STAGED READING | THE UNMARRIED WOMAN
Playwright: Ewald Palmetshofer
Translator: Neil Blackadder
Director: Guy Ben-Aharon
The ACFNY proudly presents the US & English Language Premiere of Ewald Palmetshofer’s the unmarried woman. This staged reading, directed by Guy Ben-Aharon, in a translation by Neil Blackedder, will be followed by a talk back with the Director, Translator and Playwright Ewald Palmetshofer.
The unmarried woman premiered, in German, at Vienna’s Burgtheater, in December 2014. Ewald Palmetshofer received the Mühlheim Drama Prize for the play in 2015.
THE PLAY:
Three women, three generations, an unresolved past that stinks of betrayal and blind obedience: the unmarried woman connects April 1945 with the present. The woman is old and has an alienated daughter and a grand-daughter whom she feels closer to, even though the young woman is digging through her past. Four chorus-sisters establish Palmetshofer’s syntactically twisted narrative style. This challenging, antiquated artificial language consistently fulfills a specific task: It prevents the play from being prattled to shreds.
Duration: 1 hour and 15 minutes.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
SAM EVANS
Sam Evans is a New York-based actress from Philadelphia, PA. She received her BFA in Acting from Emerson College and received additional training at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Shakespeare & Company and the Upright Citizens Brigade. Sam is an acting apprentice at The Barrow Group for 2015-2016. Her credits include working with Williamstown Theatre Festival, Huntington Theatre Playwriting Fellows, Central Square Theatre, Lyric Stage Company of Boston, Boston Playwrights Theater and Theatre on Fire. samantha-evans.com
LIZ HAYES*
Liz Hayes NYC: Into the Woods (Roundabout Theatre). Regional: Grounded (The Gamm Theare, IRNE Nomination), Into the Woods (Old Globe/McCarter). Boston: Lungs, Collected Stories (New Repertory Theatre, IRNE Nomination), Seminar, Strangers on a Train (Stoneham Theatre), Crimes of the Heart (Gloucester Stage), Look Back in Anger, Marisol, Love Song (Orfeo Group, Elliot Norton Nomination), Breaking the Code, Absurd Person Singular (Central Square Theater, IRNE Nomination), Adding Machine: A Musical (SpeakEasy Stage, Elliot Norton Nomination), Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Three Tall Women, Shakespeare in Hollywood, A Little Night Music, The Spitfire Grill (Lyric Stage). Teaching: The Boston Conservatory (Voice & Speech Faculty), Walnut Hill School for the Arts (Acting Faculty). Training: GWU/Shakespeare Theatre Company (MFA) and Brown University (BA).
ISABEL KEATING*
On Broadway, Isabel starred in The Boy from Oz (Tony Award, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle Award nominations; Drama Desk, Theatre World Award winner) opposite Hugh Jackman, as well as in Hairspray, Enchanted April, Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark and, most recently, Terrence McNally’s It’s Only A Play. Off-Broadway she has appeared at Primary Stages, Atlantic Theatre Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre and Rattlestick, among others. She won the Helen Hayes Award for Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink at Washington, DC’s Studio Theatre and has appeared regionally at The Old Globe, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf, Paper Mill, O’Neill Center, Williamstown, and more. Film and television include The Nanny Diaries, Life Before Her Eyes, 3 lbs., Law & Order: Criminal Intent, the Emmy Award-winning PBS American Masters Judy Garland: ByMyself, and upcoming, James Schamus’s film directorial debut, Indignation and The Path for Universal Television/Hulu.
MARVELYN MCFARLANE
Regional credits include Speakeasy Stage: Clybourne Park as Francine/Lena Stage, Central Sq. Theatre: Roots of Liberty (Starring Danny Glover), Huntington Theatre: A Civil War Christmas (u/s for Uzo Aduba), Wheelock family Theatre: The Little Mermaid, Israeli Stage: Best Friend, and a number of plays with Company One. She is the 2014 IRNE winner of Best Supporting Actress for her role in Clybourne Park and also a 2013 Elliot Norton nominee for the same role.
