The Most Deserving
March 30 - May 4, 2014 by Catherine Trieschmann
directed by Shelley Butler
“Frisky new comedy! Veanne Cox is PRICELESSLY FUNNY!” – The New York Times
“A BIG ACCOMPLISHED WRITER’S VOICE” – The New York Times
“Smart, HILARIOUS, RIVETING!” – The New Yorker
“INSIGHTFUL!” – Time Out, New York
“A HILARIOUS RIDE! ” – The Village Voice
“Sharp, Funny, & Witty! BRILLIANT!” – Curtain Up
“A DELIGHT! Check out this kooky, joyful play.” – New York Theatre Review
“DELICIOUS & RAUCOUS! A brilliant script, inventive direction and impeccable performances! A HIT!” – Theatre Reviews Limited
“Quick and lively, the laughs keep coming. HILARIOUS AND FUN!” – Theater Pizzazz
A Tart, Sharp Skewing of Small Town Cultural Wars.
Catherine Trieschmann
(Playwright) Her plays include The Bridegroom of Blowing Rock, Crooked, How the World Began, Hot Georgia Sunday and The Most Deserving. Her work has been produced Off-Broadway at Women’s Project Theater, the Bush Theatre (London), Out of Joint at the Arcola Theatre (London), South Coast Repertory, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, the Denver Theater Center, and Florida Stage, among others. She has received commissions from South Coast Repertory, Manhattan Theatre Club, and the Denver Theatre Center. She is the recipient of the Weissberger Award, the Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Award from the Inge Theatre Festival, and the Edgerton New Play Award. Her work is published by Samuel French in the U.S. and Methuen in the U.K. She also wrote the screenplay for the film Angel’s Crest, released by Magnolia Pictures. Originally from Athens, Georgia, she now lives in a small town in western Kansas.
Shelley Butler
(Director) Upcoming: the world premiere of Catherine Trieschmann’s The Most Deserving (Denver Center Theatre Company), Fox on the Fairway (Penobscot Theatre). Recent credits include This is Fiction by Megan Hart, starring Richard Masur at Cherry Lane (InViolet Rep), The Borrowers, (South Coast Repertory), No Way to Treat a Lady (The Colony Theater), world premieres of Christina Gorman’s Sacred Ground (Stella Adler), Ruth McKee’s The Nightshade Family (SPF), John Glore’s adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time (South Coast Repertory) and Eric Coble’s Straight On ‘Til Morning (Great Lakes Theater Festival). Shelley spent two seasons as artistic associate in charge of new play development for Hartford Stage and three seasons as artistic associate for Great Lakes Theater Festival and is the current Features Editor for the SDC Journal. She is the recipient of Drama League Directing Fellowship, a 2005 Director’s Guild of America Trainee, a member of SDC, the Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab and is a WP Lab alum.
Veanne Cox
(Jolene Atkinson) Recently appeared in The Old Friends at Signature and “Two Broke Girls,” “Smash,” “Louie,” and “Pan Am.” Broadway: A Free Man of Color, La Cage au Folles, Caroline, or Change, The Dinner Party, Company (Tony and Drama Desk Award Nominations), Smile. Off-Broadway: Obie Award for Sustained Excellence Damn Yankees (Encores!); Blind (Rattlestick); Paradise Park (Signature, Lucille Lortel Nomination); Spain(Lucille Lortel Nomination); Last Easter (Drama Desk Nomination); The Wooden Breeks (MCC); House and Garden, Labor Day (MTC); The Altruists, The Batting Cage, The Waiting Room, Flora, the Red Menace (Vineyard); Freedomland (Playwrights Horizons); A Question of Mercy (NYTW). Regional:The Beaux’ Stratagem (Helen Hayes Nomination); The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, The Way of the World (Shakespeare Theatre Co.); Private Lives (Guthrie).
