Works From Mike Daisey, Rajiv Joseph, and Bruce Norris Among Woolly Mammoth Theatre's 30th Season

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, on the verge of turning the big 3-0, is excited to announce the lineup of plays for the 30th Season (2009-10). Featured are a World Premiere by Danai Gurira (In the Continuum), exciting new works from Mike Daisey (If You See Something Say Something), Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo), and Bruce Norris (The Unmentionables), and a large-scale work by Charles L. Mee (Big Love).  In addition, Woolly Mammoth’s favorite out-of-town troupe, The Neo-Futurists, returns to DC for an unprecedented fourth engagement of their hit show, Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind in December.

“For Woolly Mammoth’s 30th Season, we’re drawing our favorite actors and playwrights together to ask huge questions about our nation and engage in a provocative dialogue with our community,” states Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz.  “Poised between hope and despair, the current American moment is re-shaping our lives.  During 2009-10, we’ll gain new perspective on economics, war, race, love, and commitment – by looking across the globe and into our own neighborhoods to ask big questions:  Are the old divisions between capitalism and socialism breaking down?  What is the role of the individual in times of upheaval?  Do personal relationships take on new meaning when the ground is shifting beneath us?  How does our democracy look to people around the world?  How does it influence the way we relate to our families and friends?  

These questions are embedded in a remarkable group of new plays by the most gifted and challenging writers in America,” continues Shalwitz.  “Teetering between the ridiculous and the sublime, each one takes us to its own exotic world, and then leads us squarely back to our own.  Throughout the 30th Season, Woolly will be offering new ways for our audience to share their own thoughts and engage in conversations with artists, experts, and one another – via our website, social gatherings, pre-show panels, post-show dialogues, and a special conference on themes about theatre and democracy that will take place during the run of Full Circle.  We’ll be reaching out to new friends in the media, politics, academia, and even the military – to expand the circle of conversation, bring fresh perspective to the work on our stage, and strengthen the role of theatre in our civic discourse.”

The 2009-10 30th Season (subscription series):

Eclipsed by Danai Gurira (World Premiere)

Full Circle by Charles L. Mee

The Last Cargo Cult created & performed by Mike Daisey (not a World Premiere as previously announced-see show description for more detail)

Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris

Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph

Special Performance:

Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind by The Neo-Futurists

Now in its 29th Season, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company continues to hold its place at theatre’s leading edge. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz and Managing Director Jeffrey Herrmann, Woolly Mammoth is acknowledged as “Washington’s most daring theatre company” (The New York Times), as a regional and national leader in the development of new plays, and as one of the best known and most influentiAl Small theatres in America.  Woolly Mammoth has gained this reputation by holding fast to its unique mission: 

…to ignite an explosive engagement between theatre artists and the community by developing, producing and promoting new plays that explore The Edges of theatrical style and human experience, and by implementing new ways to use the artistry of theatre to serve the people of Greater Washington, DC.  

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company is a member of the National New Play Network, Theatre Communications Group, The League of Washington Theatres, and The Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington, and a participant in the A-ha! Program: Think it, Do it, funded by MetLife and administered by Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for the American theatre.  The Theatre’s programs are supported in part by The National Endowment for the Arts, the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs Program/United States Commission of Fine Arts.

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company – 30th Season (2009-10)

Subscription Season:

World Premiere

Eclipsed

By Danai Gurira (In the Continuum)

Directed by Liesl Tommy (The Good Negro, Public Theatre)

Featuring Company Members Jessica Frances Dukes and Dawn Ursula

August 24 - September 20, 2009

Revised: The captive wives of a Liberian rebel officer form a hardscrabble sisterhood, their lives set on a nightmarish detour by civil war.  With the arrival of a new girl who can read – and the return of an old one who can kill – their possibilities are quickly transformed.  Drawing on reserves of wit and compassion, these defiant survivors ask: when the fog of battle lifts, could a different destiny emerge?

Danai Gurira is the award-winning co-writer and performer of the Off-Broadway hit, In the Continuum, seen at Woolly Mammoth in 2006, and performed across the U.S. and in South Africa.  For that production, she was the recipient of a 2006 OBIE Award, a 2006 John Gessner Outer Critics Award, and a Helen Hayes Award.  She appeared in the 2008 Oscar-nominated film, The Visitor.  Born in the U.S. to Zimbabwean parents and raised in Zimbabwe, she is a graduate of NYU.

Full Circle

By Charles L. Mee (Big Love)

Directed by Michael Rohd (Artistic Director, Portland's Sojourn Theatre)

Company Member Reunion Featuring Company Members Jessica Frances Dukes, Daniel Escobar, Sarah Marshall, Kate Eastwood Norris, Nancy Robinette, Michael Russotto,  Michael Willis, and Woolly Mammoth Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz

New Closing Date: October 26 – November 29, 2009

The ancient Chinese myth of the chalk circle re-emerges at the fall of the Berlin Wall: as the crotchety East German Chancellor watches a play, students suddenly riot and the profiteers swoop in. Amid the chaos, two women launch a madcap chase to save an orphaned baby and outrun the vultures of both communism and capitalism. Their journey through Woolly’s entire building comes full circle back to the stage—but can a disgraced artistic director help them reset the nation’s moral compass?

