Northlight Theatre, under the direction of Artistic Director BJ Jones and Executive Director Timothy J. Evans, continues to engage audiences with its commitment to developing new work with two new plays. The first, in a co-production of Marin Theatre Company and Round House Theatre, is Lauren Gunderson’s The Catastrophist, directed by Jasson Minadakis, featuring William DeMeritt, playing March 11-31, 2021. On April 18, 2021, Northlight will premiere a reading as part of Interplay of Wright/Rand, a new play by Jeffrey Hatcher and Eric Simonson, directed by David Ira Goldstein and featuring Artistic Director BJ Jones as Frank Lloyd Wright, in his first role since 2005, and Tracy Michelle Arnold as Ayn Rand.
THE CATASTROPHIST
a co-production of Marin Theatre Company and Round House Theatre
By Lauren Gunderson
Directed by Jasson Minadakis
The production is available for on demand viewing March 11-31, 2021. Tickets, $30, are on sale February 25 at northlight.org/events/catastrophist.
How do you plan for catastrophe? Virologist Nathan Wolfe, named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World for his work tracking Ebola and swine flu, has hunted viruses from the jungles of Cameroon to the basement of the CDC.. Now, in a post-COVID world, we hear his story—presented entirely digitally. America’s most produced playwright Lauren Gunderson (Miss Bennet, The Wickhams, The Book of Will) returns with a time-jumping tale based on the life and work of Nathan Wolfe (who also happens to be her husband). A deep dive into the profundities of scientific exploration and the harrowing realities of facing your own mortality, The Catastrophist is a world premiere theatrical experience built of and for this moment in time.
BJ Jones comments, “A power couple like no other, Lauren Gunderson and her husband Nathan Wolfe bridge the gap between arts and science in this one-person exploration of his extraordinary career as a world class virologist. Told from her perspective and anchored by his expertise, this strikingly theatrical monologue illuminates this moment in time.”
The cast is William DeMeritt (Nathan). The creative team includes: Peter Ruocco (Director of Photography/ Editor), Martine Kei Green-Rogers (Dramaturg), Wen-Ling Liao (Lighting Designer), Chris Houston/Implied Music (Composer/Sound Designer), Sarah Smith (Costume Designer), Christina Hogan (Assistant Director) and Nakissa Etemad (Producer).
Notes of Interest:
Lauren Gunderson has been one of the most produced playwrights in America. Her plays The Wickhams, Miss Bennet, and The Book of Will have been produced by Northlight.
The subject of the play and scientific consultant is notable virologist Nathan Wolfe, who is married to the playwright.
WRIGHT/RAND
By Jeffrey Hatcher and Eric Simonson
Directed by David Ira Goldstein
The reading premieres Sunday April 18, 2021 at 6:30pm with a live post-show discussion, streaming through April 22, 2021. www.northlight.org/events/interplay-wright-rand/
Frank Lloyd Wright and Ayn Rand: two artistic figures that loomed large over the 20th century. After years of brush-offs from the already accomplished architect to the emerging author, the two iconoclasts finally met and, perhaps surprisingly, became friends. With witty badinage and delicious posturing, we see the shared ideals and aspirations of these thorny giants, as well as the darker sides that plagued them both.
BJ Jones comments, “Frank Lloyd Wright and Ayn Rand seem an unlikely pairing on the surface. Though Rand’s best seller Fountainhead was a fictionalized glimpse of a world-famous architect, she maintained it was not Wright that she had written. He, on the other hand, insisted it was. The conflict both aesthetic and personal makes for a smart and witty war of words by two award-winning playwrights.”
The cast includes BJ Jones (Frank Lloyd Wright) and Tracy Michelle Arnold (Ayn Rand). The Dramaturg is Leean Kim Torske, who will also read stage directions. The Zoom Coordinator is Sophia Danielle-Grenier.
Notes of Interest:
This reading is a part of Northlight’s Interplay New Play Development program, providing customized support for new work in the critical stages of early play development.
Catch a glimpse of this new drama while still in the development process. The premiere will be followed by a live Q&A with the director and playwright. A recording will be available for 96 hours following the premiere.
