Meet the creatives
SHARR WHITE (Playwright)
White’s plays have been developed or produced at theatres across the country and beyond, including The Magic Theatre (West Coast premiere of The Other Place; premiere of Annapurna; finalist for a Steinberg/ATCA Award); South Coast Repertory (commissions for Annapurna and Sunlight); Marin Theatre Company (premiere of Sunlight; winner of the 2009 Skye Cooper New American Play Prize); Oregon Shakespeare Festival (development of The Other Place); Actors Theatre of Louisville (premiere of Six Years at the 2006 Humana Festival); The Cape Cod Theatre Project (playwright-in-residence); and more. The Other Place received its world premiere production Off-Broadway with MCC Theatre at the Lucille Lortel, also featuring Laurie Metcalf (Lucille Lortel, Obie awards) and directed by Joe Mantello (nom. Lucille Lortel). The Other Place was subsequently presented with its European premiere at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, where it is currently in repertory, and will premiere at the Melbourne Theatre Company in 2013. The Other Place was a recipient of the 2010 Playwrights First Award; the 2011 Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation’s Theatre Visions Fund Award; and was an Outer Critics Circle Award nominee for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play. White has also been honored with a Dr. Henry and Lillian Nesburn Award as part of the Julie Harris Award in Playwriting (The Escape Velocity of Savages); and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (Six Years). White is making his Broadway debut with Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of The Other Place at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
JOE MANTELLO (Director)
Directing credits include: Dogfight, Other Desert Cities, The Pride, Pal Joey, 9 to 5, November, The Receptionist, The Ritz, Blackbird, Three Days of Rain, The Odd Couple, Glengarry Glen Ross (Tony nomination), Laugh Whore, Assassins (Tony Award), Wicked, Take Me Out (Tony Award), Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, A Man of No Importance, Design for Living, Terrence McNally and Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking for San Francisco Opera, The Vagina Monologues, Bash, Another American: Asking and Telling, Love! Valour! Compassion! (Tony Nomination), Proposals, The Mineola Twins, Corpus Christi, Mizlansky/Zilinsky…, Blue Window, God’s Heart, The Santaland Diaries, Snakebit, Three Hotels, Imagining Brad, and The Other Place. As an actor: The Normal Heart (Tony nomination), Angels in America (Tony nomination), and The Baltimore Waltz. He is recipient of Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Helen Hayes, Clarence Derwent, Obie, and Joe A. Callaway awards. He is a member of Naked Angels and an associate artist at Roundabout Theatre Company.
EUGENE LEE (Scenic Design)
Broadway: Wicked, The Homecoming, A Streetcar Named Desire. Education: BFA, Art Institute of Chicago; BFA, Carnegie Mellon; MFA, Yale; three honorary doctorates. Production designer at “Saturday Night Live” since 1974. Resident designer at Trinity Repertory since 1967. Awards: Tony, American Theatre Wing’s Design, Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Pell, Elliot Norton for Sustained Excellence. Inductee, NY Theatre Hall of Fame. He lives with wife Brooke in Providence.
EDWARD PIERCE (Scenic Design)
Operates an NYC-based design studio specializing in the production design of Broadway, touring and international stage productions. Notable collaborations: Wicked, Billy Elliot, 9 to 5, Chaplin, The Pirate Queen, Glengarry Glen Ross, Dead Accounts, Aida, Ragtime and Noise/Funk. Select designs: A Streetcar Named Desire, Shatner’s World, Gazillion Bubble Show, Pope Benedict Mass at Yankee Stadium, The Long Red Road, A Number, Tell Me on a Sunday.
DAVID ZINN (Costume Design)
MTC: Good People, We Live Here, sets and costume design for That Face, Back Back Back and The Four of Us. Broadway: set and costume design for Seminar, costume design for Picnic, Other Desert Cities, Bengal Tiger…, In the Next Room… (Tony, Drama Desk noms.), A Tale of Two Cities and Xanadu. Recent Off-Broadway: sets and costume design for The Big Meal, Circle Mirror Transformation, Completeness (Playwrights Horizons); Dogfight (Second Stage); The Select (ERS). Costume design for Look Back in Anger (Roundabout); Kin (Playwrights Horizons); set design for Carrie, The Submission, The Pride (MCC); The Sound and the Fury (ERS). International: costume design for Rocky the Musical.
