World Premiere: after all the terrible things I do

Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s 2014/15 Stiemke Studio Season opens with the World Premiere of after all the terrible things I do. This gripping drama, a provocative piece from award-winning playwright A. Rey Pamatmat, will be directed by Milwaukee Rep Associate Artist May Adrales,who returns to The Rep after directing Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop (2012/13) and Dael Orlandersmith’sYellowman (2011/12).

Playwright A. Rey Pamatmat is known for “beautiful and painfully realistic” plays in which his deep understanding of “young characters’ complex emotional lives rings true” (Stage Left). This poignant new American drama finds Daniel, a young, gay, aspiring author, returning to his Midwestern hometown to regain his sense of self. He takes a job at a local bookstore owned by Linda, an émigré from the Philippines. The writer and the owner are drawn together by their own prejudices and questions. Soon their innocent conversation fills with tension and rage, forcing them to confront their common history, break a cycle of violence and face the reality that, sometimes, there are no second chances. after all the terrible things I do runs in the Stiemke Studio from October 1 – November 9, 2014 and opens on Friday, October 3.

The cast for after all the terrible things I do includes Sophia Skiles as Linda and Mark Junek as Daniel. Both will be making their Rep debuts with this production.

“We’re delighted to share the World Premiere production of after all of the terrible things I do in our intimate Stiemke Studio,” says Artistic Director Mark Clements. “As the story unfolds, audiences will discover there are some real thriller elements to it and you can’t second guess where it’s going to go. I love the journey it takes us on, as we watch two people who are forced to reveal secrets from their pasts in an effort to find redemption. The outer layers of the onion skin start to peel away and it becomes more revelatory the deeper we go with lots of twists and turns along the way.”

Director May Adrales added,“I am thrilled to be working again with A. Rey Pamatmat who has a singular voice in the American Theater. Rey is unafraid to question the status quo, investigate hard political issues, and delve deep into the intimate lives of people not normally portrayed in theater. It is a privilege to work on a piece that dares to challenge the mind while enlarging the heart.”

Milwaukee Repertory Theater will be partnering with the LGBT Chamber of Commerce and the LGBT Center on a variety of outreach events to further the conversation of the topics of the play, including providing resources and experts for our TalkBacks and Lobby Displays.

The Executive Producer for after all the terrible things I do is Andy Nunemaker and the Associate Producer is Greater Milwaukee Foundation William J. Radler Fund. The production is sponsored by the Cream City Foundation and Wisconsin Gazette is the Media Sponsor for this production. The Stiemke Studio Season is sponsored by Ed Seaberg and Patrick Smith.

TICKETS

Tickets for after all the terrible things I do begin at $30.00. Single Tickets for all of Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s 2014/15 productions are now on sale and can be purchased through The Rep’s Ticket Office by calling 414-224-9490, online 24/7 at www.MilwaukeeRep.com, or in person at 108 E. Wells Street. Group tickets are also available for purchase by calling Group Sales Manager Joy Surber at 414-290-5340.

To learn more about The Rep or its productions, please visit www.MilwaukeeRep.com.

THE CAST

Sophia Skiles (Linda) is a New York City-based actor whose performance work ranges from the devised to the experimental to the classics. She has appeared in productions directed by Richard Foreman, Andrei Serban, Anne Bogart, David Herskovits, David Levine, Ralph Peña, and Chay Yew, among others. She is a frequent collaborator of directors Cynthia Croot, Sonoko Kawahara, and playwright Chiori Miyagawa. Skiles earned her BS in Performance Studies at Northwestern University and an MFA in Acting at Columbia University. A dedicated educator, she has also taught performance at Mount Holyoke College and SUNY Ulster.

Mark Junek (Daniel) will be making his Rep debut with this production. Credits include The Performers (u/s Broadway),  Galileo, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Classic Stage Company), Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (Berkeley Repertory Theatre), The Imaginary Invalid (Bard SummerScape), The Seagull, Henry V (Juilliard), Smash, and Law and Order: SVU. Mark is a founder of Makehouse, which provides artists free space and time to create in rural New Jersey, www.makehouse.org. Training: The Juilliard School. Education: Columbia University.

