Dying City | Signature Theatre

By Christopher Shinn
Directed by Matthew Gardiner
Scenic Design Daniel Conway
Costume Design Frank Labovitz
Lighting Design Colin K. Bills
Sound Design Matt Rowe
Original Music Works Peter Lerman

Dates

Pride: October 19 & November 2
Discussion: October 24, November 7 & 13

The Washington Premiere of a Bold New Play

A transfixing, intimate play from the author of Four and Where Do We Live.

One year after his identical twin brother, Craig’s, suspicious death in Iraq, Peter shows up unannounced at his sister-in-law Kelly’s apartment. Having not spoken since the funeral, Peter and Kelly face-off in a passive-aggressive battle rooted in half-truths and betrayal. The two’s emotionally brutal skirmish intersperses with flashbacks of Craig’s final night home before deployment.

Featuring Thomas Keegan and Rachel Zampelli (Brother Russia), Dying City is a subtle commentary on the heart-breaking ramifications of war.

“[An] achingly compassionate new play.” – Variety

“Anyone who doubts that Mr. Shinn is among the most provocative and probing of American playwrights today need only experience the . . . sophisticated welding of form and content that is Dying City.” – The New York Times

Dying City partially sponsored by

Rachel Zampelli (Kelly) SIGNATURE: Brother Russia, Chess, See What I Wanna See, Holiday Mayhem, LaChiusa’s Ladies, December Divas II, Anyone Can Whistle in concert, The Happy Time, Saving Aimee. DC AREA: No Rules Theatre Company: Stop Kiss; Adventure Theatre: Twas the Night Before Christmas; Studio Theatre 2ndStage: POP!, Jerry Springer: The Opera, Reefer Madness: The Musical; Folger Shakespeare Theatre: The Comedy of Errors, Orestes: A Tragic Romp, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Ford’s Theatre: Shenandoah.REGIONAL: Two River Theatre Company: Orestes: A Tragic Romp; New Repertory Theatre: Into the Woods, Romeo and Juliet; Greenbrier Valley Theatre: Nevermore;Black Swan Theatre (Special Appearance, Oregon Shakespeare Festival): Breast Entanglements. EDUCATION: Santa Clara University.
Thomas Keegan (Peter/Craig) FOLGER THEATRE: Taming of the Shrew; Othello. KENNEDY CENTER: Shear Madness. CONSTELLATION THEATRE COMPANY: Women Beware Women. AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE CENTER: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Changeling, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Henry VI Pt.1, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Richard II, King Lear, Macbeth, Cymbeline. TEXAS SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL: Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, Man of La Mancha. DELAWARE SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. EDUCATION: The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy for Classical Acting at The George Washington University, MFA.

