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Nice Fish

  • Jan 17, 2016 - Feb 7, 2016

  • Loeb Drama Center

  • Run Time: 95 minutes with no intermission

Tickets

Tickets from $25

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By Mark Rylance & Louis Jenkins
Drawn from the words of Louis Jenkins
Directed by Claire van Kampen
Starring Kayli Carter, Bob Davis, Louis Jenkins, Jim Lichtscheidl, & Mark Rylance

On a lake in frozen Minnesota, the ice is beginning to creak and groan. It’s the end of the fishing season, and two men are out on the ice one last time, angling for answers to life’s larger questions. A play woven together from the acclaimed prose poems of Louis Jenkins, Nice Fish reflects nature with a wry surreality. As Jenkins writes, they “are after something big, something down there that is pure need, something that, had it the wherewithal, would swallow them whole.”

@americanrep  #NiceFishART

There is no guarantee that standing room will be available for sold-out performances however, if it becomes available a limited number of standing room tickets may be sold in person for select shows on the day of each show at 12 noon. The number of standing room tickets will not be known in advance of the ticket services office opening at 12PM. There may not be any standing room tickets sold for the final weekend. Please call our Ticket Services office with any ticket related questions at 617.547.8300. Hours are: Tuesday-Sunday, Noon-5PM.

Need to know

This production contains loud noises and flashing lights. 

Please plan to arrive early. Latecomers and re-admittance will be seated at the discretion of House Management. In particular, patrons seated in rows BB-HH will not be able to be sat in their seats after the start of the show.

Read more

Click here to read more about the show in our winter Guide.

Click here to read the show’s program.

Read these blog posts to learn more about the production:

A Long Way From Home
by Louis Jenkins

Ice Fishing: An Interview with Mark Rylance
Interview by Robert Duffley

Frozen: Or the (N)ice Fish(es) of Louis Jenkins & Mark Rylance
by Christina Davis

Notable dates

ASL Dates

Feb. 2, 7:30PM – Feb. 6 at 2PM

Audio Described Dates

Feb. 4, 7:30PM – Feb. 7, 2PM

Open Captioned

Jan. 28, 7:30PM – Jan. 31, 2PM

Age Appropriateness

Recommended for grades 9 and up.

Though couched in a familiar real-life setting, the play’s heightened, imagistic language and mythological undertones make this a surreal theater experience appropriate for experienced and first time theatergoing teens alike.

Discussions

Post-performance discussions with the cast and creative team will follow matinee performances on: 

Jan. 23, Jan. 27, Jan. 30, Feb. 3, Feb. 6

Press

Credits

Creative team

Playwright

Mark Rylance

Playwright

Mark Rylance

Mark Rylance played the title role of Hamlet and Treplev in The Seagull at A.R.T. in 1991. In addition to the A.R.T. production, he has played Hamlet over 400 times in his life: in high school at age 16, at The RSC at age 28, and at The Globe at age 40. His most recent credit is King Philippe V in Farinelli and the King by Claire van Kampen in London’s West End, first seen at Shakespeare’s Globe. Other recent theater includes Ron in Nice Fish at the Guthrie Theater in 2013; Countess Olivia in Twelfth Night and Richard III at Shakespeare’s Globe, in the West End, and on Broadway in 2013; and Johnny “Rooster” Byron in Jerusalem at the Royal Court, in the West End, and on Broadway in 2011. Other West End/ Broadway performances have included La Bête (Valère), and Boeing Boeing (Robert). His first play, I Am Shakespeare, premiered in 2007 at the Chichester Festival Theatre and was published in 2012. He has appeared at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, the Bush, The Tricycle, Shared Experience, Theatre for a New Audience, and for his own companies, The London Theatre of Imagination (LTI) and Phoebus Cart. He was the Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre from 1996-2006. Rylance’s most recent film roles include Bridge of Spies; the upcoming BFG; Wolf Hall on PBS and the BBC; The Gunman; and We Are Many. Other film work includes Days and Nights; Anonymous; The Government Inspector; The Grass Arena; Love Lies Bleeding; Intimacy; Angels and Insects; Nocturne; and Institute Benjamenta. He trained at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (1978-1980) under Hugh Cruttwell, and is an honorary bencher of the Middle Temple Hall in London; trustee of The Shakespearean Authorship Trust; an ambassador of SURVIVAL, the movement for tribal peoples; and a patron of PEACE DIRECT. 

