WATCH: Lisa Lampanelli on “Sway in the Morning” at SiriusXM
Lisa Lampanelli on Losing Vagina Weight, Working with Donald Trump & New Play “Stuffed”
WATCH! STUFFED Promo Trailer
Time Out New York says STUFFED is “equally HILARIOUS and HEARTBREAKING!”
The New York Times says “Now that Joan Rivers is gone, no one in #comedy is stomping on sensitivities as consistently as Lisa Lampanelli.”
GET TO KNOW THE CAST OF STUFFED!
ANN HARADA (Stacey) Ann Harada originated the role of Christmas Eve in Avenue Q on Broadway and the West End. Other Broadway includes Cinderella, 9 to 5, M Butterfly, Seussical, Les Miserables (revival). Recent Off-Broadway includes Brooklynite (Vineyard Theatre) and Love, Loss, and What I Wore (Westside Theatre). Regionally: 42nd Street and Mamma Mia (MUNY), and God of Carnage (George Street Playhouse). Film: Youth in Oregon, Sisters, Trouble, Admission, Hope Springs, and The Art of Getting By. TV: “The Jim Gaffigan Show,” “The Good Wife,” “SMASH,” “30 Rock,” “House of Cards,” “Master of None.”
ZAINAB JAH (Katey) Recent credits include: Maima, Eclipsed (Broadway); title role of Hamlet (The Wilma Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo N Juliet, Trojan Women (Classical Theatre of Harlem); The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Atlantic Theater, NYC), Prudence in The Convert, Josephine in Ruined, A Doll’s House (Williamstown Theatre Festival); In Darfur (The Public Theatre /NYSF), Peter Sellars’ Children Of Herakles (European Tour). Film/TV credits: New York, I Love You (Short), “Law & Order SVU,” Outliving Emily (with Andre Braugher and Philicia Rashad). Awards: OBIE Award (Eclipsed), Philadelphia Critics’ Circle Best Actress Award (Hamlet); Los Angeles Stage Alliance Ovation Award Best Featured Actress (The Convert); San Francisco Bay Area Critics’ Circle – Outstanding Performance Female Featured Role (Ruined); and Best Featured Actress, Philadelphia Critics’ Circle Featured Actress Award (The Convert).
JESSICA LUCK (Britney) Jessica is thrilled to be making her off-Broadway debut in Stuffed! Select NY Theater: The Digger (La MaMa), The Blood Brothers (The Brick), The Quake (Ideal Glass), Our Town (The Gene Frankel), and The Disembodied Soul (NY Fringe). Web Series: Down Dog and Carolers. Jessica is a Yale graduate and a recent Rockwell scholar at ESPA/ Primary Stages. She is a member of the rock band My Dear Mycroft and the improv team The Jessicas.
LISA LAMPANELLI (Playwright/Lisa) Lisa Lampanelli shot her fifth stand-up special, “Back to the Drawing Board,” which premiered June 26, 2015 on EPIX and was nominated for a 2015 Grammy Award for “Best Comedy Album.” In the special, Comedy’s Lovable Queen of Mean showed off her radically different look after having lost more than 100 pounds. That weight loss, which she has maintained for over four years, inspired her to write Stuffed since, having been every size from 2 to 26, she has firsthand knowledge of the food and body-image struggle.
Lisa became a household name when she joined 17 other celebrities on the fifth season of NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” where she advanced to the final four in the competition, raising $130,000 for her chosen charity, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. She also starred as a regular on “Bounty Hunters,” CMT’s first-ever animated series, and recently stole the show on an episode of CBS’s “2 Broke Girls,” helmed by “Sex and The City” creator, Michael Patrick King.
Lampanelli joined the ranks of comedy greats with her 2009 HBO comedy special, “Long Live the Queen,” and that same year, released her autobiography, Chocolate, Please:
My Adventures in Food, Fat and Freaks (Harper Collins). Lisa was also a monthly writer for the Women column in Playboy Magazine and is a contributor to the blog for Kripalu, the world-renowned yoga and meditation retreat center.
Photographs by Carol Rosegg
WATCH: Lisa Lampanelli Gets Stuffed Off-Broadway
As Lisa Lampanelli, the comedy favorite, prepares to make her playwriting debut, Theatermania stopped by WP Theater to interview Lisa, director Jackson Gay, and the cast of STUFFED.
What are people saying about Lisa Lampanelli?
Tony Award winning director John Rando: “Lisa has a tremendous capacity to get connected to her feelings and her bravery is boundless. She’s terrific, intelligent, and top-notch.”
