Swing State - Staged Reading
(Pay What You Wish Enabled on ALL Performances)
This new American play recently closed in New York City and is making it’s way to our stage in a professional stage reading directed by Vito Zingarelli. In ‘Swing State,’ Rebecca Gilman looks for hope to outweigh despair in this contemporary portrait of America’s heartland in a time when it feels like everyone’s way of life is in danger of disappearing.
Recently widowed, Peg tends to the 40 acres of native prairie that rises behind her rural Wisconsin home. Her solitary days are interrupted only by visits from Ryan, a family friend with a checkered past. When her late husband’s footlocker is ransacked in her barn, she places a call to the local authorities—unwittingly setting off a series of events that will forever change their lives. As Peg and Ryan fight to regain each other's trust, they learn how to help one another in a new and meaningful way and how to forge a sense of hope.
Saturday, June 22 | 7:30 PM
Sunday, June 23 | 4:00 PM
Rebecca Gilman’s plays include Swing State, Luna Gale, Boy Gets Girl, Twilight Bowl, Spinning Into Butter, Blue Surge, The Glory of Living, The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Dollhouse, The Crowd You’re in With and A Woman of the World. Her plays have been widely produced, including by the Goodman Theatre, the Royal Court Theatre, Lincoln Center Theater, Audible Theater, the Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Hampstead Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, The Acting Company, New York Theatre Workshop and MCC Theater. Among her many awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award, the Harper Lee Award, the Scott McPherson Award, the Prince Prize for Commissioning New Work, the Roger L. Stevens Award, the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright and the George Devine Award. Boy Gets Girl received an Olivier nomination for Best New Play, and she was a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for The Glory of Living. Gilman received her MFA in playwriting from the University of Iowa, and she is an artistic associate at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.
Vito Zingarelli is a director and producing director who championed new play development and mounted dozens of seasons of Classical, Contemporary and Musical Theater across North America since 1980. On the WICA stage he has directed love is a place: an e.e cummings cabaret, The Understudy, Red and the premiere of Apostrophe. Vito also served as Executive Director for WICA when it was first opening in 1997/98. He served more recently as program director at Hedgebrook for 13 years and prior to that, taught at NYU-Tisch School of the Arts and was Director of Production for North America's largest resident theatre company, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada. Vito served as Seattle Repertory’s first Production Manager when the Bagley Wright Theater was built and where he worked with Robert Egan to create their new play development program, NP3, New Plays in Process Project.