 

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Poet

Louis Jenkins

A.R.T.: Debut. Louis Jenkins has been writing and publishing poetry for more than 50 years, and most of this poetry was written in Duluth, Minnesota, Mr. Jenkins' home for the last 45 years. His most recent books are Tin Flag: New and Selected Prose Poems and Before You Know It: Prose Poems 1970- 2005, both published by Will o’ the Wisp Books. 

 

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Director

Claire van Kampen

Claire van Kampen was composer and music director of the A.R.T. productions of Hamlet and The Seagull in 1991. She began her theater career with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986, followed by work at the Royal National Theatre in 1987, becoming the first woman to be a musical director with either company. She has subsequently developed an international career as a composer/ performer, writing and playing for theatre, radio, television and film soundtracks and the concert hall. Since the opening of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London in 1997, she was Mark Rylance’s Associate Artistic Director, and the Founding Director of Theatre Music, creating both period and contemporary music for more than 35 of the Globe’s productions. She is now a Senior Research Fellow and Associate for Early Modern Theatre Music at the Globe. Other work includes music for La Bête on Broadway and the West End; Richard III and Twelfth Night at Shakespeare’s Globe/West End/Broadway; True West and Boeing-Boeing on Broadway; As You Like It at Theatre for a New Audience. Her new play Farinelli and the King ran in the West End last fall and is to become a screenplay. Recent films featuring her music include Anonymous, Days and Nights, and the miniseries Wolf Hall (historical music arranger). She was given The Vero Nihil Verius Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts at Concordia University in Portland, OR and the 2007 Sam Wanamaker Award for the founding work during the opening ten years at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. 

 

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Scenic Designer

Todd Rosenthal

Scenic Designer

Todd Rosenthal

A.R.T.: Nice Fish. Broadway: August Osage County (Tony Award), The Motherf**ker with the Hat (Tony nomination), Who’s Afraid of Virginia WoolfOf Mice and MenThis is Our YouthFish in the Dark. Off Broadway: Red Light Winter, Barrow Street; Domesticated, Lincoln Center; Qualms, Playwrights Horizons. Set designer for 6 years for the Big Apple Circus. International: August Osage County, National Theatre, London, Sydney Theater, Australia; The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Theatre Royal, Ireland. Regional: Steppenwolf (33 productions), Goodman Theatre (Artistic Partner), Guthrie Theater, Alliance, Mark Taper Forum, La Jolla Playhouse, Arena Stage, Berkeley Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse, Alley, Lyric Opera of Chicago, OSF, and many others. Select Museum Exhibitions (Lead Designer): Mythbusters: The Explosive ExhibitionThe International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes. Other Awards: Laurence Olivier, Helen Hayes, Ovation, Back Stage Garland, Joseph Jefferson, Michael Merritt Award for Excellence in Design and Collaboration. Associate Professor, Northwestern University. Graduate, Yale School of Drama. 

 

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Costume Designer

Ilona Somogyi

Costume Designer

Ilona Somogyi

A.R.T.: Nice Fish. Broadway: Clybourne Park. Off-Broadway: Gloria, Vineyard Theatre; Satchmo at the WaldorfMy Name is Asher Lev, Westside Theatre; The World is Round, Ripe Time at BAM; A Soldier’s Tale, Carnegie Hall. Regional: Disgraced, Huntington Theatre Company; Grey Gardens, Bay Street Theater; Body of an AmericanAn Opening in Time, Hartford Stage; Pride and Prejudice, Center Stage; King Hedley II, Smokey Joe’s Café, Arena Stage. MFA and Faculty, Yale School of Drama. 

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Lighting Designer

Japhy Weideman

Lighting Designer

Japhy Weideman

A.R.T.: Debut. Broadway: Sylvia, Old Times, The Visit (Tony nomination), Airline Highway (Tony nomination), The Nance (Tony nomination), Of Mice and Men (Tony nomination), The Heidi Chronicles, Macbeth at Lincoln Center (Drama Desk nomination), and The Snow Geese. Off-Broadway: Lincoln Center, Public Theater, NYTW, Playwrights Horizons, Second Stage, MTC, MCC, LAByrinth, and Vineyard Theatre. International: West End, Royal Shakespeare Co-Stratford, La Scala- Milan, Nederlands Opera-Amsterdam, Edinburgh International Festival, National Theater of Greece, National Theatre of Korea, and Opera Lyon. 