The Writer Magazine: “Lisa Lampanelli is fearlessly funny. Onstage, she can repeat something she’s told 20 times, but it sounds as if she just thought of it. Others could never get away with it.”
Michael Musto, Paper Magazine: “The queen of outrageous comedy, Lisa Lampanelli happens to have a lot of heart, particularly when dealing with weight and food issues.”
Psychology Today: “Lisa’s ability to be more open and vulnerable has not only helped her perform to her potential during difficult times, but also the crowd appears to be picking up on this new aspect of her comedy.”
New York Times best-selling author Jane Green: “She has evolved. She’s known as Comedy’s Lovable Queen of Mean, but there’s so much more depth now. . . more authentic. You can’t write a play that resonates with people emotionally unless you’ve gone through a tremendous amount of stuff. It’s about the journey to healing and wisdom.”
Lenny Bruce biographer, Ronald Collins: “Lisa Lampanelli is a comedian with an independent and irreverent streak akin to that of Lenny Bruce. Her robust comedy, like Bruce’s, takes no prisoners — and that’s just how it should be.”
The New York Times: “Queen of Mean. An equal-opportunity offender.”
GET TO KNOW: ZAINAB JAH
Starring as Katey in Stuffed, award-winning actress Zainab Jah‘s recent credits include: Maima, Eclipsed, Broadway; title role of Hamlet, (The Wilma Theatre), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo N Juliet (Classical Theatre of Harlem), The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, (Atlantic Theater, NYC), Prudence The Convert, Josephine, Ruined, A Doll’s House ( Williamstown Theatre Festival), Helen of Troy, Trojan Women, (Classical Theatre of Harlem), In Darfur, (The Public Theatre /NYSF), Peter Sellars’ Children Of Herakles, ( European Tour). Film / TV credits: New York, I Love You (Short), “Law & Order SVU,” Outliving Emily (with Andre Braugher and Philicia Rashad), Along Came Love, with Vanessa Williams. Awards: Philadelphia Critcs’ Circle Best actress Award (Hamlet ) Los Angeles Stage Alliance Ovation Award Best Featured Actress (The Convert); San Francisco Bay Area Critics’ Circle – Outstanding Performance Female Featured Role (Ruined); and Best Featured Actress, Philadelphia Critics’ Circle Featured Actress Award (The Convert).
THEATER
Zainab Jah, ‘Eclipsed’ Star, Is Ready for Battle
By ALEXIS SOLOSKIFEB. 17, 2016
In “Eclipsed,” which begins previews Feb. 23 at the Golden Theater,Zainab Jah plays Maima, an AK-47-toting soldier who has given herself the name Disgruntled. But one evening at a South Brooklyn bistro, plates of oysters arrayed before her, Ms. Jah seemed content. “I’m greedy,” she said, with enthusiasm and without apology.
A self-described “fitness fanatic” who declined to give her age (“I don’t tell; I’m a lady,” she said), Ms. Jah is slim and not quite 5-foot-2, but with her plumb line posture, coiled braids and forceful energy, she looms larger. Especially when she’s holding a machine gun. Onstage, in Danai Gurira’s play about women entangled in a civil war in Liberia, she is incandescent, fierce and gentle, moving with tenacious grace. Offstage, the wattage is only a little dimmer. She even manages to slurp oysters with poise.
Born in England, she spent her first 10 years with a grandmother in Sierra Leone before joining her parents, both doctors, in England. It was that grandmother who first introduced her to theater, recruiting her for a church troupe called Christ’s Little Band.
Despite pressure from her parents to pursue medicine or law, she trained as a dancer and worked happily for several years before she began craving another form of expression. “I just sat up in bed and said, ‘I want to be an actor,’” she said.
Initially, directors would cast her only in Greek tragedies or Shakespeare. But she expanded her repertoire with a number of plays set in Africa, like Lynn Nottage’s “Ruined” and Ms. Gurira’s “The Convert.”
She first played Maima in 2009, rejoining the play Off Broadway last year, just after wrapping the title role of “Hamlet” at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. (Word of warning: For her art, Ms. Jah has learned to fire an automatic weapon and wield a sword. Stay on her good side.)
Her approach to character is rigorous and largely physical, a holdover of the dance training. “It’s always instinctive before it becomes intellectual,” she said. She thinks of Maima as a little Yorkshire terrier. “They’re always the first to attack the big dogs in the street,” she said.
While working on the play, she can’t let Maima go. After a rehearsal, she’ll get dressed, go home and watch documentaries about Liberia. “I don’t know whether it’s because I’m African myself, but I have to give such a completeness to these characters,” she explained. “I feel I will do them a disservice by not living in them full time.”