CREATIVE TEAM

May Adrales (Director)is an Artistic Associate at Milwaukee Rep. Previously, she directed The Mountaintopand Yellowman at The Rep in their Stiemke Studio. She has developed and directed work at Goodman Theatre, The Public Theater, The Roundabout Theatre, Second Stage Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Primary Stages, Partial Comfort Productions, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. She is a Drama League Directing Fellow, Van Lier Fellow, Women’s Project Theater Lab Director, SoHo Rep Writers/Directors, New York Theatre Workshop Directing Fellowship alum, and is a recipient of the Theatre Communications Group New Generations Grant, a Stage Directors and Choreographers Association Denham Fellowship, and Paul Green Foundation Directing Award. She is a former Artistic Program Director (Lark Play Development Center) and Artistic Associate (The Public Theater). She received her MFA from Yale School of Drama and is currently on the faculty.

Daniel Zimmerman (Scenic Designer) will be making his Rep debut with this production. Selected New York Credits: Andrew Hinderaker’s Suicide, Inc. (Roundabout Theater Company); Bekah Brunsetter’s Be a Good Little Widow for Ars Nova and The Confidence Man (Woodshed Collective); and Steven Levenson’s Seven Minutes In Heaven (Colt Coeur). Other New York work has been seen at Here Arts, Cherry Lane Theatre and The Ohio. Selected regional: God of Carnage (Portland Stage); Boom (Kitchen Theater); The Who’s Tommy (ReVision at Asbury Park); and frequent collaborator for the O’Neill Playwrights Conference. Upcoming: Peggy Stafford’s Motel Cherry (Clubbed Thumb), Romeo and Juliet (Actors Theatre of Louisville). As an Art Director, Daniel has created events for Google, YouTube, Vanity Fair, Vogue, W Magazine, MTV, Spaeth Design and The NYC Makeup Show, Christopher Young Design for Harry Winston, Lumore Design, and the Here! Television Networks. MFA: NYU.

Mary Folino (Costume Designer) is the Costume Director at The Rep. Originally from Philadelphia, Folino spent many years as the Assistant Costume Shop Manager for Walnut Street Theatre. She designed the costumes for last season’s Ain’t Misbehavin’ and will design the upcoming production of Five Presidents, as well as numerous productions in the Philadelphia area. Select designs include Hair (Prince Music Theater), The Mousetrap (Walnut Street Theatre),Around the World in 80 Days (Walnut Street Theatre), and Romeo and Juliet (Lantern Theater Company).

Keith Parham (Lighting Designer) will be making his Rep debut with this production. New York credits include: Between Riverside and Crazy (Atlantic Theater Company); The Model Apartment (Primary Stages); Tribes and Red Light Winter (Barrow Street Theatre); Stop the Virgens (with Karen O; St. Ann’s Warehouse);Ivanov and Three Sisters (Classic Stage Company); A Minister’s Wife (Lincoln Center Theatre); and Adding Machine (Minetta Lane Theatre). International credits include Stop the Virgens(Sydney Opera House) and Homebody/Kabul(National Theatre in Belgrade, Serbia). Regionally, Parham has worked on The Jewels and The Silent Language (The Utopian Theatre Asylum); Venus in Fur and Sweet Bird of Youth (Goodman Theatre); Tribes and The Birthday Party (Steppenwolf Theatre Company). He has also worked with Arena Stage, Alley Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, and Actors Theatre of Louisville, among others. Parham has been recognized with Obie, Lortel, and After Dark Awards.

Andre J. Pleuss (Sound Designer) will also be making his debut with this production. He was recently the Composer and Sound Designer for The Tempest and The Two Gentlemen of Verona at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In six seasons at OSF other productions include: A Streetcar Named Desire, King Lear, The White Snake, As You Like It, August: Osage County, Ghost Light, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Merchant of Venice, Equivocation, and The Clay Cart. Other theaters: Broadway: 33 Variations, I Am My Own Wife and Metamorphoses. Regional: Argonautika/Arabian Nights (Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Lookingglass Theatre Company); After the Quake (Steppenwolf Theatre Company, La Jolla Playhouse);  Ghostwritten (Goodman Theatre); Cymbeline (The Shakespeare Theatre Company); Marcus (American Conservatory Theater); and Endgame (Steppenwolf Theatre Company). among others. Other credits: Associate Artist with Lookingglass Theatre Company, About Face Theatre, and California Shakespeare Festival; Resident Designer with Victory Gardens Theater. Awards: Multiple Joseph Jefferson Awards and Citations, Ovation Award, Drama Critics Circle Award, Barrymore Award, Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel nominations for composition and sound design.

