MUNICH MEDEA: HAPPY FAMILY
January 30 - February 25, 2024
Written by Corinne Jaber
Directed by Lee Sunday Evans
a co-production with PlayCo
“Why did you tell them about our secrets?”
“Why share things with them that they cannot understand?”
Childhood friends, Caroline and Alice reestablish contact after more than 20 years. As they begin to unravel shared memories, they discover the part that Caroline’s father, a renowned theater actor, played in both their lives and how it affects them to this very day. Corinne Jaber’s new play captures the wild vulnerability of youth and the heavy armature of adulthood in unsparing, theatrical detail, led by award-winning director Lee Sunday Evans (Oratorio for Living Things, Dance Nation).
MUNICH MEDEA: HAPPY FAMILY deals with sexual assault and its aftermath. Experiences are recounted, but not enacted onstage. We recommend this piece for people ages fourteen and up. Please email us at tickets@wptheater.org if you would like more information or details on content.
Press Release for MUNICH MEDEA: HAPPY FAMILY
Full Cast Announcement
Corinne Jaber
Corinne Jaber (Playwright) is of Syrian/German heritage and was born in Munich and raised in Canada and Germany. She is an award-winning actress as well as a writer/director/ She has been part of many international theater productions in English as well as in French, such as – to name but a few – Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata, A Dybbuk For 2, by and with the late Bruce Myers, Irina Brook’s Beast on the Moon (for which she obtained a “Molière” the best actress award in France) and more recently Oh My Sweet Land, a monologue which she conceived and co-authored together with together with Amir Nizar Zubai as well as acted in. For many years she has worked with Afghan actors in Kabul on Shakespeare. Their work culminated in production of Comedy of Errors at the “Globe to Globe Festival” for the Globe Theater in London. Her play The Bus That Didn’t Stop On the Partition of India has now developed into her very first film which she also produced and directed. She is currently in the process of post-production. Munich Medea: Happy Family, her most recent play, will premier in New York in 2024.
Lee Sunday Evans
Lee Sunday Evans (Director) is a two-time Obie Award-winning Director + Choreographer and the Artistic Director of Waterwell. She most recently directed the acclaimed production of Heather Christian’s ORATORIO FOR LIVING THINGS and was just announced as the director of a Broadway-bound musical adaptation of A WRINKLE IN TIME. She is developing a TV project for A24. Notable credits include DANCE NATION by Clare Barron, DETROIT RED by Will Power, SUNDAY by Jack Thorne, IN THE GREEN by Grace McLean, MILLER, MISSISSIPPI by Boo Killebrew, and HOME by Geoff Sobelle. She also directed THE COURTROOM by Arian Moayed (NYTimes Best Theater of 2019) which she just directed as a feature-length film that premiered in the 2022 Tribeca Festival.
Crystal Finn
Crystal Finn (Caroline) is thrilled to be working for the first time with WP, and to be back working with PlayCo. after performing in their production of one of her all-time favorite plays Villa, by Guillermo Calderon. NY theater includes many world premieres at Playwright’s Horizons, Roundabout, MTC, 59E59, Fulcrum, and Clubbed Thumb where she is an affiliated artist. In 2022 she made her Broadway debut in Birthday Candles, by Noah Haidle, for which she won a Theater World Award. She is also a writer and is working on a solo show about Wittgenstein and a book of essays about acting.
Heather Raffo
Heather Raffo (Alice) is a singular and outstanding voice in the American theater whose work has been championed by the New Yorker as “an example of how art can remake the world”. Having helped forge a new genre of Arab American theater, she’s spent her career writing and embodying stories of Iraq: from the lives and dreams of Iraqi women in her seminal work 9 Parts of Desire (2003), to the suicidal ideation of an Iraq war veteran in the opera Fallujah (PBS film 2012), to the restless longings of an Iraqi refugee architect, in Noura (2018). A film adaptation of Nine Parts, released on PBS in 2023, is a radical reimagining of her groundbreaking play from the vantage point of 20 years after the war. A recent Creative Capital, NPN and APAP grantee, Raffo is currently building an ambitious new theatrical platform following migration and the global economy which aims to be the first ever-evolving, multi-locational theater platform.
Kurt Rhoads
Kurt Rhoads (Father) Broadway: Julius Caesar. Off Broadway: Off Peak by Brenda Withers, 59E59 St Theatre; Fashions for Men, Mint Theatre; Othello, The Good Natur’d Man, Pearl Theatre; The Case of Kaspar Mayer, Ubu Rep, Americana Absurdum, Present Company. Regional: Arena Stage, How I Learned to Drive, Agamemnon and his Daughters; Everyman Theatre: Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Sweat; Old Globe: Fiction, Dinner with Friends; Denver Center: Book of Will. 25 seasons of acting and directing at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. Video Games: Red Dead Revoler, Redemption, GTA San Andreas, III, Bully. 73 plays with his wife, Nance Williamson. Education: University of Chicago, DePaul University.
Kristen Robinson
Kristen Robinson (Scenic Design) is an award-winning designer, artist, and educator. Her work ranges from experimental opera to regional theatre and everything in between. Select design credits include: with WP Theater, [PORTO], Drinking in America (Audible Theater), Don Giovanni, (Wolftrap Opera), Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things (Ars Nova), In the Green (LCT3), Heart of Darkness (Baryshnikov Arts Center), Minor Character (Under the Radar Festival), Everybody Black, The Thin Place (Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville), graveyard shift (Goodman Theatre), Familiar (Steppenwolf Theatre), Ethel (Alliance Theatre). She is the Assistant Professor of Scenic Design at Purchase College. A Princess Grace Fellow, she holds her MFA from Yale University and is a proud member of USA 829. You can view her work at kristenrobinsondesign.com.