Ms. Jah isn’t sure what she’ll do once “Eclipsed” closes in June. Maybe she’ll move to Jamaica and sell ice cream, she said, maybe she’ll turn to TV and film. She’d like to do a horror movie: “Run through the woods, scream,” she said with a laugh. Those monsters don’t stand a chance.
© 2016 The New York Times Company
GET TO KNOW: JESSICA LUCK
Starring as Britney in Stuffed, Jessica Luck‘s New York Theatre credits include: The Digger (La MaMa), The Blood Brothers (The Brick), The Quake (Ideal Glass), The Disembodied Soul and Buddy Becker’s Uncut Flick(NY Fringe). Web Series: Down Dog and Carolers. Jessica is a Yale graduate and a recent Rockwell scholar at ESPA/ Primary Stages. She is a member of the rock band My Dear Mycroft and the improv team The Jessica’s. Jessica is thrilled to be making her Off-Broadway debut in Stuffed!
GET TO KNOW: ANN HARADA
Ann Harada originated the role of Christmas Eve in Avenue Q on Broadway and the West End. Other Broadway includes Cinderella, 9 to 5, M Butterfly, Seussical, Les Miserables (revival). Recent Off – Broadway includes Brooklynite (Vineyard Theatre) and Love, Loss, and What I Wore (Westside Theatre). Regionally: 42nd Street and Mamma Mia (MUNY), and God of Carnage (George Street Playhouse) FILM: Youth in Oregon, Sisters, Trouble, Admission, Hope Springs, and The Art of Getting By. TV: “The Jim Gaffigan Show,” “The Good Wife,” “SMASH,” “30 Rock,” “House of Cards,” “Master of None.”
Read an interview at NPR with Ann Harada:
Ann Harada, From ‘Smash’ To Stepsisterhood
February 5, 2013
Rebecca Ritzel
Ann Harada is that rare Asian-American musical theater actress who’s never starred in The King and I or Miss Saigon. After a few summer stock stints as Bloody Mary in South Pacific, Harada realized if she was going to make it in theater, it would be as a character actor. In 2003, she originated the role of Christmas Eve in the irreverent puppet musical Avenue Q, a part she played on and off for six years. She’s been busy ever since, including a six-month run as Madame Thenardier in the Broadway revival of Les Miserables.
Tonight, Harada’s first regular TV character, the long-suffering stage manager Linda, returns to the NBC series Smash. After filming nine episodes for season 2, Harada left behind Katharine McPhee, Megan Hilty and the rest of the cast so she could originate the role of stepsister Charlotte in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. The show is now running in previews; it opens on Broadway March 3.
Before heading to the theater recently, Harada carved out some time to talk about her career, from her start in summer stock to her star turns as not-so-stock characters.
As a young actress, did you envision yourself playing roles in The King and I or Miss Saigon or South Pacific?
I always wanted to play these roles in the repertory, but I found I had a hard time getting cast in typically Asian parts, because for whatever reason, people were like, “You’re too American,” “You’re too funny,” or, “You’re so not right for this.” That just wasn’t going to be where my path was, and I just had to get over that.
Did that shift happen pretty quickly for you?
When you are a minority actor, you figure out right away that so much of the game is what people expect you to be, or think that you could be, based on how you look. When you don’t fit that mold, you have to figure out other ways to be seen. I had to start working on ways that I wasn’t being cast traditionally.
And by “traditionally” you mean?
Not Asian-specific.
There are a lot of actresses out there playing Tuptim who might be jealous of that.
Believe me, there was nothing I wanted more when I was younger than to be that ingenue. But that’s not who I was. And I’m a character actor. And when you are a young character actor, there is pretty much nothing out there for you, especially if you are Asian. Oh, my God. I am such a late bloomer in terms of my career.
On NBC’s Smash, returning for a second season, Harada plays the much-put-upon stage manager Linda, charged with keeping the chaos at the show-within-a-show more or less under control.
So how old were you when you realized that you were destined to be a character actor?
I’ll put it this way: When I saw Cinderella as a young girl, it never really crossed my mind that I wanted to play Cinderella. I was thinking, “I could be a stepsister.” I have always gravitated more towards those parts.
So is that how you got cast as Christmas Eve?
No. That was a complete stroke of fate. When Bobby Lopez and Jeff Marx were developing [Avenue Q], they were literally looking for an Asian actress to come in and say, like, two sentences in “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.” I went, and I was Christmas Eve from then on.
