In her smart comedy The Book Club Play, D.C.-area playwright Karen Zacarías examines the intricacies of book clubs, with their unspoken rules, high-spirited debates and strong bonds formed when least expected. With an ensemble cast featuring Fred Arsenault, Ashlie Atkinson, Rachael Holmes, Eric Messner, Kate Eastwood Norris and Tom Story, this is Zacarías' second collaboration with Director Molly Smith at Arena Stage and is the first work of a Resident Playwright to be produced as part of their three-year residencies through the American Voices New Play Institute. The Book Club Play runs October 7-November 6, 2011 in the Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle.
"The Book Club Play is a ‘Chinese box' of a play within a piece of literature, within a documentary, within people's lives," says Director Molly Smith. "Karen has managed to mention or utilize more than 30 books. This play is a crafty comedy about a book club that implodes; crafty because book clubs are almost a secret society-many people belong to them but you rarely know it about their lives. In some ways the theater is just one big book club."
In The Book Club Play, Ana is a type "A" personality living in a letter-perfect world: a husband who adores her, the perfect job and her greatest passion, Book Club. But when bizarre circumstances put her ideal book club under a magnifying glass, things begin to heat up and more truths are told than anyone bargained for. Zacarías brings Arena Stage the latest chapter of her comedy about life, love, literature and the side-splitting results when friends start reading between the lines.
"It's challenging to re-examine a comedy that you love, especially one like The Book Club Play that had a great popular response when it was first produced," says Zacarías. "Why mess with something that works for many people? But I knew there was something in the older script that did not fully capture the rich experience of being part of a good book club-the friendship, the food and the pleasure of talking about books."
The Book Club Play first opened at Bethesda's Round House Theatre and later played at the Berkshire Summer Festival in 2008. When Zacarías became an American Voices New Play Institute Resident Playwright in 2010, she decided to use some of the resources allocated to her through the Institute to continue working on the play. For more information about the Institute's playwright residencies, visit here.
Zacarías continues, "My residency at Arena gave me time and space to revisit, rethink and rewrite the entire play. With the support of Director Molly Smith and Dramaturg Jocelyn Clarke, I took the leap and made exciting and dramatic changes while keeping the original premise and inspiration intact. My goal is to make The Book Club Play more engaging by making it funnier, deeper and more resonant."
Karen Zacarías (Playwright) is working again with Molly Smith at Arena Stage, where she is a resident playwright. Other plays include Legacy of Light (world premiere at Arena Stage), Mariela in the Desert, The Sins of Sor Juana, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (world premiere at Round House Theater) and several TYA musicals with music by Debbie Wicks La Puma. Her awards include a Steinberg citation for Best New Play (Legacy of Light), Primus Prize (Mariela in the Desert), New Voices Award, National Latino Play Award, ATT/TCG First Stages Award, Blackburn Award finalist and Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play (The Sins of Sor Juana). She teaches at Georgetown Univ. and is founder of the award-winning Young Playwrights' Theater.
Molly Smith (Director). Over the past 13 seasons, Molly Smith has been instrumental in leading the re-invention of Arena Stage. From the programming for the architecture to the envisioning of the Kogod Cradle, Smith has focused her creative life on the building of this new Center for American Theater. This re-invention has been part of a major artistic change as well, into the production, presentation, development and study of American Theater which leads Arena into the 21st Century. Ms. Smith has been a passionate leader in new play development for the past 30 years while at Arena Stage as well as at Perseverance Theatre in Alaska, the theater she founded and led for 19 years. She has commissioned or championed numerous world premieres, including Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned to Drive and Mineola Twins; Tim Acito's The Women of Brewster Place; Moisés Kaufman's 33 Variations; Charles Randolph-Wright's Blue; Zora Neale Hurston's lost American play, Polk County; Karen Zacarías' Legacy of Light; Passion Play, a cycle by Sarah Ruhl; and every tongue confess by Marcus Gardley, some of which she has directed. She founded Arena's downstairs series, which has read or workshopped some 60 plays, half of which have gone on to full productions. In 2009, two shows nurtured at Arena Stage (33 Variations and Next to Normal) moved to Broadway. Ms. Smith's directorial work has also been seen at the Shaw Festival in Canada, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, and Centaur Theatre in Montreal and includes classics such as South Pacific, Mack and Mabel, Anna Christie and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Smith has served as literary advisor to Sundance Theatre Lab and formed the Arena Stage Writers Council, composed of leading American Playwrights. An avid traveler, Ms. Smith brings artists of international renown to work at Arena Stage and has served as a member of the board of the Theatre Communications Group as well as the Center for International Theatre Development. She directed two feature films, Raven's Blood and Making Contact, and received honorary doctorates from both Towson and American Universities.