Richelle Harrington Calin (Stage Manager) has been with Milwaukee Rep since 2004. Milwaukee Rep credits include: Bach at Leipzig, The Clean House, Intimate Apparel, Gem of the Ocean, A Christmas Carol, They Voysey Inheritance, Life Could Be a Dream, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Night is a Child, I Am My Own Wife, Greater Tuna, Pride and Prejudice, Shear Madness, The Lady with All the Answers, Yankee Tavern, Route 66, Cabaret, Bombshells, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Yellowman, Othello, The Mountaintop, and How the World Began. 

Kimberly Carolus (Assistant Stage Manager) returns to Milwaukee Rep for a second season after being a stage management intern last year. She recently graduated from the University of Central Florida with her BFA in Stage Management. Last season she worked on The History of Invulnerability, An Iliad, Woody Sez, A Christmas Carol, Forever Plaid, Ragtime, and I Left My Heart at The Rep. Her UCF credits include Stage Manager for Spring Awakening, as well as various Assistant Stage Management and Event Management positions. She has also worked for the Orlando Repertory Theatre and completed an internship with Walt Disney World.

Hannah Greene (Assistant Director) is a graduate of Northwestern University and a Denver native. Select directing projects include Swan Song (Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Midnight Projects), an original

adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 4.48 Psychosis, The Seagull, and A Bright Room Called Day. Assisting credits include Howard Shalwitz’s Stupid F***ing Bird (Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company), Heidi Stillman’s The North China Lover and David Catlin’s The Little Prince (Lookingglass Theatre Company), Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s The King and I (Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation Observership Program) and Amanda Dehnert’s Into the Woods(Oregon Shakespeare Festival; FAIR Program). Greene has also worked with The Hypocrites, Buzz22 Chicago, Theatre Zarko, and Steppenwolf’s Garage Rep.

KEY BIOGRAPHIES

A. Rey Pamatmat is an award-winning playwright. His short play Something in the Water was performed at The Flea Theatre as part of the world premiere of The Mysteries in April 2014, and his 10-minute play Some Other Kid will be presented throughout the United States this year as part of The New Black Fest’s Facing Our Truth: 10-Minute plays about Trayvon, Race, and Privilege.Pamatmatwas recently the 2012 – 13 Hodder Fellow in Playwriting and the 2011 – 12 Playwright of New York (PoNY) Fellow at The Lark Play Development Center. His play Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them began a rolling world premiere at the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s 2011 Humana Festival of New American Plays, earned the 2012 Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award Citation. a 2013 GLAAD Media Award nomination, and played across the United States. His play Thunder Above, Deeps Below, was developed at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference before its world premiere by Second Generation. Both plays were 2013 Lambda Literary Award Finalists in the LGBT Drama Category. Waterwell’s New Works Lab premiered his play. A Spare Me, at the Professional Performing Arts School in New York, and Playscripts, Inc. will publish it this spring.Pamatmat’s play DEVIANT was produced by the Vortex Theatre Company, and his shorts have been produced by the Actors Theatre of Louisville (This is How It Ends, Ain’t Meat, and 1,260-Minute Life), Vampire Cowboys (Red Rover), HERE (High/Limbo/High), and the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts Camp (Out of Joint). His work has been selected as a finalist at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference (Pure in 2009, Edith in 2010, and The Shotgun Message in 2012), featured in HX Magazine’s Top Ten Plays (DEVIANT), and nominated for two NYIT Awards including Outstanding New Script (DEVIANT). He is a Co-Director of the Ma-Yi Writer’s Lab, and is a past recipient of the Princess Grace Award for Playwriting, a Princess Grace Special Projects Grant, a NYFA Playwriting Fellowship, and a Truman Capote Literary Fellowship. Other plays include: Beautiful Day, New, Picture 24, A Power Play; or, What’s-Its-Name, Pure, and The Shotgun Message. BFA: NYU, Drama. MFA: Yale School of Drama, Playwriting.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.

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