How were you able to take playing such an idiosyncratic character — a heavily accented Japanese therapist engaged to an unemployed puppet — and use the role as a steppingstone?
It’s always nice to be affiliated with a hit. When I went to auditions, people knew who I was.
Before you auditioned for Smash, did you ask any stage managers for advice?
No. It was only 10 minutes. It’s not like I did very much method work going into that first audition. But when I went back, I thought about a lot of stage managers that I’ve worked with, and I do kind of model myself after one of them.
Have you had good relationships with your stage managers over the years? Or are you a problem child?
Yes. I’m happy to say that I have. But I have been written up for laughing onstage.
In rehearsals for Bombshell, the show-within-a-show on Smash, whose side is Linda on? The actors? Or the creative team?
I would have to say she’s on the creative team’s side, but looking out for the welfare of the actors. Stage management is such a delicate row to hoe. You have to deal with everyone’s personal issues, as well as the crew.
In that sense, Smash seems pretty accurate. Linda knows who’s fooling around with who in the dressing rooms, but at the same time she’s trying to help hang the lights.
Absolutely. The only time I put my foot down was when we were shooting a scene in tech, and they had given me a yellow blouse to wear, and I was like, “No. C’mon. We’re in tech. I would be wearing black.”
Have there been many moments when they’ve turned to the theater people on set and, and asked you, “What would really happen here?”
Smash has been, for the most part, very good about listening to the people who have a lot of stage experience. There was one time when they had the stage manager’s console facing the wrong way. And I was like, “Please, for the love of God, don’t shoot it like that. We will get so much flak.”
Can you give us any hints about what’s in store for Linda? Any more break-out scenes, like dancing at the Indian wedding?
Nothing like that. There will be no singing or dancing for me, but there are some great moments in Linda history coming up, in terms of stage manager breakdowns.
Were you eager to get back onstage yourself?
Oh yes. I mean, it was bittersweet, but hopefully it won’t be goodbye forever.
You had to go fulfill your childhood dream of playing a stepsister.
Of course. And to be in a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical that has never been on Broadway.
Is it really Broadway material though? Their Cinderella was a made-for-TV movie that came out in 1957, and there’s a version licensed to elementary schools.
We have an entirely new book by Douglas Carter Beane [the playwright who wrote The Little Dog Laughed and Xanadu]. It’s more cheeky and edgy. The dialogue is much punchier. It’s very funny, and there’s a contemporary feel to the humor, but there are no Justin Bieber jokes.
How would you describe your character, the stepsister Charlotte?
She is just pure id. She is that girl who tries just way too hard. Just wants to be liked, and is so unsuccessful at it. Everything about her is so over the top. All of my dresses are various shades of hot pink. You cannot miss me. She is just too-too. But she’s not evil; she’s overeager.
And you like that, that she’s not the stereotypical evil stepsister?
Of course, because what’s there to be evil about? You can resent a perfect person without being evil. I resent perfect people all the time.
So she’s the girl you feel sorry for at the dance?
Oh, yes. I would feel very sorry for her.
Is it fun, being back onstage and singing again, instead of herding singing divas for television?
It is the most fun you could ever have, to be in a show like Cinderella, with the funniest people. … I’m playing in the major leagues, with the best people there are. And I’m doing what I love to do. There is just not a better feeling in the world.
GET TO KNOW: JACKSON GAY
JACKSON GAY
(Stuffed Playwright & Star) Lisa Lampanelli shot her fifth stand-up special, “Back to the Drawing Board,” which premiered June 26, 2015 on EPIX and was nominated for a 2015 Grammy Award for “Best Comedy Album.” In the special, Comedy’s Lovable Queen of Mean showed off her radically different look after having lost more than 100 pounds. That weight loss, which she has maintained for over four years, inspired her to write Stuffed since, having been every size from 2 to 26, she has firsthand knowledge of the food and body-image struggle.
Lisa became a household name when she joined 17 other celebrities on the fifth season of NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” where she advanced to the final four in the competition, raising $130,000 for her chosen charity, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. She also starred as a regular on “Bounty Hunters,” CMT’s first-ever animated series, and recently stole the show on an episode of CBS’s “2 Broke Girls,” helmed by “Sex and The City” creator, Michael Patrick King. She also was recently accepted into and attended the Yale Summer Conservatory for Actors in New Haven, CT.
Lampanelli joined the ranks of comedy greats with her 2009 HBO comedy special, “Long Live the Queen,” and that same year, released her autobiography, Chocolate, Please: My Adventures in Food, Fat and Freaks (Harper Collins). Lisa was also a monthly writer for the Women column in Playboy Magazine and is a contributor to the blog for Kripalu, the world-renowned yoga and meditation retreat center.
