MEDIA CONTACT: Julia Guzman, Public Relations Manager, Asolo Repertory Theatre,(941) 351-9010 ext. 4800, julia_guzman@asolo.org or visit the pressroom at www.asolo.org 

 

 

 

About the play: Longtime playwriting collaborators arrive at a luxurious Palm Beach hotel one lovely spring evening in 1934 with their young composer in tow. The three are ready to surprise their leading lady – who is engaged to the composer – with the latest version of their new musical. But they’re the ones in for the surprise when the leading lady’s old flame turns up at the hotel as well, and he’s not ready to let her go. Delightful mischief follows as one of the playwrights plots a clever scheme (involving a play-within-a-play) to set everything right. As art imitates life time and again in this clever comedy, what is clearest of all is the power of theatre to reveal truth even as it conceals it.

 

         This is James Clarke’s twelfth season as an Associate Artist.Past seasons: Amadeus, Men of Tortuga, A Few Good Men, Pride and Prejudice, Enchanted April, Anything to Declare?, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Rounding Third, Sherlock Holmes & The West End Horror, The Front Page, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Crucible, The Millionairess, Murder by Misadventure, The Diary of Anne Frank, Inherit the Wind, You Never Can Tell, Filumena, A Flea in Her Ear, Born Yesterday, The Hollow, and Twelfth Night. He was in the FSU/Asolo Conservatory program in the 1970s and spent a year with Asolo Rep after graduating. TV credits include: Ryan's Hope (Pat Ryan), Search for Tomorrow, Guiding Light, a CBS series entitled Legwork, and Saracen, a series in England. James has toured the country, appearing at such theatres as Yale Rep, Pittsburgh Public, Geva, and numerous theatres in Manhattan (including Circle in the Square and SoHo Rep), Boston, and Los Angeles.

          Douglas Jones returns for his twenty-second season as an Associate Artist. Last season: Von Strack, Amadeus; Avery, Men of Tortuga; Markinson, A Few Good Men; Collins, Pride and Prejudice; Wilberforce, Darwin in Malibu. Past seasons: Laughing Stock, Enchanted April, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Peter Pan, Sherlock Holmes & The West End Horror, The Front Page, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Crucible, The Road to Ruin, The Millionairess, Hay Fever, The Corn is Green, You Never Can Tell, Art, A Flea in Her Ear, Golden Boy, Black Coffee, King Lear and many roles in Nicholas Nickleby and The Kentucky Cycle. Other favorites include directing The Zoo Story, Welcome to the Moon, Salt-Water Moon, Fred and Doog, and his award winning performance as Vanya in Uncle Vanya at the Banyan Theater. Doug has spent seasons at Baltimore's Center Stage, The Cleveland Play House, Milwaukee Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse, Boston’s Huntington Theatre, American Stage, The Playmakers, The Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Florida Studio Theatre, and has appeared in four plays Off-Broadway. Doug holds degrees from Hobart College and The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

This is Dana Green’s first season with Asolo Rep. She spent four seasons with the Stratford Festival of Canada where she appeared in Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Orpheus Descending, The Brother's Karamazov, Love's Labours Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Swanne: Queen Victoria. Chicago theatre credits include Measure for Measure (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre), Hay Fever (Court Theatre), Blood Wedding, The Cherry Orchard (Hypocrites Theatre), Ghetto (Famous Door Theatre), Zoyka's Apartment (European Repertory Theatre, and Another Part of the Forest (Eclipse Theatre).  Regional theatre credits include All's Well That Ends Well (Yale Repertory Theatre), Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (Meadow Brook Theatre), Twelfth Night and Macbeth (Shakespeare Festival of Dallas).  Television credits include Early Edition (CBS).

Bryan Torfeh returns to Asolo Rep for his second season as a Guest Artist. Last season Bryan played Salieri in Amadeus and King in The Plexiglass Slipper. London and West End roles: Passepartout, Around The World; George, High Society; Mr. Sowerberry, Oliver!; Rico, Copacabana; Figaro, The Marriage of Figaro; Hamlet, The Reduced Shakespeare, and seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company, notably Nicholas Nickleby (U.K. and Broadway). U.S. roles: Kerner, Hapgood (Ahmanson Season, L.A.); Jack, The Importance of Being Earnest (Indiana Rep); Salieri, Amadeus (Indiana Rep and Syracuse Stage); the twin Antipholi, The Comedy of Errors; the King, Loves Labour's Lost; and the Prince, Kean (Shakespeare Santa Cruz). TV: This is Dom Joly, Dead Air (BBC) Film: Velvet Goldmine. Bryan was Director of Drama at Jakarta International School in Indonesia, and Course Tutor at Drama Studio London. He directed the first production at Stratford-upon-Avon's Waterside Theatre, and London's first professional all-female Shakespeare. Torfeh holds degrees from UCSC and London's Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

Juan Javier Cardenas, a third year FSU/Asolo Conservatory student, makes his debut with Asolo Rep this season. Last season in the Cook: Dionysus, The Bacchae. Performances include A Midsummer Night's Dream, Big Love, and The Dumbwaiter. He has a B.F.A. in Acting from the University of Florida. Juan has toured through the U.S.A., Russia and Greece.

 

 

About the Director:Greg Leaming is the director for the FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training and Associate Artistic Director of Asolo Repertory Theatre. He directed Pericles and Blue Window for the FSU/Asolo Conservatory and the world premiere of Men of Tortuga and his translation/adaptation of Anything to Declare? for Asolo Rep. Other credits include Associate Director and Producing Director, Hartford Stage Company; Artistic Director, Portland Stage Company; Director of Artistic Programming and Acting Artistic Director, Long Wharf Theatre; Associate Professor of Theatre and Head of Directing, Southern Methodist University. Off Broadway, he directed the world premiere of Constance Congdon’s Lips for Primary Stages. Other productions include: Arms and the Man, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Intimate Exchanges, Anna Christie, The Illusion, Private Lives, Baltimore Waltz, On The Verge and the world premieres of Constance Congdon’s Losing Father’s Body, Jeffrey Hatcher’s Turn of the Screw, Keith Curran’s Church of the Sole Survivor, Steven Druckman’s Going Native, Theresa Rebeck’s Abstract Expression, Joe Sutton’s The Third Army, Alan Knee’s Syncopation and David Schulner’s An Infinite Ache for theatres including Stage West, Philadelphia Drama Guild, Cincinnatti Playhouse in the Park, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Southwest Shakespeare, Dorset Theatre Festival, Hangar Theatre, and Florida Stage. He has developed new works with New Dramatists, New York Theatre Workshop, New York Stage and Film, Cape Cod Theatre Project, The Gathering at Bigfork and Theatre of the First Amendment.