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Media Amok

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Cecilia and Nigel, an elderly Gramercy Park couple, pine for a simpler life away from the daily assaults of living in New York City.  Looking to television for escape, they are bombarded with a battery of talk shows that cannot be silenced even when Cecilia enters the glass tube.  The play ends as Nigel tries to destroy the television and free his wife who is being transported to Vermont.

Credits

Creative team

By

Christopher Durang

Christopher Durang (The Idiots Karamazov) is the author of The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Obie Award, Dramatists Guild Award), Baby with the Bathwater, and Media Amok, all presented at the American Repertory Theater; as well as A History of the American Film (Tony nomination), The Actor's Nightmare, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You (Obie Award), Beyond Therapy, Laughing Wild, Durang/Durang (an evening of six plays including a Tennassee Williams parody For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls), Sex and Longing, and Betty's Summer Vacation (Drama Desk nomination). As a performer, Mr. Durang appeared in Laughing Wild in Los Angeles, shared an acting ensemble Obie for The Marriage of Bette and Boo in New York, and with John Augustine and Sherry Anderson has performed his cabaret Chris Durang and Dawne in numerous venues, winning a 1996 Bistro Award. He co-wrote with Sigourney Weaver and performed in the Brecht–Weill parody Das Lusitania Songspiel, appeared with Julie Andrews in the Sondheim review Putting It Together, and in Call Me Madam. His films include The Secret of My Success, Mr. North, The Butcher's Wife, Housesitter, The Cowboy Way, The Object of My Affection, and The Out-of-Towners. For television Mr. Durang wrote for the Carol Burnett special "Carol and Robin and Whoopi and Carl" and for the PBS series Trying Times. He has written several screenplays and two sitcom pilots. Mr. Durang has an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, is the winner of numerous scholarship and grants, and had his plays published by Grove Press and Smith & Kraus. Since 1994 he and Marsha Norman have co-chaired the Playwrighting Program at the Juilliard School.

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Directed by

Les Waters

Directed by

Les Waters

Cardenio – Director. A.R.T.: Media Amok.  Associate Artistic Director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre; directing credits include Eurydice (also Yale Repertory Theatre and Second Stage in New York City, one of Top 10 Plays of 2006 by the New York Times), Fêtes de la Nuit and Big Love (also at Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival, Long Wharf Theatre, Goodman Theatre, and Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival; 2001 Obie Award for Direction), Finn in the Underworld, The Glass Menagerie, The Mystery of Irma Vep, The Pillowman, Suddenly Last Summer, To the Lighthouse and Yellowman. Other credits: Apparition, Connelly Theatre (one of the Best 5 Plays of 2005 by Time Out New York), Hot ‘N’ Throbbing, Signature Theatre; Fen and Ice Cream with Hot Fudge, Rum and Coke, Romeo and Juliet, New York Shakespeare Festival; Life During Wartime, Manhattan Theatre Club; Savannah Bay, Classic Stage Company. Waters’ work has been seen at theatres across the United Kingdom and the United States. Elsewhere in America, he has directed for American Conservatory Theater, the Goodman, Guthrie Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Yale Repertory Theatre. In his native England, Waters has staged work with the Bristol Old Vic, Hampstead Theatre Club, Joint Stock Theatre Group, National Theatre, Royal Court Theatre and Traverse Theatre Club. He has a long history of working collaboratively with prominent playwrights like Wallace Shawn, Caryl Churchill, and Charles L. Mee; champions important new voices, such as Jordan Harrison, Sarah Ruhl, and Anne Washburn. Waters is an associate artist of The Civilians, a New York-based theatre group, and former head of the M.F.A. directing program at U.C. San Diego. His many honors include a Drama-Logue Award, an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, a KPBS Patte and several awards from critics’ circles in the Bay Area, Connecticut and Tokyo.

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Set design by

Bill Clarke

Costume design by

Christine Joly De Lotbiniére

Lighting design by

John Ambrosone

Lighting design by

John Ambrosone

Lighting Designer John Ambrosone has designed over thirty productions for the American Repertory Theater, including Lysistrata, Absolution, Marat/Sade, Othello, Animals and Plants, Mother Courage (2001 Elliot Norton Design Award), The Doctor's Dilemma, Three Farces and a Funeral, Nocturne, IvanovThe Cripple of Inishmaan, The King Stag, Boston Marriage, Charlie in the House of Rue, Valparaiso, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, How I Learned to Drive, Nobody Dies on Friday, Man and Superman, The Old Neighborhood, When the World Was Green (A Chef's Fable), Alice in Bed, Slaughter City, and Buried Child. On Broadway he designed The Old Neighborhood. Work in resident theaters includes the Alley Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, the Coconut Grove Playhouse, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Walnut Street Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, and Arena Stage. Mr. Ambrosone also has designed in Singapore, Moscow, Japan, Brazil, Taiwan, Mexico, Germany, and France.

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Sound design by

Maribeth Back

Cast

Cecilia

Anne Pitoniak

Cecilia

Anne Pitoniak

Nigel

Alvin Epstein

Alvin Epstein is a former artistic director of the Guthrie Theater and associate director of Robert Brustein's Yale Repertory Theatre. He has directed over twenty productions (five at the American Repertory Theater, including the inaugural A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1980) and performed in over one hundred (over fifty at the A.R.T.). His A.R.T. roles include Old Man in Lysistrata, the Herald in Marat/Sade, Dionisio Genoni in Enrico IV, John of Gaunt/First Gardener in Richard II, Erich Honecker in Full Circle, McLeavy in Loot, Shabelsky in Ivanov, and Lee Strasberg in Nobody Dies on Friday; Mr. Epstein has also appeared in The Doctor's Dilemma, Antigone, Three Farces and a Funeral, The Winter's Tale, Charlie in the House of Rue, The Merchant of Venice, In the Jungle of Cities, The Bacchae, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, When the World Was Green (A Chef's Fable), Slaughter City, Tartuffe, The Tempest, Beckett Trio, The Threepenny Opera, and Waiting for Godot, among many others. His twenty Broadway and off-Broadway productions include his debut with Marcel Marceau, the Fool in Orson Welles's King Lear, Lucky in the American premiere of Waiting for Godot, Clov in the American premiere of Endgame, Peachum in The Threepenny Opera (co-starring with Sting), and the world premiere of Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikin's When the World Was Green (A Chef's Fable). For twenty years he and Martha Schlamme performed A Kurt Weill Cabaret on tour in the U.S. and South America and a year's run on Broadway. He has performed at many resident theaters throughout the U.S., in films and on television. Awards include Most Promising Actor ('56 Variety Poll), Brandeis Creative Arts Award ('66), Obie for Dynamite Tonight! ('68), Elliot Norton Award for Sustained Excellence ('96), and the IRNE Award for Best Supporting Actor as Shabelsky in Ivanov ('99). Mr. Epstein teaches acting at the American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University.

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Morton Hell

Lewis Black

Morton Hell

Lewis Black

Felicia Falana

Christine Estabrook

Felicia Falana

Christine Estabrook

Ensemble

Starla Benford, Candy Buckley, Thomas Derrah, Jeremy Geidt, Royal Miller, Jennifer Roszell, Michael Rudko, Steven Skybell, Michael Starr

Ensemble

Starla Benford, Candy Buckley, Thomas Derrah, Jeremy Geidt, Royal Miller, Jennifer Roszell, Michael Rudko, Steven Skybell, Michael Starr