Dina El-Aziz
(Costume Design, she/her) Regional: Lost Girl (Dartmouth); Selling Kabul (Northern Stage); English (Barrington Stage); Disgraced (American Stage); A Distinct Society (TheaterWorks); Layalina (Goodman Theatre); A Distinct Society (Pioneer Theater); English (Studio Theater); Selling Kabul (Seattle Rep); Unseen (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); When Monica Met Hillary (Miami New Drama); This is Who I Am (OSF/Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co./Guthrie Theater/American Repertory Theater/PlayCo); 9 Parts of Desire (Portland Center Stage); King Lear (Northern Stage); Noura (The Guthrie); Noura (The Old Globe); Selling Kabul (Williamstown Theatre Festival). Off-Broadway: Weightless (WP theater); The Vagrant Trilogy (The Public Theater); Spindle Shuttle Needle (Clubbed Thumb); Heartland (Geva Theater/59E59); First Down (Noor Theater/59E59); Hindsight (Fault Line Theater). Other theatre credits: One Night, P*ssyC*ck Know Nothing, Marjana and the Forty Thieves Pay No Attention To The Girl (Target Margin Theater). Design for Stage and Film MFA–New York University Tisch School of the Arts. www.dinae.me
Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew
Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew (Lighting Design) is an award-winning designer for theatre, dance, opera, musicals, music performances and large-scale immersive installation. NY Times described her designs as “clever” and “inventive”. Recent: Kimberly Akimbo (Broadway), King Lear (STC), WILD: A Musical Becoming (A.R.T.), The Nosebleed (LCT3), Gloria: A Life (Daryl Roth Theatre), Walden (Theaterworks), Golden Shield (MTC), cullud wattah (The Public), Oratorio for Living Things (Ars Nova). Plus designing for immersive experiences like Nevermore Park: Home of Flyboy with artist Hebru Brantley. www.jeanetteyew.com
UptownWorks/Daniela Hart
UptownWorks / Daniela Hart (Sound Design) The UptownWorks sound team is a group of designers that creates collaboratively for theatre, film, podcasts, music production and other media. Select design highlights include Lady Day (Baltimore Center Stage); Tiny Father (Barrington Stage/Chautauqua); Avaaz (South Coast Rep); Singularity Play (HarvardTDM); Black Odyssey (Classic Stage); Chicken & Biscuits (Asolo Rep); Espejos:Clean (Hartford Stage/Syracuse Stage); Which Way To The Stage (Signature DC); the ripple, the wave…(Berkeley Rep/Goodman); Blues Clues & You! (Round Room Live); Queen (Long Wharf Theater/A.R.T.NY); Fires in the Mirror (Baltimore Center Stage/Long Wharf Theatre). This design was led by Daniela Hart (uptownworksnyc.com), Bailey Trierweiler (btsounddesign.com) and Noel Nichols (noelnicholsdesign.com). Daniela, Noel & Bailey received their MFAs in Sound Design from Yale School of Drama.
Skylar Fox
Skylar Fox (Magic Design) Broadway: Fat Ham (OBIE award); associate designer for Harry Potter & the Cursed Child, Back to the Future, and A Beautiful Noise . Off-Broadway/ International: Boop! (Broadway in Chicago), The Comeuppance (Signature Theatre), You Will Get Sick (Roundabout Theatre Company), Wicked, Matilda (Atilier de Cultura, São Paulo) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (London Grand), and Damn Yankees (Shaw Festival). He is the co-artistic director of Nightdrive, where he has directed and co-written The Grown-Ups (Top 10 NYC Theatre Productions of 2021, Time Out NY), Alien Nation, Providence, RI, Thank You Sorry, and Apathy Boy. www.skylarfox.com & nightdrive.org.
Jaimie Van Dyke
Jaimie Van Dyke (Production Stage Manager) OFF-BWAY/REGIONAL: SM credits: Ironbound (Rattlestick/WP), A Beautiful Day in November…(New Georges/WP, Obie Award), Bright Half Life (WP), HERE (NY Comedy Fest/186k Productions), How to Get into Buildings (New Georges), Roar of the Greasepaint… (Goodspeed Musicals), Tonight at 8:30 (Guild Hall) and 10 productions with Blessed Unrest. TOURS: With Hasan Minhaj: “Off With His Head”, “The King’s Jester”, “Homecoming King”, “Before the Storm” (stage manager & tour manager). Sworn Virgin and Doruntine (Balkan tour with Teatri Oda of Kosova & Blessed Unrest) TV/FILM: Producer “The King’s Jester”, Assoc. Producer “Homecoming King”, Screens Producer “Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj”, GFX Producer “Game Theory with Bomani Jones”
Samantha Tutasi
Samantha Tutasi (Properties Supervisor) Ecuadorian-American props and scenic designer, most recent collaborations include: Theater – Coping Mechanism (Wild Project); Virgin, Mother, Whore (Boundless Theater Co.), Captain Courageous and The Secret Garden (Powerhouse Theater Collaborative); Film -.Egg Timer (dir. Annie Tippe). She frequently works with the American Theater Wing on their educational program, Springboard To Design. BFA: State University of New York at Purchase, 2022. samanthatutasidesign.myportfolio.com