Lisa’s rise to the top of the comedy food chain began in 2002 when she was the only female comedian invited to skewer Chevy Chase on the NY Friars Club Comedy Central Roast. She soon became known as the “Queen of the Roasts”, going on to lambaste such names as Pamela Anderson, Jeff Foxworthy, William Shatner, Flava Flav, David Hasselhoff and, most recently, Donald Trump. Due to her success as a roaster, in 2009, Lisa was asked to serve as Roastmaster for the highly rated Comedy Central Roast of friend and fellow comic, Larry the Cable Guy.
One of the few white comedians to perform on BET’s “Comic View,” Lisa has clearly cemented her huge crossover appeal. She went on to appear on Comedy Central’s “Last Laugh 2005” and her one-hour special that year, “Take It Like a Man,” was a hit with the comedy network yet again. The CD and the DVD of the same name hit #6 on the comedy charts. Then, in January 2007, Lisa’s second one-hour special, “Dirty Girl,” debuted on Comedy Central and Warner Bros. Records, and reached #4 on the charts. Soon thereafter, “Dirty Girl” was nominated for a Grammy Award for 2007’s “Best Comedy Album”.
#STUFFEDPLAY
Get to Know the Cast of QUEENS
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- SOFIYA AKILOVA
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- PAOLA LÁZARO
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- MARJAN NESHAT
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- AMANDA QUAID
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- ANNA REEDER
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- ANDREA SYGLOWSKI
SOFIYA AKILOVA (Stage Direction) is a tv, film, and theatre actor, and a writer. She emigrated from Uzbekistan to New York with her family in 1990. She attended LaGuardia High School for Performing Arts and completed her bachelor’s in English Literature at Queens College. Sofiya is also an alumna of NYU Grad Acting. Recently, she has performed in productions at Yale Rep and The Old Globe Theatre. She has also appeared in the following television shows: Madam Secretary, TURN: Washington’s Spies, Allegiance, and Alpha House. Sofiya is a recent and proud member of the 52nd Street Project.
PAOLA LÁZARO (Isabela/Glenys) is an actress and playwright born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She holds a B.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from SUNY Purchase College, M.F.A. in Playwriting from Columbia University. In 2015 she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play in To the Bone at Cherry Lane Theatre. Lázaro was also in Martyna Majok’s John Who’s Here From Cambridge at EST. She received the Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence grant at the Atlantic Theater for 2016-2017 for her play Tell Hector I Miss Him, premiering next season at Atlantic. Her most recent play There’s Always the Hudson will have a reading at Labyrinth Theater in May as part of their Up Next Series. Paola was awarded the Arts Entertainment Scholarship Award from NHFA, a member of the Public Theater’s 2015 Emerging Writers Group and was selected Playwright-in-Residence for the Sundance Theater Lab in Morocco 2016.
MARJAN NESHAT (Aamani/Nasima) Recent theater credits include Irina in Three Sisters, Fallaci directed by Oskar Eustis, Scorched, Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Aiesha Ghazali in The Near East, Masha in The Seagull with Dianne Wiest. She just finished work on the film The Book of Henry with Naomi Watts and a recurring role on the ABC drama “Quantico.” Other film and TV credits include a starring role in the independent film Almost in Love with Alan Cumming, RoboCop, Sex in the City 2, Funny in Farsi (directed by Barry Sonnenfeld), “Person of Interest,” “Royal Pains,” “Blue Bloods,” “Black Box,” “Unforgettable,” “Fringe,” multiple Law and Orders. She is a member of The Actors Center in NYC.
AMANDA QUAID (Inna) New York: The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence (Playwrights Horizons, world premiere by Madeleine George), Luck of the Irish (LCT3, Lortel nom), Cock (The Duke), A Public Reading…Walt Disney (Soho Rep, world premiere by Lucas Hnath), Pericles (Public, AEA St. Clair Bayfield Award), Equus (Broadway), The Illusion (Signature), Galileo (CSC), Happy Hour (Atlantic), The Witch of Edmonton (Red Bull), The Seagull (dir. Max Stafford-Clark), three plays at Irish Rep, most recently The Weir. Regional: Old Globe, Shakespeare Theatre, Barrington Stage Company, Folger, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. TV/film: “Blue Bloods,” “Law & Order: SVU,” Non-Stop. Faculty: HB Studio, The Freeman Studio. Quaid directed her first short film, English, in 2014, which premiered at Cannes Short Film Corner and will screen in May as part of the New York Women in Film and Television’s Immigrant Experiences Series. For more info, visit amandaquaid.com.