 

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Sound Designer

Scott W. Edwards

Sound Designer

Scott W. Edwards

A.R.T.: Debut. As the Resident Sound Designer for the Guthrie Theater, Edwards has designed over 100 productions in the last 20 years. Minneapolis/St. Paul area: The Children’s Theatre Company (over 40 productions), The Jungle Theater, Penumbra Theatre Company, Mixed Blood Theatre, Illusion Theater, Ballet of the Dolls (founding member), Theater Mu, Eye of the Storm Theatre, Teatro Latino, The Minnesota Opera. Regional: San Jose Rep, Arizona Theatre Company. Radio: Production Manager/Live Sound Engineer, Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. Awards: Minneapolis Star Tribune Outstanding Sound Designer (2003, for Pride and Prejudice; 2004, for The Pirates of Penzance); Helen Hayes Award nomination (2014, You Can't Take It With You, Arena Stage). 

 

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Composer

Claire van Kampen

Claire van Kampen was composer and music director of the A.R.T. productions of Hamlet and The Seagull in 1991. She began her theater career with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986, followed by work at the Royal National Theatre in 1987, becoming the first woman to be a musical director with either company. She has subsequently developed an international career as a composer/ performer, writing and playing for theatre, radio, television and film soundtracks and the concert hall. Since the opening of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London in 1997, she was Mark Rylance’s Associate Artistic Director, and the Founding Director of Theatre Music, creating both period and contemporary music for more than 35 of the Globe’s productions. She is now a Senior Research Fellow and Associate for Early Modern Theatre Music at the Globe. Other work includes music for La Bête on Broadway and the West End; Richard III and Twelfth Night at Shakespeare’s Globe/West End/Broadway; True West and Boeing-Boeing on Broadway; As You Like It at Theatre for a New Audience. Her new play Farinelli and the King ran in the West End last fall and is to become a screenplay. Recent films featuring her music include Anonymous, Days and Nights, and the miniseries Wolf Hall (historical music arranger). She was given The Vero Nihil Verius Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts at Concordia University in Portland, OR and the 2007 Sam Wanamaker Award for the founding work during the opening ten years at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. 

 

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Casting

Jim Carnahan, CSA

A.R.T.: WARHOLCAPOTENice Fish, The Glass Menagerie, Once. Director of Artistic Development for Roundabout Theatre Company. Roundabout Theatre Company: Time and the Conways, The Price, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Love Love Love, She Loves Me, Noises Off, On the Twentieth Century, The Real Thing, Cabaret, Harvey, Sunday in the Park with George, The Pajama Game, Twelve Angry Men, Nine, Assassins, Side Man. Additional Broadway credits: 1984, Groundhog Day, Fun Home, Constellations, You Can’t Take It With You, The River, The Glass Menagerie, Matilda, Once, Peter and the Starcatcher, The Mountaintop, Jerusalem, Arcadia, The Scottsboro Boys, American Idiot, Spring Awakening, The Pillowman, Thoroughly Modern Millie, True West. London credits include: Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Angels in America, The Glass Menagerie, Nice Fish, The Red Barn, The Motherf**ker with the Hat, Streetcar Named Desire. Film & TV: The Seagull (upcoming), A Home at the End of the World, "Glee" (Emmy Award nomination).

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Production Stage Manager

Evangeline Rose Whitlock

Production Stage Manager

Evangeline Rose Whitlock

A.R.T.: Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3). Off-Broadway: Lost Girls, MCC; Grounded, Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1,
2 & 3)
, Antony and Cleopatra, Public Theater; The Odyssey, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Public Theater Public Works (dir. Lear deBessonet); Vinegar Tom, Pentecost, PTP/NYC at Atlantic Stage 2. National Tour: Flashdance the Musical. Regional: The Scottsboro Boys, CTG/Old Globe/A.C.T.; Allegiance, A Room With a View, Odyssey, Engaging Shaw, Old Globe; Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin, A Dram of Dummhicit, La Jolla Playhouse; What is the Cause of Thunder?, Williamstown Theatre Festival. Adjunct Faculty at Adelphi University. MFA, UC San Diego. 

 

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Cast

Flo

Kayli Carter

A.R.T.: Debut. Theater: Machinal (Irene Ryan nomination), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Spring Awakening, SCAD. Workshops: The Aeneid. TV/Film: “Z” (Amazon, Dir. Tim Blake Nelson), “Rings” (Paramount, Dir. F. Javier Gutiérrez). Performing Arts BFA from Savannah College of Art and Design. 

