a play by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Risa Brainin

About the Play

To learn more about the plot and themes of Melancholy Play please visit the show's Wikipedia page!

About the Playwright

Sarah Ruhl’s Plays include In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Tony Award nominee for best new play), The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize Finalist, 2005; The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); Passion Play, a cycle (Pen American award, The Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center); Dead Man’s Cell Phone (Helen Hayes award); Melancholy Play; Eurydice; Orlando, Demeter in the City (NAACP nomination), Late: a cowboy song, Three Sisters, and most recently, Stage Kiss and Dear Elizabeth.

Her plays have been produced on Broadway at the Lyceum by Lincoln Center Theater, off-Broadway at Playwrights’ Horizons, Second Stage, and at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater, and downtown at Clubbed Thumb and Classic Stage Company. Her plays have been produced regionally all over the country, with premieres at Yale Repertory Theater, the Goodman Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Arena Stage, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Madison Repertory Theater, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Cornerstone Theater, and the Piven Theatre Workshop in Chicago.

Her plays have also been produced internationally in London, Germany, Australia, Canada and Israel, and have been translated into Polish, Russian, Spanish, Norwegian, Korean, German and Arabic.

Originally from Chicago, Ms. Ruhl received her M.F.A. from Brown University where she studied with Paula Vogel. In 2003, she was the recipient of the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award and the Whiting Writers’ Award. She was a member of 13P and of New Dramatists and won the MacArthur Fellowship in 2006. She was recently the recipient of the PEN Center Award for a mid-career playwright, the Feminist Press’ Forty under Forty award, and the 2010 Lilly Award. She is currently on the faculty at Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family.

For more information about Sarah Ruhl please visit her website!

Production Team

• Written by Sarah Ruhl
• Director: Risa Brainin
• Costume Designer: Dianne J. Holly
• Lighting Designer: Michael Klaers
• Original Music and Sound: Michael Roth
• Scenic Designers: Anna Bondur & Tal Sanders
• Stage Manager: Angelica Diaz
• Assistant Director: Emily Weisberg
• Assistant Stage Manager: Nicole Rillorta
• Choreographer: Valerie Huston
• Dialect Coach: Michael Morgan
• Dramaturg: Courtney Rundell
• Fight Coach: James Donlon

Cast

• Jason Barlaan
• Claudia Kiser
• Will McFadden
• Victoria T. Mejia
• Shannon Parker
• Carlos Peñuela
• Lourdes Uribe
• Ashley Windham
• Nickey Winkelman

Photo

To view this photo of Melancholy Play and complete photo galleries for our other LAUNCH PAD Preview Productions please visit the show's album on our Facebook page!