This event is FREE with a suggested donation, but registration is required to receive a viewing link. To sign-up, and for additional details, please visit www.northlight.org/events/interplay-wright-rand/
BJ Jones last appeared onstage at Northlight in 2005’s Permanent Collection by Thomas Gibbons, opposite Harry J. Lennix, who directed an Interplay reading earlier this year.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
The Catastrophist
Lauren M. Gunderson (Playwright) has been one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015, topping the list twice including in 2019-2020. She is a two-time winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for I and You and The Book of Will, the winner of the Lanford Wilson Award and the Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the John Gassner Award for Playwriting, and a recipient of the Mellon Foundation’s Residency with Marin Theatre Company. She studied Southern Literature and Drama at Emory University and Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School, where she was a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. She co-authored the Miss Bennet plays with Margot Melcon, and her play The Half-Life of Marie Curie is available on Audible.com. Her work is published at Playscripts (I and You; Exit, Pursued By A Bear; The Taming; and Toil and Trouble), Dramatists Play Service (The Revolutionists; The Book of Will; Silent Sky; Bauer; Natural Shocks; The Wickhams; and Miss Bennet), and Samuel French (Emilie). Her picture book Dr. Wonderful: Blast Off to the Moon is available on Amazon. She is currently developing musicals with Ari Afsar; Dave Stewart and Joss Stone; and Kait Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk.
Jasson Minadakis (Director) is in his 15th season as artistic director of Marin Theatre Company, where he has directed Mother of the Maid, Sovereignty, Oslo, Shakespeare in Love, Thomas and Sally, Guards at the Taj, August: Osage County, The Invisible Hand, Anne Boleyn, The Convert, The Whale, Failure: A Love Story, the world premiere of Lasso of Truth, The Whipping Man (San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle Awards for Best Production and Best Acting Ensemble), Waiting for Godot, Othello: the Moor of Venice, The Glass Menagerie, Edward Albee’s Tiny Alice, the world premiere of Libby Appel’s adaptation of Chekhov’s Seagull, Happy Now?, Equivocation (SFBATCC Award, Best Director), the world premiere of Sunlight, Lydia, The Seafarer, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, A Streetcar Named Desire, said Saïd, Love Song, and The Subject Tonight is Love. As artistic director of Actor’s Express Theatre Company, he directed The Pillowman; Bug; The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer; Echoes of Another Man; Killer Joe; Burn This; The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?; Blue/Orange; and Bel Canto. As producing artistic director of Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, he directed Jesus Hopped the ’A’ Train, Chagrin Falls (2002 Cincinnati Entertainment Award for Best Production), and numerous others, including 19 productions of Shakespeare. Regional credits include The Whipping Man at Virginia Stage Company, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Hamlet at Georgia Shakespeare, Copenhagen at Playhouse on the Square (2003 Ostrander Theatre Award for Best Dramatic Production), and Bedroom Farce at Wayside.
William Demeritt (Nathan) is an actor, writer, director, theatre educator, and dialect coach. Off-Broadway credits include The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World AKA the Negro Book of the Dead at Signature Theatre Company; Liz Swados’ Violence Project at LaMaMa ETC.; and Mom, How Did You Meet the Beatles? at The Public Theatre. International credits include Hamlet at the Bridge Lane Theater (London) and October in the Chair & Other Fragile Things at the Amsterdam International Fringe Festival. Regional credits include Will in Shakespeare in Love (U.S. premiere), Fenton in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Sholem Asch in Indecent at Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Orsino in Twelfth Night at Yale Rep; We, The Invisibles at the Humana Festival of New American Plays, Actors Theatre of Louisville; writer and co-creator of the one-man show Origin Story (winner, New York Innovative Theatre Award, Best Solo Performance); Sense and Sensibility at Dallas Theatre Center; and The Slam Jam at the Upright Citizens’ Brigade Theatre. Film credits include The Normal Heart; The Lennon Report; The Surrogate; What’s Up, Lovely?; and Bad Luck Dandelion. Television credits include The Flight Attendant (HBOMax), NCIS: New Orleans, Person of Interest, Law & Order: SVU, One Life to Live, The Outs (Vimeo), and Guiding Light. Additional credits include the audiobooks Underground Airlines (AUDIE nomination, Earphones award winner), The Mortifications, Snapshot, The Wild Ones trilogy, The Resisters, and the Isaiah Coleridge series; and Featured Narrator for The New Yorker and The New York Times on the AUDM app (streaming service for narrated long-form journalism). William has a BFA from Marymount Manhattan and an MFA from Yale School of Drama.