Kristin Griffith
(Edie Kelch) Women’s Project Theater: Bethany, Irish Repertory Theatre: It’s A Wonderful Life, Ernest in Love, The Master Builder; The Mint Theater: Mary Broome, The Charity That Began at Home, Mr. Pim Passes By, The Truth About Blades. Broadway: A Texas Trilogy: The Oldest Living Graduate; LuAnne Laverty Oberlander. Off Broadway: Lucy Thurber’s Bottom of the World and Marriage, Jody’s Mother, (The Atlantic Theater); Stretch: A Fantasia (Ohio Theater, The Living Theater); The Countess (Greenwich Street Theater, The Beckett, The Lambs); The Holy Terror, written and directed by Simon Gray (Promenade Theater) and many Marathons at Ensemble Studio Theater, where she is a member. Regional: The Wild Duck (Bard Summerscape); Snow Falling on Cedars, An Enemy of the People, Three by Thornton Wilder (Baltimore Center Stage); Widower’s Houses, Great Catherine, Thark (The Shaw Festival, Ontario). Film: Woody Allen’s Interiors, Merchant/Ivory’s The Europeans, Steven Soderbergh’s King of the Hill, Rose Hill, with Jennifer Garner, The Long Way Home, with Jack Lemmon, and upcoming films Drawing Home, Cold in July, and I Smile Back. TV: Guest Star on “Blue Bloods,” “New Amsterdam,” “Third Watch,” and all franchises of “Law & Order.”
Adam LeFevre
(Dwayne Dean) Broadway: Devil’s Disciple; Our Country Good; Summer and Smoke; Footloose; Mamma Mia; Guys and Dolls; Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Off-Broadway: Old Friends (Signature Theatre); Him (Primary Stages); How the World Began (Women’s Project Theater); Doctor Dilemma, Cyrano, the Marriage of Bette and Boo, (Roundabout); Goose and Tomtom and Henry V (NYSF). Regional: Alley, Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, Huntington Stage, Actors Theater of Louisville, Capital Rep, La Jolla, Westport, Wiliamstown, Yale Rep– new plays and classics. Film: Featured in over 75 films, among them The Return of the Secaucus 7, Only You, The Ref, Fool’s Gold, She’s Out of My League, The Lucky One. TV: “Recount”, “Empire Falls”, HBO; “Storm of the Century”, ABC mini-series; “No Ordinary Baby”, Lifetime, and guest-starring roles in numerous episodics. Writer: Everything All At Once, Wesleyan University Press; Ghost Light, Finishing Line Press; A Swindler’s Grace, forthcoming in 2015 from New Issues Press.
Jennifer Lim
(Liz Chang) Broadway: Chinglish (Theater World Award & Drama Desk Nom). NY: Cry, Trojans! (The Wooster Group), Golden Child (Signature), Vengeance Can Wait (P.S.122), Young Jean Lee’s Songs of The Dragons (HERE Arts, U.S./European tour), Yokastas Redux (La MaMa E.T.C.). Regional: Chinglish (Goodman Theater – Jeff & Chicago Theater Critics’ Beat Nom). Int’l: This Isn’t Romance (Soho Theatre, London), The Medea (Turkey), Hamlet (Shanghai Experimental Theatre Festival & Grotowski Int’l Theatre Festival, Wroclaw). Film/TV: The Savages, 27 Dresses, Person of Interest, The Good Wife, Elementary, Blue Bloods, Law & Order (all three), Royal Pains. Member of GF&Co. MFA from YSD. jenniferlimonline.com
Daniel Pearce
(Ted Atkinson) Broadway: Machinal (Roundabout), The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Circle in the Square). Off-Broadway: Bill W and Dr Bob (Soho Playhouse), Falling (Minetta Lane), Passion Play (Epic), King Lear, Measure for Measure, Henry V, Henry VI (NYSF/Public), The Picture of Dorian Gray (Irish Repertory), A Mother, a Daughter, and a Gun (New World Stages), Love’s Fire (Public), Romeo and Juliet (New Victory). London: Love’s Fire (Barbican). Regional: La Jolla, Long Wharf, McCarter, Guthrie, Chautauqua, Geva, ATL, Shakespeare Theater DC among others. Film/TV: Salt, An Invisible Sign, Clowns, Godzilla, “Law and Order: All Flavors,” “Chapelle’s Show,” “Queens Supreme.” MFA from NYU.