 

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The DNR Man

Bob Davis

The DNR Man

Bob Davis

A.R.T.: Debut. Regional: The Crucible, Othello, Nice Fish, dozens more, Guthrie Theater (26 seasons since 1987); Richard III (Richard III, Star Tribune Best Performance), Ten Thousand Things; Betrayal, Sylvia, Jungle Theater; Peter Pan, Children’s Theatre; Sherlock Holmes, Park Square Theatre; The Foreigner, Chanhassen Dinner Theatres; Mixed Blood; New Classic; Actors Theatre of St. Paul; Cricket Theatre; Illusion Theater; Pasadena Playhouse. TV/Film: Factotum, A Simple Plan, Trauma, “Algo’s FACTory.” Awards: McKnight Fellowship, Lunt- Fontanne Fellowship. 

 

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Wayne

Louis Jenkins

A.R.T.: Debut. Louis Jenkins has been writing and publishing poetry for more than 50 years, and most of this poetry was written in Duluth, Minnesota, Mr. Jenkins' home for the last 45 years. His most recent books are Tin Flag: New and Selected Prose Poems and Before You Know It: Prose Poems 1970- 2005, both published by Will o’ the Wisp Books. 

 

View full biography

Erik

Jim Lichtscheidl

A.R.T.: Debut. International: Tiny Kushner, Tricycle Theatre, London. Regional: The Miser, Berkeley Rep, Alley Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Theatre de la Jeune Lune; Santaland Diaries, Portland Center Stage; The 39 Steps, Arizona Theatre Company; Love’s Labour's Lost, Actors Theatre of Louisville; over 30 productions with the Guthrie Theater including Uncle Vanya, Peer Gynt, Side Man, Merrily We Roll Along, Arms and the Man, Clybourne Park, and Nice Fish. Film: A Serious Man, Best Man Down, Factotum

 

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Ron

Mark Rylance

Mark Rylance played the title role of Hamlet and Treplev in The Seagull at A.R.T. in 1991. In addition to the A.R.T. production, he has played Hamlet over 400 times in his life: in high school at age 16, at The RSC at age 28, and at The Globe at age 40. His most recent credit is King Philippe V in Farinelli and the King by Claire van Kampen in London’s West End, first seen at Shakespeare’s Globe. Other recent theater includes Ron in Nice Fish at the Guthrie Theater in 2013; Countess Olivia in Twelfth Night and Richard III at Shakespeare’s Globe, in the West End, and on Broadway in 2013; and Johnny “Rooster” Byron in Jerusalem at the Royal Court, in the West End, and on Broadway in 2011. Other West End/ Broadway performances have included La Bête (Valère), and Boeing Boeing (Robert). His first play, I Am Shakespeare, premiered in 2007 at the Chichester Festival Theatre and was published in 2012. He has appeared at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, the Bush, The Tricycle, Shared Experience, Theatre for a New Audience, and for his own companies, The London Theatre of Imagination (LTI) and Phoebus Cart. He was the Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre from 1996-2006. Rylance’s most recent film roles include Bridge of Spies; the upcoming BFG; Wolf Hall on PBS and the BBC; The Gunman; and We Are Many. Other film work includes Days and Nights; Anonymous; The Government Inspector; The Grass Arena; Love Lies Bleeding; Intimacy; Angels and Insects; Nocturne; and Institute Benjamenta. He trained at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (1978-1980) under Hugh Cruttwell, and is an honorary bencher of the Middle Temple Hall in London; trustee of The Shakespearean Authorship Trust; an ambassador of SURVIVAL, the movement for tribal peoples; and a patron of PEACE DIRECT. 

 

View full biography

Additional staff

Assistant Stage Manager

Katie Ailinger

Assistant Stage Manager

Katie Ailinger

A.R.T.: The Tempest, The Lily’s Revenge, The Donkey Show, Woody Sez, Futurity: A Musical By The Lisps, Ajax. Off-Broadway: Nixon’s Nixon, Fresh Play Festival, MCC Theater; Trial by Water, I Land, Ma-Yi Theatre. Boston area: Choice, The Second Girl, Cry of the Reed, Streamers, Huntington Theatre Company; A Delicate Balance, The Secret Rapture, Trinity Rep; Othello, Comedy of Errors, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company; Other Desert Cities, RED, The Divine Sister, The Great American Trailer Park Musical, SpeakEasy Stage Company; God’s Ear, Pericles, Henry VIII, Actors’ Shakespeare Project. Graduate of the University of Southern California with a BFA in Stage Management and a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association. 

 

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Associate Lighting Designer

Jax Messenger

Production Assistant

Jake Stepansky