Contact:

Meredith Reed

970.300.4288

 

 

New York, NY (June 20, 2019) – Theatre Aspen (Jed Bernstein, Producing Director) announced today the lineup for the organization’s inaugural one-person show festival,Solo Flights, taking off this September, following the 2019 summer season in Aspen, Colorado. Solo Flights is an annual week-long festival of one-person shows presented in the beginning stages of their development. In addition to the performances, Solo Flightswill feature signature events including talkbacks, creative discussions, and special receptions. This year’s Solo Flights festival will be held September 18 – 21, 2019 at Theatre Aspen’s Hurst Theatre.

 

Productions for the very first festival include Dr. Glas by Edgar Award-nominated playwright Jeffrey Hatcher starring Obie Award and Drama Desk Award winner Daniel Gerroll and directed by two-time Obie winner Lisa Peterson; What We Leave Behind, a new one-woman musical by Frederick Loewe Award winner Jenny Giering and writer of fiction, poetry, and theatre Sean Barry and directed by Connecticut Critics Circle Award winner Tracy Brigden; and When It’s You by Courtney Baron (Eat Your Heart Out), directed by Kent Nicholson, Associate Producer of Musical Theater at Playwrights Horizons in New York.

 

“We are thrilled to have assembled this group of first-rate writers, directors, and actors to join us for our inaugural Solo Flights festival,” says Bernstein. “Aspen has long been a creative home to artists of all disciplines. We look forward to introducing this new festival and to welcoming the theatre community at large to beautiful downtown Aspen in September.”

 

Tickets are now on sale. Early Boarding Frequent Flyer Packages, which include one ticket to each show, are priced at $120 and Early Boarding Take Flight Sampler Packages, which include 4 tickets to any combination of shows, are $200. A limited number of $350Premiere Class Packages, which include premium seating, festival opening and closing parties, and a special piece of Solo Flights inaugural merchandise, are also available. Single tickets go on sale July 15. Tickets can be purchased at the Theatre Aspen Box Office, now open at the Hurst Theatre, by calling 970.300.4474, Monday-Friday, 9am to 5pm, or online at www.TheatreAspen.org

 

Additional casting and creative team information will be announced shortly.

 

 

 

SOLO FLIGHTS FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

 

 

DR. GLAS | Thursday, September 19 @ 4 PM (followed by a talk-back); Friday, September 20 @ 7 PM (followed by a creative discussion); Saturday, September 21 @ 10 AM

 

Dr. Glas, a new one-person play by Jeffrey Hatcher, based on the classic Scandinavian mystery novel “Doktor Glas” by Hjalmer Söderberg and translated from Swedish by David Barrett, is the chilling, yet witty, love story of a 19th-century physician grappling with the decision of a lifetime. As told in first person account, the Doctor (Daniel Gerroll) finds himself madly in love with an unhappily married patient, who presses to see him regularly about her miserable state—pitting his passion against his morality. Ultimately, Dr. Glas is seduced into helping her in any way he can, even if it means murder.

 

WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND | Thursday, September 19 @ 7 PM (followed by a talk-back); Friday, September 20 @ 12 PM (followed by a creative discussion); Saturday, September 21 @ 1 PM

 

What We Leave Behind, with book, music, and lyrics by Jenny Giering and Sean Barry, is a courageous one-woman musical exploring what it means to live a life reshaped by illness. This story in two lives, follows a woman from her diagnosis of breast cancer, through treatment, and the onset of a mysterious new condition that robs her of her ability to function fully as a wife, mother and artist. Her journey is juxtaposed with the time before her struggles began, when life was full of daring and passion—when she and her husband together embarked on a relationship with another woman. The musical, with abundant heart and humor, acknowledges the loss that comes from serious illness, while declaring that one’s existence can still be alive with wonder and hope—if we are brave enough to embrace it. 

 

WHEN IT’S YOU | Thursday, September 19 @ 12 PM (followed by a talk-back);Friday, September 20 @ 4 PM (followed by a creative discussion); Saturday, September 21 @ 7 PM

 

 

 

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

 

Daniel Gerroll (Dr. Glas, Dr. Glas) has appeared on television and film in both the United Kingdom and the United States, although his greater contribution has been to the stage in both countries. In New York City, he has won the Theatre World Award for The Slab Boys and Knuckle, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Translations and the Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance. His Broadway credits include Plenty, The Homecoming, Enchanted April and High Society. In the UK he was seen in London inOnce a Catholic (Royal Court and West End) and a number of plays in repertory at the Queens Theatre in Harrogate, Yorkshire. Off-Broadway he has appeared frequently at Second Stage, Manhattan Theatre Club and Roundabout Theatre Company. Gerroll's television credits include “Miami Vice,” “Burn Notice,” “Cheers,” “Knots Landing,” “Seinfeld,” “Sisters,” “Blue Bloods,” “Sex and the City,” “Law & Order,” “Code Black” and “The Starter Wife.” On film Gerroll has appeared in Still Alice, Chariots of Fire, Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, 84 Charing Cross Road, Drop Dead Fred and Big Business. A relationship with the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis began with his playing Henry Higgins in Pygmalion in 2004 and continued with his creating the role of Scrooge in the Guthrie's updating of its annual tradition and most recently playing Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. In 2017 he played the lead in the first New York revival of Shadowlandsplaying C. S. Lewis. Later that year her appeared in Claudia Rankine’s play The White Card (ART Boston), Frost/Nixon (Bay St Theatre) and Skylight (ACT Seattle).

