Second Stage Theatre (Carole Rothman, Artistic Director; Ellen Richard, Executive Director) will continue its 30th Anniversary Season with the New York premiere of Gina Gionfriddo's play, BECKY SHAW, directed by Peter Dubois.
The recent runaway hit of the Humana Festival, BECKY SHAW will begin previews Tuesday, December 16 at Second Stage Theatre (307 West 43rd Street) and will officially open on Thursday, January 8, 2009 at 6:30pm. For tickets or more information, please visit www.2ST.com.
In BECKY SHAW, a newlywed couple fixes up two romantically challenged friends: wife's best friend, meet husband's sexy and strange new co-worker. When an evening calculated to bring happiness takes a dark turn, crisis and comedy ensue in this wickedly funny new play that asks what we owe the people we love and the strangers who land on our doorstep.
BECKY SHAW will feature David Wilson Barnes (reprising his acclaimed performance from the world premiere production at the Humana Festival), Emily Bergl ("Men in Trees," Second Stage Theatre's Some Americans Abroad), Kelly Bishop ("Gilmore Girls," original cast of Six Degrees of Separation, Tony Award-winner for A Chorus Line), Annie Parisse (who created the title role of Becky Shaw in the world premiere production at the Humana Festival), and Thomas Sadoski (reasons to be pretty, Second Stage Theatre's Reckless, Gemini, This Is Our Youth, All This Intimacy).
BECKY SHAW will feature scenic design by Derek McLane, costume design by Jeff Mahshie, lighting design by David Weiner, and sound design by Walter Trarbach.
GINA GIONFRIDDO is the author of After Ashley (Vineyard Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville), U.S. Drag (Clubbed Thumb, Connecticut Rep; published by Smith & Kraus in Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2002), Guinevere (Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference), Safe, and Trepidation Nation (both at Actors Theatre of Louisville), among other plays. She has received an Obie Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, a Lucille Lortel Fellowship, and a Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship.
Director Peter Dubois is the newly appointed Artistic Director of Boston's Huntington Theatre Company. Also a former Artistic Director of Alaska's innovative Perseverance Theatre Company, DuBois' recent work includes the Obie Award-winning production of David Grimm's Measure for Pleasure, as well as Richard III starring Peter Dinklage (both at the Public Theatre) and the LAByrinth Theatre Company's co-production of Bob Glaudini's Jack Goes Boating starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Ortiz, Beth Cole and Daphne Rubin-Vega. He recently staged a new adaptation of Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre.
David Wilson Barnes appeared in the world premiere production of Becky Shaw at the Humana Festival. Other theatre credits include Saint Crispin's Day, Rattlestick Theatre; Men Without Shadows, The Flea; Jersey Story, Cherry Lane; The Square, Ma Yi Theatre Company/The Public Theatre; Hamlet, The Public Theater; Mirandolina, The Pearl; A Midsummer Night's Dream, 78th St. Theatre Lab; The Caucasian Chalk Circle and The Bald Soprano, La Mama ETC; Hedda Gabler, Horace Mann Theatre. Television: "Law and Order," "L & O: Criminal Intent," and "Sex and the City." Film: Capote, Ozark Savage, Extreme Mom, Nose.