ANA REEDER (Renia) Broadway: Big Knife, Hedda Gabler, Top Girls, Sight Unseen; Off-Broadway: Radiance, The Maids, Happy Hour, Living Room in Africa, The Wooden Breeks, Small Tragedy (Obie), Humble Boy, An Experiment with an Air Pump,Time of the Cuckoo, Some Voices, Killers and Other Family, Maid, Macbeth, Henry VIII, Hedda Gabler (NYTW); London: The Distance from Here (Almeida Theatre) Williamstown: A Streetcar Named Desire. Film: No Country for Old Men, The Locksmith (original title: Homewrecker/ Best of Next/Sundance), Acts of Worship (Independent Spirit Award Nomination/Best Actress, Best Actress/Santa Barbara Film Festival), Marie and Bruce, One for the Money. TV: HBO’s You Don’t Know Jack, Damages, Law & Order, Blue Bloods. BA: Middlebury College, MFA: NYU.
ANDREA SYGLOWSKI (Pelagiya/Lera) recently appeared in the world premiere productions of The Nest by Theresa Rebeck (The Denver Center) and Of Good Stock by Melissa Ross (South Coast Rep). Her 2014 production of Venus in Fur at the Huntington Theatre garnered her the 2014 Elliott Norton Award for Best Actress in a Large Theatre, and an IRNE Award for Best Actress. She has participated in new play development workshops at The Roundabout, New York Theatre Workshop, Labyrinth Theatre Company, Bay Street Theatre, The Lark, Ars Nova, Jewish Plays Project, Ma-Yi Theatre Company, The New York Society Library, and BAM. Other credits include: Asking for Trouble (Ensemble Studio Theatre), The Walk Through (Slate Theatre Company), A Flea in her Ear, Bully to You, Schmoozy Togetherness, White Trash Anthem (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Three Sisters, Loves Labours Lost, Elijah, Carve (Chautauqua Theatre Company) Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare at the Manor) TV: ‘The Good Wife,’ ‘How to Get Away with Murder,’ ‘Elementary.’ Film: Every New York City Party Happens in a Bathroom. Training: USC and The Juilliard School, class of 2013, where she was the proud recipient of the Robin Williams Scholarship.
FINAL WEEK OF THE PIPELINE FESTIVAL
WEEK 5: April 21 – April 23
QUEENS
The award-winning playwright Martyna Majok unveils her latest work for Pipeline Festival audiences.
By Martyna Majok
Directed by Tamilla Woodard
Produced by Rachel Karpf Reidy
Starring Sofiya Akilova, Paola Lázaro, Marjan Neshat, Amanda Quaid, Ana Reeder, Andrea Syglowski
Martyna Majok, author of WP’s recent hit IRONBOUND, continues her exploration of the people on the fringes of society through a fierce and funny new play about immigrant women seeking more than the American Dream. Don’t miss this chance to see this award-winning playwright’s newest work in its earliest stages! #QueensPlay
@WomensProject #PipelineFestival / #WPLab
The Pipeline Festival: Rachel Karpf
(Producer) Rachel Karpf works with artists and cultural institutions to produce theater and live performance pieces that inspire, delight, and move audiences. Recent works include Todd Almond and Courtney Love’s Kansas City Choir Boy (ART/Beth Morrison Projects) and Jay Scheib and Keeril Makan’s Persona (M.I.T & National Sawdust/Beth Morrison Projects). As Associate Director of Page 73: Clare Barron’s You Got Older, directed by Anne Kauffman (2 OBIE Awards, 4 Drama Desk Award noms., Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist); George Brant’s Grounded, directed by Ken Rus Schmoll (Drama Desk Award nom.); Cori Thomas’ When January Feels Like Summer, directed by Daniella Topol (co-produced with EST). With the Institute for Psychogeographic Adventure, she has produced large-scale site-specific performance adventures including in the Brooklyn Museum (BEAT Festival), PRELUDE, Stony Brook University, and throughout the DUMBO neighborhood. For 13P: Lucy Thurber’s Monstrosity, Julia Jarcho’s American Treasure, and Madeline George’s The Zero Hour. Other projects at LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater, New York Theater Workshop, and the Commonweal Theatre. Creator of the lecture series Saloon; grant review panelist for NSYCA and others. BA: Dartmouth College. rachelkarpf.com
WEEK 5: April 21 – April 23
QUEENS
The award-winning playwright Martyna Majok unveils her latest work for Pipeline Festival audiences.