Nathan Wolfe (Subject and Scientic Consultant) is the Founder and Chair of Metabiota, which provides a unique data analytics platform for epidemic risk. Wolfe received his doctorate in Immunology and Infectious Diseases from Harvard in 1998. He has been honored with a Fulbright fellowship and the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. He is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. Wolfe has published over 100 scientific publications and his work has been published in or covered by Nature, Science, The New York Times, The Economist, NPR, The New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes, among others. Wolfe has two prominent TEDTalks that have garnered close to two million views. His critically acclaimed book, The Viral Storm, has been published in six languages and was shortlisted in 2012 for the Royal Society’s Winton Prize. In 2011, he was named as one of the hundred most influential people in the world by Time magazine; Rolling Stone named him one of the “100 Agents of Change” in 2009; and Popular Science recognized him as one of their “Brilliant 10” in 2006.
Wright/Rand
Jeffrey Hatcher (Playwright) Broadway: Never Gonna Dance (book). Off-Broadway: Three Viewings and A Picasso at Manhattan Theatre Club; Scotland Road and The Turn of the Screw at Primary Stages; Tuesdays with Morrie (with Mitch Albom) at The Minetta Lane; Murder by Poe, The Turn of the Screw, and The Spy at The Acting Company; Neddy at American Place; and Fellow Travelers at Manhattan Punchline. Other Plays/Theaters: Compleat Female Stage Beauty, Mrs. Mannerly, Murderers, Mercy of a Storm, Smash, Armadale, Korczak's Children, To Fool the Eye, The Falls, A Piece of the Rope, All the Way with LBJ, The Government Inspector, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and others at The Guthrie, Old Globe, Yale Rep, The Geffen, Seattle Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse, Cleveland Playhouse, South Coast Rep, Arizona Theater Company, San Jose Rep, The Empty Space, Indiana Rep, Children's Theater Company, and dozens more in the U.S. and abroad. Film/ TV: Stage Beauty, Casanova, The Duchess, and episodes of Columbo. Grants/Awards: NEA, TCG, Lila Wallace Fund, Rosenthal New Play Prize, Frankel Award, Charles MacArthur Fellowship Award, McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, and Barrymore Award Best New Play. He is a member and/or alumnus of The Playwrights Center, the Dramatists Guild, the Writers Guild, and New Dramatists.
Eric Simonson (Playwright) is an ensemble member of Steppenwolf Theatre, where his writing/directing credits include Lindiwe, Nomathemba (written with Ntozake Shange and Joseph Shabalala), Carter’s Way, Honest and Fake. For Broadway, he wrote Magic/Bird, Bronx Bombers and Lombardi, which was the longest running play of the 2010-11 season. His production of Steppenwolf’s The Song of Jacob Zulu received six Tony Award nominations, including one for best direction. Simonson has also served as a Writer/Producer on television shows including Homecoming and The Man in the High Castle (both on Amazon), and the upcoming Swagger (Apple+). His documentary films include A Note of Triumph: the Golden Age of Norman Corwin, which won an Academy Award.
David Ira Goldstein (Director) is the former Artistic Director of Arizona Theatre Company where he produced and/or directed over 200 mainstage plays, workshops, readings, and presentations. ATC directing credits include Next to Normal, The Sunshine Boys, Hair, Much Ado about Nothing, My Fair Lady, Valley Song, The Illusion, The Pajama Game, Side Man, [title of show], How I Learned to Drive, and Wait Until Dark, as well as many world premieres including The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini; Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure (winner of the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America), Inventing van Gogh, Rocket Man, Private Eyes, Over the Moon and Dracula by Steven Dietz; and Ten Chimneys, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of The Suicide Club by Jeffrey Hatcher. Mr. Goldstein has been a guest director at theatres all across the country including Northlight, Arizona Opera, Pasadena Playhouse, Berkeley Rep, Seattle Rep, Florida Stage, Center Repertory Theatre, and Kansas City Rep, among others. His musical A Marvelous Party: The Noël Coward Celebration, played extensively across the U.S., including at Northlight where the production won four Jeff Awards.
Tracy Michelle Arnold (Ayn Rand) makes her home in Spring Green, Wisconsin (home of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin), where she is a member of American Players Theatre’s Core Acting Company. Since 1999, she has spent 21 seasons at APT, and is humbled to have such an extraordinary artistic home. Credits with the company include Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Kate in Taming of the Shrew, Cleopatra in Antony & Cleopatra, Julie in The Royal Family, and Linda Lohman in Death of a Salesman, among many others. Other Regional credits include Nora in Doll’s House, Part Two at Indiana Rep, Emily in The Lifespan of a Fact and Regina in The Little Foxes at Asolo Rep, Brooke in Other Desert Cities at the Goodman, Amanda in Private Lives at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, and Miss Madrigal in in The Chalk Garden at Northlight.