JUSTIN TOWNSEND (Lighting Design)
Is an international lighting and set designer for performance. He designed Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson on Broadway, for which he was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award and a Henry Hewes Award. Other New York City design work includes Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike, Lincoln Center; Galileo and Unnatural Acts, Classic Stage Company; Milk Like Sugar, Playwrights Horizons; On the Levee, Lincoln Center Theater’s LCT3; Opus, Primary Stages; Speech and Debate, Roundabout; Beauty on the Vine and Palace of the End, Epic Theatre Ensemble. In 2011 his work was featured in four productions in the American exhibit at the Prague Quadrennial. Mr. Townsend is an assistant professor of theatre at Northeastern University where he teaches lighting and set design. www.justintownsend.com.
FITZ PATTON (Original Music & Sound Design)
Has designed and scored more than 260 productions in 20 cities across the U.S. In 2010 he was awarded both Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk Awards for his design for When the Rain Stops Falling at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and was nominated again in 2011 for his work on The Other Place at MCC. His symphony, The Holy Land, a 45-minute work for baritone, tenor and mezzo-soprano and orchestra, was completed in January of this year. He is the founder of Chance Magazine, a new theatre design magazine to be published this winter, and is a graduate of Vassar College, Bard College and Yale University.
WILLIAM CUSICK (Video & Projection Design)
Is a video artist, filmmaker and projection designer based in NYC. His designs for theatre, opera and dance have been seen across the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia. Broadway: The Coast of Utopia (Lincoln Center Theater). Off-Broadway: Bare the Musical (New World Stages), The Clean House (LCT), Arjuna’s Dilemma (Brooklyn Academy of Music), Newyorkland (Baryshnikov Arts Center), Welcome to Nowhere (Performance Space 122), Americana Kamikaze (PS122). International and tours: Rock the Ballet (Rasta Thomas), Tap Stars (Rasta Thomas), The Shoe of Manitu (Stage Entertainment). Awards include the 2007 Henry Hewes Award for Projection Design and the 2009-2011 NEA/TCG Career Development Program for American Theatre Designers.
BARCLAY STIFF (Production Stage Manager)
Broadway: Don’t Dress for Dinner, Wit, The House of Blue Leaves, Elling, Enron, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Mary Stuart, The Country Girl, The Seafarer, Inherit the Wind, Losing Louie, Shining City, Whoopi, Hedda Gabler, The Price. Off-Broadway: Gruesome Playground Injuries, Farragut North, Beauty of the Father, A Picasso, House/Garden, From Door to Door, Juvenilia, Frank’s Home, Debbie Does Dallas, Fully Committed. Williamstown: eight seasons. Thanks to a great team with Kelly and Catherine.
KELLY BEAULIEU (Stage Manager)
Broadway: Don’t Dress for Dinner, Wit, The House of Blue Leaves, Elling, Enron, Brighton Beach Memoirs. National tours: Grease. Off-Broadway: Lincoln Center Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Atlantic Theater Company, stageFARM, others. Regional: Williamstown Theatre Festival, Huntington Theatre Company. Education: Boston University.
CAPARELLIOTIS CASTING (David Caparelliotis, Lauren Port, Miriam Mintz, Felecia Rudolph)
Broadway includes Craig Wright’s Grace, Theresa Rebeck’s Dead Accounts, Lyle Kessler’s Orphans (upcoming), Seminar, The Columnist, Stick Fly, Good People, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, The House of Blue Leaves, Fences, Lend Me a Tenor, The Royal Family. Also: Second Stage, Atlantic, LCT3, Ars Nova, Old Globe 2012-13 season, Goodman, Arena and Williamstown Theatre Festival (three seasons). Recent film/television: HairBrained (upcoming with Brendan Fraser) and “Steel Magnolias” (Sony for Lifetime).
MCC Theater
MCC Theater is the award-winning Off-Broadway theater that produces new work while nurturing the development of playwrights and more than 1,200 high school students annually through a variety of programs. MCC produces its annual three-play season at the Lucille Lortel Theatre and will open its own two-theater complex on West 52nd Street in 2014. Productions include: Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit by Margaret Edson; Tony-winning Frozen by Bryony Lavery ; Jeff Talbott’s The Submission ; Sharr White’s The Other Place ; Alexi Kaye Campbell’s The Pride ; Michael Weller’s Fifty Words ; Russell Lees’ Nixon’s Nixon ; and Tony-nominated Reasons to Be Pretty by Playwright-in-Residence Neil LaBute. mcctheater.org.
ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION
In 2000, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation partnered with Manhattan Theatre Club to commission and produce engaging plays with science and technology themes and characters. To date, MTC’s Sloan partnership has commissioned 40 plays, which have been produced in New York, London and nationwide. The Foundation has supported MTC’s productions of Charlotte Jones’ Humble Boy and David Auburn’s Proof.