Creative Team

Christopher Shinn (Playwright) Shinn’s most recent play, Picked, premiered at the Vineyard Theatre in 2011. His play before that, Now or Later, premiered at the Royal Court in 2008, and was shortlisted for the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play. His other plays include Dying City (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Where Do We Live (Obie in Playwriting), Four, What Didn't Happen, On the Mountain, Other People, and The Coming World. His plays have been seen in New York at Lincoln Center Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, and the Vineyard Theatre, and are published in collections from TCG and A&C Black. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting and a grant from the NEA/TCG Residency Program. He currently teaches at the New School for Drama.
Matthew Gardiner SIGNATURE: Director: Xanadu, Really Really, The Hollow, Side by Side by Sondheim, Art, [title of show], See What I Wanna See; Choreographer: Sweeney Todd, Dirty Blonde; Assistant Director and Choreographer: over 20 productions at Signature Theatre, alongside Eric Schaeffer, Frank Galati, John Rando, Karma Camp, Christopher D’Amboise and Jeremy Skidmore. Associate Artistic Director (2011-present), Resident Director (2010-2011), Resident Assistant Director (2006-2010); SIGNATURE CABARET: Director: Broadway Duets, Lost Songs of Broadway 1950s, Signature Sings (featuring Natascia Diaz & Euan Morton), December Divas II, Singing Shakespeare. NEW YORK: Director: NYMF: The Greenwood Tree; Assistant Director: Circle in the Square: Glory Days. DC AREA: Director/Choreographer: Kennedy Center: Snow White, Rose Red (and Fred!); Everyman Theatre: Let Me Sing And I’m Happy; Metrostage: tick, tick…BOOM!; Catholic University of America: La Boheme, Candide; Co-Director/Choreographer: Studio Theatre: Jerry Springer: The Opera: Reefer Madness (2008 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Musical and Direction of a Musical), Choreographer: Studio Theatre: Grey Gardens, Adding Machine. Assistant Director: Kennedy Center: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. EDUCATION: Carnegie Mellon University.
Daniel Conway (Scenic Design) SIGNATURE: The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Chess, Dirty Blonde, Sunset Boulevard, Hairspray. DC AREA: Shakespeare Theatre: The Merry Wives of Windsor; Studio Theatre: Sucker Punch; Folger Theatre: Cyrano; Round House Theatre: Double Indemnity. REGIONAL: Arden Theatre: Cyrano; Milwaukee Repertory: The Diary of Anne Frank. AWARDS: Two Helen Hayes Awards for Outstanding Set Design (12 nominations). TEACHING: Head of Design and Production division of The School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies at The University of Maryland. UPCOMING: Milwaukee Repertory: A Christmas Carol; Studio Theatre: The Aliens; Kennedy Center Family Theatre: The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg; Arden Theatre: A Raisin in the Sun; Signature: Crimes of the Heart.
Frank Labovitz (Costume Design) DC AREA: Round House Theatre: Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Next Fall, Pride and Prejudice; Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company: Mr. Burns: a post electric play, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Fever/Dream; Studio Theatre, 2^nd Stage: Astroboy and the God of Comics, Mojo; Theater J: The Religion Thing; Something You Did, Sholom Aleichem: Laughter Through Tears; Imagination Stage: Rapunzel, Junie B. Jones: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells, Callisto 5; No Rules Theatre Company: Stop Kiss; Forum Theatre: Mad Forest.
Colin K. Bills (Lighting Design) SIGNATURE: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, God of Carnage, Brother Russia, Really Really, Hairspray, Side by Side by Sondheim, As the Curtain Rises, I Am My Own Wife. DC AREA: Woolly Mammoth Theatre (Company Member): over 25 designs including Mr. Burns, A Bright New Boise, Clybourne Park, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Dead Man’s Cell Phone; Round House Theatre: Eurydice, The Book Club Play; Studio Theatre: Lungs, Circle Mirror Transformation; dog & pony dc, Forum Theatre, Imagination Stage, The Kennedy Center, MetroStage, Olney Theatre, The Smithsonian Institution, Synetic Theatre, Theatre for the First Amendment, Theatre J, The Washington Revels. REGIONAL: The Berkshire Theater Festival: Best Kept Secret; CENTERSTAGE: Crime & Punishment, Working it Out; Intiman Theatre: All the King’s Men; Portland Center Stage: The North Plan; The Williamstown Theatre Festival: The Physicists. AWARDS: 2011, 2010 and 2008 Helen Hayes Awards, 2009 Princess Grace Theater Fellowship. EDUCATION: Dartmouth.
Matt Rowe (Sound Design) SIGNATURE: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Xanadu, God of Carnage, Brother Russia, Really Really, Hairspray (Helen Hayes nomination), A Second Chance, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South, The Boy Detective Fails, The Hollow, Side by Side by Sondheim, Art, And the Curtain Rises, Sunset Boulevard, Walter Cronkite is Dead., A Fox on the Fairway, Chess, Sycamore Trees, [title of show], Sweeney Todd, Show Boat, First You Dream: The Music of Kander & Ebb, Dirty Blonde, Giant, The Little Dog Laughed, Les Misérables, Anyone Can Whistle in concert, The Visit, The Happy Time, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Glory Days, Merrily We Roll Along, The Witches of Eastwick. DC AREA: Kennedy Center: First You Dream (Associate Sound Designer), Snow White, Rose Red (and Fred!); Nobody’s Perfect.
Peter Lerman (Original Music) SIGNATURE: Art. MUSICALS: The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. (dir. Michael Mayer), The Virginia (2010 Disney/ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop). RECORDINGS: Original Soundtrack for Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue. TV/FILM MUSIC: Walker Academy (MTV Films Movie Musical), Modern Family on ABC. EDUCATION: Columbia University, BA, Music. AWARDS: 2011 Sondheim Young Artist Citation, 2010 Jonathan Larson Award, 2010 Dramatists Guild Fellowship, 2005 Kennedy Center ACTF Musical Theater Award.
Julie Meyer (Production Stage Manager) SIGNATURE: Xanadu, Really Really, A Second Chance, The Boy Detective Fails, I Capture the Castle (21/24 workshop), Art, Sunset Boulevard, Walter Cronkite is Dead., Chess, Tamar and the River (21/24 workshop), [title of show], I Am My Own Wife, Show Boat, Dirty Blonde, The Boy Detective Fails (21/24 workshop), Giant, Glory Days, Les Misérables. REGIONAL: Lyric Theatre: Stephen Schwartz’s new musical Snapshots: a Musical Scrapbook, Disney’s High School Musical, Oklahoma! Evita, Singin’ in the Rain, Once on This Island; Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre: Jane Eyre; Little Me; Dirty Blonde; I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change. EDUCATION: Rutgers University, MFA, Stage Management.