'a delicate balance' begins rehearsals in los angeles

Yesterday we had our first read-thru with the company and designers at The Odyssey Theater. I'm so glad to be re-teaming with director Robin Larsen and to be working with this terrific cast for the first time. ADB will mark my fourth play with Robin (the Ovation Award-winner "Four Places" I produced rather than acted in), and it's almost exactly two years to the day since we did "The Fall to Earth" at the same theater.

We open April 26th. Once tickets are on sale, you'll find them HERE.

my 'rabbit hole' adventure featured in LA Stage Times

Les Spindle and the good people at LA Stage Times have put together a lovely feature article on my role in RABBIT HOLE and career in general. I had a really nice time talking to Les--he knows as much about the Los Angeles theater scene as anybody you'll find.

You can read the article here.

trailer for 'the fall to earth' with jobeth williams

JoBeth Williams, Ann Noble, Deborah Puette. Photo by David Colclasure.

Click HERE to watch the trailer for The Fall to Earth. Through April 1, 2012 in Los Angeles at the Odyssey Theatre.

everything you need to know to see the west coast premiere of acclaimed 'the fall to earth'

NOW EXTENDED! 

Chicago playwright Joel Drake Johnson's darkly funny and occasionally terrifying play, The Fall to Earth, runs through April 22  at the Odyssey Theatre in west Los Angeles.

Cast of characters:

Click here to watch the trailer!

Fay Schorsch, a mother: JoBeth Williams
Rachel Browney, her daughter: Me 
Terry Reed, a police officer: Ann Noble

All information including performance schedule, showtimes, ticketing, creative team bios, technical crew and more can be found at the Odyssey Theatre website, so give the link a click. A blurb from the description there:

Playwright Johnson's funny and harrowing play explores the treacherous terrain of parent/child relationships, where everything changes, yet always remains the same.

For a great interview with director Robin Larsen and JoBeth, visit LA Stage Times here.

If you're a casting director or someone else with the ability to offer the cast further employment, email me here for professional comps, and I'll do my damnedest.

See you at the theater!

'the fall to earth'

Back in 2010, I was fortunate to be part of the producing team that offered up Joel Drake Johnson's funny and heartbreaking play, Four Places, in Los Angeles at Rogue Machine. That production was helmed by my dear friend and frequent collaborator, Robin Larsen, and featured Roxanne Hart in one of the lead roles. Its quartet of actors and creative team went on to many richly-deserved award nominations that season, including the Ovation Award for Best Production, Intimate Theater, which we ultimately won. The whole process was a thrill, and so I'm really, really excited to announce that I've re-teamed with Robin and Roxanne for another project written by Joel.

Earlier this year, we secured the West Coast premiere rights to Joel's equally dark and funny drama about family secrets, The Fall to Earth, which premiered at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater several years back. Robin will again direct, but Rox and I will switch places--this time around I'll star and she'll produce along with the fine folks at Los Angeles' acclaimed Odyssey Theatre. And as the icing on the cake, the wonderful JoBeth Williams will grace the stage in a tour de force role as the mother of my character. Rehearsals begin this week with a February 11 opening.

Click here for performance schedule and tickets. 

I hope you'll join us.

"four places" nets 3 LADCC awards including best production

With Mark at Jerry's Famous Deli, 1:21 a.m.

The accolades for this gem of a play keep coming. On March 14, the team of "Four Places" received three more awards from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, including the biggie for Best Production. The award will sit alongside its kin from the Ovation and recently-announced Garland Awards. Folks have been asking me what I'll produce next, but I'm not ready to give details, yet. I'd like to revel in this one a bit longer. Thanks to everyone who supported this beautiful play, written by the wonderful Joel Drake Johnson, and congratulations to my fellow producers, John Perrin Flynn and Matthew Elkins and to director, dear friend and frequent collaborator Robin Larsen. So continuously proud of our cast, Tim Bagley, Anne Gee Byrd, Roxanne Hart, and Lisa Rothschiller Ragsdale on their win for Best Ensemble. A dream cast if ever there was one. And thank you to all of our designers and technical and house staff at Rogue Machine and publicist Judith Borne. You all did a marvelous job keeping that show running through its many extensions in 2010.

The party continued early into the next morning with heaps of corned beef and chicken soup at Jerry's Famous Deli on Ventura Blvd, in a booth not unlike the one in the play....

uh, yeah, there's a little bit of theater in L.A.

When my then-boyfriend-now-husband and I moved to L.A. from Chicago, I was pretty sure I was kissing legitimate theater goodbye. The rap about Los Angeles theater being all bad showcase projects had jaded me before I even landed at LAX. I'm sure I'd even muttered some of it myself, before I knew any better.

I'm not often this glad to have been 180 degrees off the mark. Los Angeles' theater community is as vibrant and varied, as talented and troubled as of that in any of the major market in the U.S. It's nowhere near perfect (another post on that when I'm less hung-over), but when it's good, it is top-notch. Chicago taught me my first lessons on living a life in the theater, and L.A. continues that schooling.

Congratulations to all of the nominees at last nights' Ovation Awards. Congratulations to all who toil and triumph, persevere and prosper onstage in the land where the screen would be king. Just being a part of this community makes me as proud as winning Ms. Ovation herself.

Congratulations to you wherever you live, so long as you make theater that truly means something to you.