BJ Jones (Frank Lloyd Wright) is in his 22nd season as Artistic Director of Northlight. Mr Jones is a two-time Joseph Jefferson Award Winning actor and a three-time nominated director. He has directed the world premieres of Relativity, Charm, Faceless, White Guy on the Bus, Chapatti, The Outgoing Tide (Jeff Nomination,) Better Late, and Rounding Third. Notably he has directed productions of Outside Mullingar, Grey Gardens, The Price, The Lieutenant of Innishmore, Curve of Departure, and The Beauty Queen of Leenane. As a producer he has guided the world premieres of Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, Shining Lives, The Last Five Years, and Studs Terkel’s ‘The Good War.’ Additional directorial credits include Pitmen Painters (Jeff Nomination, Timeline); 100 Saints You Should Know (Steppenwolf); Glengarry Glen Ross (Susie Bass Nomination, Alliance Theatre, Atlanta); The Lady with All the Answers (Cherry Lane, New York); Animal Crackers (Baltimore Center Stage); Three Musketeers, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing (Utah Shakespeare Festival), and four productions at the Galway International Arts Festival. As a performer, he has appeared at Northlight, Goodman, Steppenwolf, Court and other theatres throughout Chicago. Film/TV credits include The Fugitive, Body Double, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Early Edition, Cupid, and Turks, among others.
ABOUT INTERPLAY
Since its inception in 2006, Northlight’s Interplay Program has invested in provocative new works by American and international playwrights, providing customized support in the critical stages of early play development.
Through Interplay, Northlight seeks to serve the specific needs of the play and can provide playwright commissions, workshops with actors, and private or public readings. The public reading series is an instrumental part of the Interplay program, providing audiences the opportunity to participate in a part of the evolutionary process from initial idea to full theatrical production, including first-hand insight from the playwright. Also through the reading series, the playwright has the opportunity to hear audience response that is integral to shaping the play for full production.
As of 2020, Interplay has provided support for 40 new plays, 33 of which have gone on to full productions – some at Northlight and others around the country, including the Goodman Theatre, the Humana Festival, TheatreWorks, and off-Broadway. Four plays have continued on to acclaim at Ireland’s famed Galway International Arts Festival.
That staggering success rate has established Interplay as a valuable incubator for new work in the American theatre, and has helped cement Northlight’s national reputation as an important contributor to the American theatrical canon.
Support for new play development and this reading, available at no cost to general and student audiences, comes from The Ralla Klepak Foundation for Education in the Performing Arts; The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; ComEd, An Exelon Company; BMO Harris Bank; The Sullivan Family Foundation; Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; The Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation; the John R. Halligan Fund; the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; and Evanston Community Foundation.
Northlight Theatre aspires to promote change of perspective and encourage compassion by exploring the depth of our humanity across a bold spectrum of theatrical experiences, reflecting our community to the world and the world to our community.
Founded in 1974, the organization has mounted over 220 productions, including more than 40 world premieres. Northlight has earned 208 Joseph Jefferson Award nominations and 36 Awards, as well as ten Edgerton Foundation for New Play Awards. As one of the area’s premier theatre companies, Northlight is a regional magnet for critical and professional acclaim, as well as talent of the highest quality.
Northlight is supported in part by generous contributions from Allstate Insurance; the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; BMO Harris Bank; Bulley and Andrews; The Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation; ComEd, An Exelon Company; The Davee Foundation; Evanston Arts Council; Evanston Community Foundation; Lloyd A. Fry Foundation; Full Circle Foundation; John R. Halligan Fund; Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; Illinois Humanities; Katten Muchin Roseman LLP; Kirkland & Ellis Foundation; Margaret and Paul Lurie; The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Jackie Mack and More; Colonel Stanley R. McNeil Foundation; Modestus Bauer Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; Niles Township; NorthShore University HealthSystems; Northwestern University; The Offield Family Foundation; The Pauls Foundation; PNC Bank; Polsinelli; Ralla Klepak Trust for the Performing Arts; Room & Board; Sanborn Family Foundation; Dr. Scholl Foundation; The Shubert Foundation, Inc.; Skokie Community Foundation; The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust; The Sullivan Family Foundation; and Tom Stringer Design Partners.