. Lobby activities originally designed and created in collaboration with Method 121—and profiled in the Capital Business section of The Washington Post—will enable patrons to explore the Pinspiration Boards of the production’s artists to learn more about the design and production process and reimagine and share some of the play’s most pivotal monologues. These activities will challenge patrons to unleash their inner artist and revolutionize Chekhov’s classic work to create new, fresh, and accessible forms of the text.
SCHEDULE
Stupid Fucking Bird runs July 28 through August 17 with performances Wednesdays through Fridays at 8pm, Saturdays at 3pm and 8pm, and Sundays at 2pm and 7pm. Monday, July 28 and Tuesday, July 29 will be Pay What You Can performances and will begin at 8pm.
PERFORMANCE CALENDAR
July 28, 2014: Pay What You Can performance at 8pm
July 29, 2014: Pay What You Can performance at 8pm
July 30, 2014: Benefit Reception at 6pm and Press Night performance at 8pm
July 31, 2014: Performance at 8pm
August 1, 2014: Performance at 8pm
August 2, 2014: Performances at 3pm and 8pm
August 3, 2014: Performances at 2pm and 7pm
August 6, 2014: Performance at 8pm
August 7, 2014: Performance at 8pm
August 8, 2014: Performance at 8pm
August 9, 2014: Performances at 3pm and 8pm
August 10, 2014: Performances at 2pm and 7pm
August 13, 2014: Performance at 8pm
August 14, 2014: Performance at 8pm
August 15, 2014: Performance at 8pm
August 16, 2014: Performances at 3pm and 8pm
August 17, 2014: Performances at 2pm and 7pm
PRESS NIGHT
Wednesday, July 30, 2014 will be Press Night and the performance that evening will begin at 8pm. Please contact Communications Coordinator Michael Love at [email protected] or 202-312-5276 to RSVP.
TICKETS
Tickets to Stupid Fucking Bird start at $35 and can be purchased online at woollymammoth.net, by phone at (202) 393-3939, via email at [email protected], or in person at the Box Office, located at 641 D Street NW.
Patrons who are 30-years-old and younger may, at any time, purchase Section B tickets for $20 to any performance. There are also discounts available for first responder men and women and active US military personnel, spouses, and veterans. More information is available at woollymammoth.net.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Facebook.com/WoollyMammothTC
Twitter: @WoollyMammothTC #Woolly35#WoollyBird
ABOUT WOOLLY
Poised to begin its 35th Anniversary Season, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company continues to hold its place at the leading edge of American theatre. Acknowledged as “one of the most influential outposts for the best new American plays” (The Washington Post), and “known for its productions of innovative new plays” (The New York Times), Woolly Mammoth is a national leader in the development of new works, and one of the best known and most influential mid-sized theatres in America.
Woolly Mammoth’s summer 2014 offerings include Roger Guenveur Smith’s Rodney King (July 8–July 20) and the return of Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird (July 28–August 17).
The apocryphal quip by Marie Antoinette—“Let them eat cake!”—sparks Woolly’s deliciously decadent 35th Anniversary Season, one in which we skewer our leaders and walk the widening divide between the haves and the have-nots. The cast of characters include queens and presidents, boomers and hustlers, the living and the living dead, and all of the works explore societies and individuals under attack from outside and inside forces, breaking down, breaking out, and groping toward new solutions. Season 35, entitled “Let Them Eat…,” includes David Adjmi’s Marie Antoinette (September 15–October 12, 2014), Old Trout Puppet Workshop’s Famous Puppet Death Scenes (December 9, 2014–January 4, 2015), Lisa D’Amour’s Cherokee (February 9–March 8, 2015), Chad Beckim’s Lights Rise On Grace (March 30–April 26, 2015), and Robert O’Hara’s Zombie: The American (May 25–June 21, 2015).
Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company is a participant in the Audience (R)Evolution Program,
funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications
Group, the national organization for the professional not-for-profit American Theatre.
www.woollymammoth.net
Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
641 D Street, NW
Washington, DC 20004
Box Office: 202-393-3939
facebook.com/WoollyMammothTC
twitter @WoollyMammothTC
