Award-winning Drama Featured in Winter
Series at Stonington Opera House
Discounted weekend
travel packages available for the Actors Equity production of “The Aliens” by
Annie Baker February 2-12, 2012
STONINGTON, ME:
Who are “The Aliens” landing at the Stonington Opera House February 2-12?
Neither the terrifying little green men nor the friendly, finger pointing E.T.
the title might lead you to expect. Annie Baker’s Obie Award-winning drama “The
Aliens” is a sweetly humorous, gentle, and extraordinarily beautiful new play
about three young men who find community hanging out in the back alley behind a
rural coffee shop, where it is difficult to imagine anything of great
consequence happening. Yet it does.
Director Peter Richards, who has previously received acclaim for his direction
of Brilliant Traces, Dying City, and Elizabeth Rex for Opera House Arts,
proposed the contemporary play in part due to the familiarity of its setting and
characters to rural Mainers. “It’s an incredibly important role of live stage
drama, to reflect our unique lives back to us,” said Opera House Arts’ Artistic
Director Judith Jerome. “Mainstream films and TV shows don’t capture the kinds
of community we know here, they don’t help us to see and celebrate and
understand ourselves.”
The small cast is comprised of Jasper, a self-defined, 30-something year-old,
guitar playing “street urchin” who’s writing a novel; his best friend K.J., a
college drop out and songwriter; and the 17-year-old garbage-toting Evan, whom
they befriend. Sometimes called “slackers,” the three are classic “misfits,”
alienated from mainstream expectations, guys who can’t quite find the right
thing to do despite—or in spite of—their unique, individual creative geniuses.
Playwright ANNIE BAKER is one of America’s hottest young playwrights. Now 30
years old herself, Baker grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, and graduated from
the Department of Dramatic Writing at New York University's Tisch School of the
Arts. She earned her MFA from Brooklyn College. The Aliens, which premiered
Off-Broadway at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in April 2010, was a finalist
for the 2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and shared the 2010 Obie Award for Best
New American Play with Baker’s earlier play Circle Mirror Transformation.
Director PETER RICHARDS has spent summers in Stonington his entire life. He most
recently directed the hugely successful Elizabeth Rex as part of Opera House
Arts’ Shakespeare in Stonington 2011, in addition to the dark comedy Brilliant
Traces in February 2010 and Dying City in 2011. As an actor, he appeared as
Claudio in 2010 in the Shakespeare in Stonington production of Measure for
Measure. Richards also directed a staged reading of Peter Matthiessen’s Men’s
Lives in 2008 at the Opera House. He has appeared at the Opera House as Dr.
Smith of Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant in the 10th Anniversary Revue in 2009;
as Orlando in As You Like It in 2006 and as one of the brothers in the infamous
“moose play” featured in 2003’s The Ferry Musicals. Other theater acting credits
include: Gone; Olly’s Prison; Dido, Queen of Carthage; Othello; Macbeth; Romeo
and Juliet; Coriolanus; Spring Awakening and Fear and Misery in the Third Reich.
Television and film credits include: “As the World Turns,” Stroke, and The
Audition. He received an MFA in acting from A.R.T. Institute at Harvard
University/MXAT and a BA from Harvard College and lives in New York City.
CHRIS BELLANT (Evan) has been actively working in New York and L.A. for the last
six years. He was most recently seen as Macduff in a production of Macbeth.
Other New York theater includes Killing John Grisham in the New York Int'l
Fringe Festival, Twelfth Night, David Lindsay Abaire’s Snow Angel, Love's
Labour's Lost, and Twelve Angry Men. Film and television credits include a pilot
for Fox and a number of short films that have played at festivals around the
country. Chris trained at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (Stella Adler Studio).
JOSH BYWATER (K.J.) is making his Opera House Arts debut. Regional and other
credits include: The Crucible (Ozark Actors Theatre); All My Son (Hubbard Hall);
Tennessee WIlliams' One Arm (Steppenwolf Theatre/Tectonic Theater/About Face);
The Story (Goodman Theatre); Time and the Conways and Picni (Griffin
Theatre-Chicago); Lebensraum and The Chosen (New Jewish Theatre-St Louis). TV:
As the World Turns and Grey's Anatomy. Josh is a resident Artist with CRY HAVOC
Theatre Company in New York City, where he has helped develop several new plays.
DANNY JONES (Jasper) is a born and raised Alaskan who has just recently moved to
New York City. Danny's regional credits include: 12 Angry Men (Asolo Repertory
Theater), Las Meninas (Asolo Rep.), Antigone Now (Asolo Touring Co.), Danny And
the Deep Blue Sea (FSU/Conservatory). In addition to being a freelance actor he
is also a celebrated performance poet and seasonal commercial fisherman. He
would like to thank his loving family and friends for their unconditional
support.
Scenic design for the show is by Wayne Merritt, with lighting by Michael Reidy
of Bates College and costumes by Rebecca Lasky, whose work has been seen
previously at the Opera House in Taming of the Shrew and Dying City.
The full production schedule and tickets are available at
www.operahousearts.org or by calling
the Stonington Opera House at 207-367-2788. Regular tickets are $20, with fixed
income, student, and group discounts available. Additionally, Opera House Arts
is offering discounted weekend travel packages, including pre-theater dinner and
lodging, in collaboration with The Seasons of Stonington, Boyce’s Motel and The
Inn on the Harbor. Packages start as low as $120 per person. Please call
207-367-2788 for details.
Opera House Arts (OHA) is celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Stonington
Opera House, on the National Register of Historic Places, in 2012. OHA is a
nonprofit small professional theater noted for its original productions and
artist commissions, including 2010’s Burt Dow, Deep Water Man, which will be
reprised in August 2012.