By Martyna Majok
Directed by Tamilla Woodard
Produced by Rachel Karpf
Starring Sofiya Akilova, Paola Lázaro, Marjan Neshat, Amanda Quaid, Ana Reeder, Andrea Syglowski
Martyna Majok, author of WP’s recent hit IRONBOUND, continues her exploration of the people on the fringes of society through a fierce and funny new play about immigrant women seeking more than the American Dream. Don’t miss this chance to see this award-winning playwright’s newest work in its earliest stages! #QueensPlay
@WomensProject #PipelineFestival / #WPLab
WATCH: Behind the Scenes with the QUEENS Creative Team
WEEK 5: April 21 – April 23
QUEENS
The award-winning playwright Martyna Majok unveils her latest work for Pipeline Festival audiences.
By Martyna Majok
Directed by Tamilla Woodard
Produced by Rachel Karpf Reidy
Starring Sofiya Akilova, Paola Lázaro, Marjan Neshat, Amanda Quaid, Ana Reeder, Andrea Syglowski
Martyna Majok, author of WP’s recent hit IRONBOUND, continues her exploration of the people on the fringes of society through a fierce and funny new play about immigrant women seeking more than the American Dream. Don’t miss this chance to see this award-winning playwright’s newest work in its earliest stages! #QueensPlay
@WomensProject #PipelineFestival / #WPLab
The Pipeline Festival: RACHEL SUSSMAN
(Producer) Rachel Sussman is a New York-based producer committed to nurturing diverse work through creative collaboration. She serves as the Director of Programming for The New York Musical Theatre Festival and is a co-founder of The Indigo Theatre Project as well as The MITTEN Lab, a new emerging artist residency in her native state of Michigan. Rachel has worked with such companies as Second Stage Theatre, 321 Theatrical Management, RKO Stage, Goodspeed Musicals’ Mercer Colony, Lincoln Center’s American Songbook, The Tony Awards, and CREATE-Ireland in Dublin, Ireland. Producing credits include: Talk to me about Shame (FringeNYC, Overall Excellence Award), Lemon Cake (133rd St. Arts Center), The Imaginary Menagerie (Joe’s Pub), and, most recently, The Woodsman (59E59 & New World Stages). She is currently developing a new musical with composer/lyricist Shaina Taub. Rachel is a trustee for The Awesome Foundation NYC and sits on Advisory Boards for The Musical Theatre Factory and Strangemen & Co. She is a graduate of the Commercial Theater Institute and a University Scholar alumna of NYU Tisch.
When Raba Zacharai suddenly passes away, his daughter Shiraz inherits the prominent Persian rug shop he built in New Haven after leaving Iran in 1979. After diving into a love affair with a dangerously beautiful customer and discovering her mother’s secret longing to return to her homeland after years in exile, Shiraz must negotiate the costly business of carpets, family, duty, and desire. #RugDealerPlay
@WomensProject #PipelineFestival / #WPLab
The Pipeline Festival: THE CAST OF THE RUG DEALER
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- Farah Bala
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- Soraya Broukhim
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- Edward A. Hajj
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- Rita Wolf
Farah Bala (Shiraz) Originally from Bombay, India, Farah is an actor, producer & leadership coach based in NY. Barrymore Award Nomination for Outstanding Leading Actress (alongside theatre veteran Anna Deavere Smith). MFA Theater: Sarah Lawrence College; 2-year recipient of the Fezana Performing Arts Award. Select Theatre: Tales from the Tunnel; Honor Killing; In the Book Of; One-woman show To The Death of My Own Family, Macbeth, Two Gentlemen of Verona. Select Film & TV: Entre Nos; The War Within; Karma, Confessions and Holi; Broad City. New play development at The Actors Studio, Labyrinth, Women’s Project, Red Bull, Rising Circle, The Lark, Ma Yi, among others. Profiled in Umbrage Edition’s national award winning book, GREEN CARD STORIES – one of 50 profiles of recent immigrant stories from around the world. farahbala.com