Ray Anthony Thomas
(Everett Whiteside) is a member of the Atlantic Theatre Company, where he has appeared in Human Error, Distant Fires, and The Lights. He was last seen on Broadway in Raceby David Mamet, and he was in the original production of Water by the Spoonful, (2012 Pulitzer for Drama.) Favorite credits include: August Wilson Century Cycle for NPR (Fences and Jitney), Topdog/ Underdog, The Exonerated, and Volunteer Man (for which he received an OBIE for Performance.) Recent films include: Trouble with the Curve, Shutter Island, Pariah, and Sleepwalk with Me. And his TV credits include “Law and Order” (6 episodes), “The Sopranos,” “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” and “Oz”.
David Barber
(Set Design) NY credits include The Orphans’ Home Cycle (Signature), The Vandal (The Flea), Women Beware Women (Red Bull), TOKIO Confidential (Atlantic Stage 2), A Simple Heart (CSC) and set and/or costumes for HERE, The Ohio, Rattlestick, Actors’ Studio, Chashama, Gabrielle Lansner Dance and others. Regional includes The Denver Center, Baltimore Centerstage, Hartford Stage, ART, Pittsburgh Public, Two River, Dorset Festival, Barrington Stage, Contemporary American Theater Festival, Idaho Shakespeare, Great Lakes Theater, others. Television includes art direction for “E! Network News”, “The TODAY Show” and “Football Night in America” and production design for Tyra Banks’ MTV pilot “Fashion Mega Warrior”. Film includes production design for It’s All Relative, Hearts and Minds, Double Header. Awards include Drama Desk, Henry Hewes Award, Innovative Theatre Award, Denver Ovation Awards, Westword’s “Best of Denver”, Connecticut Critics Circle Award and inclusion in the Prague Quadrennial (1999). David is resident designer and an ensemble member of Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant and currently serves as E! Network’s NY Art Director.
Traci Klainer Polimeni
(Lighting Design) NY theatre credits include: Sand (Women’s Project); The Asphalt Kiss (59E59, Drama Desk nomination); Broadway production of Prune Danish starring Jackie Mason (Royale Theatre); Four (MTC, Lucille Lortel nomination); One Ride (Queens Theatre in the Park); Now Circa Then, Core Values and 2 Girls For 5 Bucks (Ars Nova); The Irish Curse (Soho Playhouse); Based On A Totally True Story (MTC). Regional credits include: Hartford Stage, Virginia Stage Co., Two River Theatre Co., Asolo Repertory, Maltz Jupiter, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Capital Repertory, City Theatre. Traci is the owner of the design firm Luce Group that specializes in museum, architectural, exhibit and event lighting design. Current Luce project includes: Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Leon Rothenberg
(Sound Design) For Women’s Project Theater: Bethany. Broadway: The Nance (Tony Award), The Heiress, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (Tony Nomination), Impressionism. Select NY/Off-Broadway: Tectonic Theater Project, Manhattan Theater Club, Public Theater, LCT3, New York City Center. Select Regional: Two River Theater, Arena Stage, Seattle Repertory Theater, North Shore Music Theater, Theater By The Sea, New York Stage & Film, Long Wharf, McCarter, La Jolla Playhouse, Old Globe, Intiman. International: Cirque du Soleil’s Kooza and Wintuk, National Theater of Cyprus, Dijon Festival. more info: klaxson.net
Veanne Cox and Adam LeFevre in THE MOST DESERVING.
Photo by Carol Rosegg.
Ray Anthony Thomas and Jennifer Lim in THE MOST DESERVING.
Photo by Carol Rosegg.
Kristin Griffih and Veanne Cox in THE MOST DESERVING.
Photo by Carol Rosegg.
Jennifer Lim, Kristin Griffith, and Veanne Cox in THE MOST DESERVING.
Photo by Carol Rosegg.
Veanne Cox and Daniel Pearce in THE MOST DESERVING.
Photo by Carol Rosegg.
Ray Anthony Thomas and Jennifer Lim in THE MOST DESERVING.
Photo by Carol Rosegg.
Kristin Griffith, Ray Anthony Thomas, Daniel Pearce, and Adam LeFevre in THE MOST DESERVING.
Photo by Carol Rosegg.
Kristin Griffith, Jennnifer Lim, Veanne Cox, Daniel Pearce, and Adam LeFevre in THE MOST DESERVING.
Photo by Carol Rosegg.
Kristin Griffith, Jennifer Lim, and Ray Anthony Thomas in THE MOST DESERVING.
Photo by Carol Rosegg.