Charles L. Mee is the author of numerous plays including Big Love, True Love, First Love, bobrauschenbergamerica, Wintertime, Iphigenia 2.0, Queen’s Boulevard, and the text for Martha Clarke’s Vienna: Lusthaus, among others.  His work has been performed at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music, American Repertory Theatre, The Public Theater, Lincoln Center, Steppenwolf Theatre, and extensively around the U.S., as well as in Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Brussels, Istanbul, and elsewhere.  He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The Last Cargo Cult

Created and performed by Mike Daisey (If You See Something Say Something, How Theater Failed America)

Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory

January 11 – February 7, 2010

(Though TLCC is a new work being developed at Woolly Mammoth, our run is no longer considered the World Premiere as previously announced.  Additional engagements for the production are currently being booked, some of which fall before the Woolly run).

Revised: Fearless autobiographer and gonzo journalist Mike Daisey has traveled to a tiny South Pacific island to take part in the annual festival of the “Jon Frum Cult.” Worshippers of cargo left behind by American G.I.’s, these islanders build meticulous bamboo replicas of Western engineering, re-enact scenes from internet broadcasts, and summon American power through sympathetic magic. What does our economic crisis mean to them, and what can they teach us about wealth and wishful thinking?

Mike Daisey’s many monologues include Monopoly!, Truth, Invincible Summer, Tongues Will Wag, The Ugly American, I Miss the Cold War, Great Men of Genius, Wasting Your Breath, 21 Dog Years, as well as two performed at Woolly Mammoth, How Theater Failed America and If You See Something Say Something, which Woolly premiered in 2008.  He has performed his unique brand of extemporaneous storytelling across the country, been a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman. He is a commentator for NPR’s Day To Day and PRI’s Studio 360 and a contributor to Wired, Slate and Salon.

Clybourne Park

By Bruce Norris (The Unmentionables)

Directed by Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz

Featuring Company Members Kimberly Gilbert, Mitchell Hébert, and Jennifer Mendenhall

March 15 – April 11, 2010

A white community in 1950’s Chicago splinters over the Black family about to move in. Fast-forward to our present day, and the same house represents very different demographics as we climb through the looking-glass of Lorraine Hansberry’s classic A Raisin in the Sun. These hilarious and horrifying neighbors pitch a battle over territory and legacy that reveals how far our ideas about race and gentrification have evolved—or have they?

This new work will premiere Off-Broadway directly before Woolly Mammoth’s production.

Bruce Norris is an actor and writer whose plays include The Unmentionables, The Infidel, Purple Heart, We All Went Down to Amsterdam, and The Pain and the Itch, all of which premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre.  The Unmentionables was produced at Woolly Mammoth in 2007 and received seven Helen Hayes Award nominations.  Bruce is the recipient of the Whiting Foundation Prize for Drama (2006), two Joseph Jefferson Awards for Best New Work, and the Kesselring Prize, Honorable Mention (2006).  His play, A Parallelogram, premieres at Steppenwolf next season.

Gruesome Playground Injuries

By Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger in the Baghdad Zoo)

Directed by John Vreeke (Boom)

Featuring Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey and Tim Getman

May 17 – June 13, 2010

Two eight-year-olds’ lives collide in the nurse’s office: Doug rode his bike off the roof and Kayleen can’t stop throwing up. As they mature from accident-prone kids to self-destructive adults, their broken hearts and broKen Bones draw them ever closer.  These two rebels may only be fit for one another. But how far can one person go to heal another’s wounds?

This new work will premiere at a colleague theatre directly before Woolly Mammoth’s production.

Rajiv Joseph’s plays include Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, for which he received the 2009 Kesselring Fellowship and an NEA grant for Outstanding New American Play, and Animals Out of Paper, The Leopard and the Fox, All This Intimacy, and Huck and Holden.  In 2008, he received the 2008 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award given to an emerging playwright of exceptional promise by the Vineyard Theatre

Special Performance:

Back By Popular Demand For A 4th Engagement!

Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind (30 Plays in 60 Minutes)

Created by Greg Allen, written, directed & performed by The Neo-Futurists

December 7, 2009 – January 2, 2010

The Neo-Futurists return to Woolly with a brand new set of 30 mini plays performed in a dizzying 60-minute race against the clock.  In this long-running late-night sensation from Chicago, you never know what’s coming next. But you know it features the Neo’s signature performance style with a zany mix of heady and ridiculous subject matter.  The perfect holiday treat for DC’s savvy audiences, every performance of TMLMTBGB is a unique experience not to be missed.

The Neo-Futurists, creators of over 60 original, full-length productions, are a collective of wildly productive writer/director/performers who create immediate, non-illusory, interactive and head slappingly affordable performances.  From their theater above a Chicago funeral home, they have toured from San Francisco to Romania and won the coveted Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival.  Their acclaimed play 43 Plays for 43 Presidents was performed for President Jimmy Carter (he liked it!).

For more information, visit http://www.woollymammoth.net/.