Soraya Broukhim (Azar) NYC Theatre Credits: Petrol Station (NYU/BAM), No Place to Hide (The Living Theatre, Bread & Puppet Theatre), I am Gordafarid (NYTW & Rising Circle), Soundwaves: The Passion of Noor Inayat Khan (Fringe), Blackbird (One woman show, Schmucks Theatre), Here We Are, History of the World, SMOPS, Korach by Judith Malina (The Living Theatre), Red Tent Fabrik (JoyceSoho), Antigone, Betrothed (Ripe Time), Gut Girls (Chocolate Factory), Woyzeck (CultureProject), Innocent Erendira (Here), Logic of the Birds (Lincoln Center). Regional Theatre: Scorched (Syracuse Stage), In the Heart of America (Interact Co. PA), Wintertime (San Jose Rep), Afghan Women (Passage Theatre, NJ), Sodom & Gomorrah (O’Neill Playwrights Conference), Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (CT), & Blue Demon (WTF) dir. Darko Tresnjak. Europe: Antigone (Romania, UNESCO/ITI). TV/Film: “Madam Secretary,” Xenophilia, Flat Tire, Headshot, Rosewater, America 1979, Eugenia & John, An Encounter with Simone Weil, The Push. Graduate of Fordham University LC, BAADA, NTI, & St. Petersburg Arts Theatre Academy. Adjunct Professor of Theatre at Fordham University and Artistic Associate of the Living Theatre. sorayabroukhim.com
Edward A. Hajj (Raba) is delighted to be a part of the first ever “Pipeline Festival.” New York credits include: Manhattan Theatre Club, Roundabout Theatre, New Georges, NAATCO, The Cherry Lane, Lark, New Dramatists, Naked Angels, Lincoln Center & EST. Regional: Actors Theatre, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf, Alliance, InterAct. Many thanks to Rachel, Lee, Riti, Lisa and the WP staff, my acting partners and the “rug-dealing” production team. The best is yet to come. edwardhajj.com
Rita Wolf (Mariam) started her career with the Royal Court Youth Theatre in London. Her first professional job was Joint Stock Theatre Co’s Borderline by Hanif Kureishi. She has gone on to a career in theatre, TV and film which in the US includes Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul at NYTW, BAM and Mark Taper Forum, David Grieg’s The American Pilot at MTC (Drama Desk nomination) and A.R. Gurney’s O, Jerusalem at The Flea. In 1991 she co-founded Kali Theatre Co in London to produce exclusively the work of female South Asian Theatre practitioners. Their latest show The Dishonoured by Aamina Ahmad opened in London this March.
When Raba Zacharai suddenly passes away, his daughter Shiraz inherits the prominent Persian rug shop he built in New Haven after leaving Iran in 1979. After diving into a love affair with a dangerously beautiful customer and discovering her mother’s secret longing to return to her homeland after years in exile, Shiraz must negotiate the costly business of carpets, family, duty, and desire. #RugDealerPlay
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PHOTOS: The Pipeline Festival ‘Kick Off’
View a slideshow of photographs from the ‘Kick Off’ toast and party for WP’s inaugural Pipeline Festival:
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The Pipeline Festival: CYGNUS’ Kate Rigg
Kate Rigg (Mama Hansen) Off Broadway: The Jammer, Three Kinds of Exile (Atlantic), BFE (LongWharf/Playwrights Horizons), Dogeaters (The Public) Vagina Monologues (Westside Theater) Most Fabulous Story (NYTW) Regional: Playmakers Rep, ATL, Brava, CTGLA, New World Theater, Out North, Conworks. TV: The Path, Law and Order SVU, Law and Order, Law and Order CI, Fox’s Family Guy, One Night Stand-Up, Dr. Phil, Comedy Central Women in Comedy, Showtime’s Hot Tamales, Film: Race Is the Place, That’s What She Said, The Naughty Show. Artist Residencies: Smithsonian Institute, NYFA, Comedy Central Theater. Lead Singer of the spoken word/rock outfit Slanty Eyed Mama. Stand Up Comic and solo artist in stadiums and dive bars around the world. Graduate: Julliard. www.katerigg.com
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The Pipeline Festival: CYGNUS’ Teresa Avia Lim
Teresa Avia Lim (Cydney Hansen) Theatre: NAATCO’S Awake and Sing and Macbeth Mobile Shakespeare Unit at the Public Theater, Peerless at Yale Rep, 4000 Miles at Long Wharf Theatre, Seminar at Philadelphia Theatre Co. Originated her roles in Water by the Spoonful at Hartford Stage, Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them at Humana Festival/ Actors theatre of Louisville and Concerning Strange Devices From the Distant West at Berkeley Rep. Also appeared in productions of Lorenzaccio, Pericles, Macbeth, and the Tempest at The Shakespeare Theatre of Washington DC. Television: “Blue Bloods”, “Limitless”, “Unforgettable”, “Law and Order: Criminal Intent”. Film: Dispatched. Training: Yale School of Drama: An Inaugural Recipient of Jerome L. Greene Scholarship.
@WomensProject #PipelineFestival / #WPLab