MELISSA MILLER
Melissa made her Broadway debut in “Tartuffe” with the Roundabout Theater. She played Jessica opposite F. Murray Abraham in TFANA’s “Merchant of Venice.” She recently did work on the new Hulu series “The Path” coming out next year. www.melissamiller.org
DEE NELSON*
Dee Nelson has appeared on Broadway in The Heiress with David Strathairn and Jessica Chastain, and off-Broadway in Stephen Karam’s Sons of the Prophet (Roundabout Theatre Company) and Ken Urban’s The Awake (59E59). For her regional work, she has received an Elliot Norton Award, two NH Theatre Awards, and a Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship. In the coming season, Dee will appear in the world premiere of Craig Lucas’s I Was Most Alive with You at the Huntington Theatre. She is currently writing a new musical with acclaimed composer Ellen Mandel.
LISA ROWE-BEDDOE*
Lisa Rowe-Beddoe is a British-trained actress, acting coach, and director. Past roles include Lola (Enchanted April), Bananas (The House of Blue Leaves) Lady Croom (Arcadia) Mrs. Braddock (The Graduate) Miss Casewell (The Mousetrap), and Portia (Julius Caesar). She was Assistant Director of Education for Wheelock Family Theatre in Boston from 2010 to 2013, has an MA in performance, specializing in Shakespeare, and founded Shakespeare for Teens (acting courses for young actors). She is also a voice-over artist, a dialect coach and lives in NYC.
EWALD PALMETSHOFER (Playwright)
Ewald Palmetshofer was born in 1978 at Mühlviertel, Upper Austria. He initially studied drama and German language and literature, but transferred to theology and teacher training in the subjects philosophy, psychology and education, which he is still studying today. Alongside his studies and writing, he works in the social sector. He participated in the wiener wortstaetten author-theatre project during the 2006/07 season. Since the 2007/08 season, he has been an author in residence at the Schauspielhaus in Vienna. In 2008, Ewald Palmetshofer was chosen as best young dramatist in the Theater heute Yyearbook critics’ survey. 2008 saw him nominated for the Mülheim Dramatists’ Award with hamlet is dead. no gravity, for which he was put forward again in 2010 with his play faust is hungry and chokes on gretchen. In the 2011/2012 season, Ewald Palmetshofer is a guest dramaturg at the Nationaltheater Mannheim.
http://www.ewaldpalmetshofer.at/
NEIL BLACKADDER (Translator)
Neil Blackadder translates drama and prose from German and French, specializing in contemporary theatre. His translation of Ewald Palmetshofer’s hamlet is dead. no gravity was produced at the Arcola in London in September, having premiered in Chicago in 2014. Neil has translated several plays by Lukas Bärfuss, including The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents, which has had several productions. Other playwrights Neil has translated include Rebekka Kricheldorf and Thomas Arzt, and he has received grants from the Howard Foundation and PEN, and held residencies at the Banff Center and Writers Omi. Neil grew up in England and now teaches theatre at Knox College.
GUY BEN-AHARON (Director)
Born in Israel, Guy is the Producing Artistic Director and Founder of Israeli Stage, an initiative dedicated to sharing the diversity and vitality of Israeli culture. After the success of the Israeli Stage, Guy was asked by the Goethe-Institut Boston to develop the German Stage, by swissnexBoston to develop the Swiss Stage and by the Austrian Cultural Forum to develop the Austrian Stage. Thus, in 2014, he directed Thomas Bernhard’s Weltverbesserer/The World Fixer. His dedication to bringing theatre to younger audiences has resulted in tours up and down the East Coast from Toronto to Atlanta at various cultural and academic institutions. A proud Emerson College alum, Guy has been profiled in Ha’aretz/The International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe (2012 & 2014), and The Improper Bostonian for the unique work he does to build cultural bridges.
AUSTRIAN STAGE is an initiative supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum New York to introduce Austrian contemporary theatre to American audiences.