 

Jeffrey Hatcher (Dr. Glas, Playwright). Hatcher's plays have been produced on Broadway, off-Broadway, in regional theaters throughout the United States and in dozens of countries abroad.  They include Three Viewings, A Picasso, Never Gonna Dance, Scotland Road and Compleat Female Stage Beauty, as well as adaptations of A Confederacy of Dunces, The Turn of the Screw, The Government Inspector, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Tuesdays with Morrie (with Mitch Albom).  He has written the films Stage Beauty, Casanova, The Duchess and A Slight Trick of the Mind starring Ian McKellan.  For television he has written episodes of “Columbo” and “The Mentalist.”  His awards include the Rosenthal New Play Prize, the Frankel Award, the Charles MacArthur Fellowship Award, Edgerton Grant, NEA, McKnight and Jerome Foundations, the Barrymore Award for Best New Play (A Picasso), L.A. Critics Circle Award for Best Adaptation (Cousin Bette), and the 2013 Ivey Award for Lifetime Achievement.  He is a member and/or alumnus of The Playwrights Center, Dramatists Guild, Writers Guild and New Dramatists and lives in Minnesota with his wife Lisa Stevens and their son Evan.

 

Lisa Peterson (Dr. Glas, Director) is a two-time Obie Award-winning writer and director and the Associate Artistic Director at Berkeley Rep where previous projects include An Iliad (2012), which Lisa co-wrote with Denis O’Hare, and which won Obie and Lucille Lortel Awards for Best Solo Performance, Mother Courage, The Fall, and Antony & Cleopatra. For California Shakespeare Theater, Lisa directed King Lear, The Winter’s Tale, All’s Well That Ends Well, and Love’s Labour’s Lost. Other recent West Coast productions include Hamlet, Henry IV Pt 2, and Othello (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); and Chavez Ravine (Ovation Award for Best Production), Palestine New Mexico, Electricidad, Water, The House of Bernarda Alba, Body of Bourne, and Mules (Mark Taper Forum). In New York, Peterson has directed The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek; Bexley, OH(!), or, Two Tales of One City; Traps; and Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (Obie Award for Direction); Slavs! (Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness); and The Waves adapted from Virginia Woolf by Peterson and David Bucknam (Drama Desk nomination) all at New York Theatre Workshop; King Liz (2nd Stage Uptown); Hamlet in Bed (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater); To the Bone (Cherry Lane Theatre); The Patron Saint of Sea Monsters and The Chemistry of Change (Playwrights Horizons); The Poor Itch, The Square and Tongue of a Bird (the Public Theater); TheFourth Sister and The Batting Cage (Vineyard Theatre); Collected Stories (Manhattan Theatre Club); Shipwrecked, Motherhood Outloud, The Model Apartment (Primary Stages); Birdy adapted from the William Wharton novel by Naomi Wallace (Women’s Project); and Sueno by Jose Rivera (MCC). In Canada, she directed The Philanderer(Shaw Festival) and The Trouble with Mr. Adams (Tarragon). Lisa has directed world premieres by many major American writers, including Tony Kushner, Beth Henley, Donald Margulies, Jose Rivera, Ellen McLaughlin, Mac Wellman, Marlane Meyer, Polly Pen, Stephen Belber, Naomi Wallace, and many others. She regularly works at the Guthrie Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Center Stage in Baltimore, Long Wharf, Yale Rep, Hartford Stage, Intiman, Seattle Rep, Arena Stage, O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Midwest Playlabs, Ojai Playwrights Conference, and Sundance Theatre Lab and is a Usual Suspect at NYTW, a member of Ensemble Studio Theater, and on the executive board of SDC.

 

Tracy Brigden (What We Leave Behind, Director) is excited to be making her Theatre Aspen debut. She served as Artistic Director at City Theatre Company in Pittsburgh for 16 years directing over 50 productions of new plays including world premieres by Christopher Durang, Keith Reddin, Adam Rapp, Jeffrey Hatcher and many others. Recent work includes Time Flies by David Ives at Barrington Stage starring Debra Jo Rupp, The Roommate at Cincinnati Playhouse, A Doll’s House, Part 2 at Arden Theatre, the American premiere of Oil by Ella Hickson at Olney Theater Center, Hand to God at Theaterworks Hartford and Heisenberg by Simon Stephens at Pittsburgh Public Theater starring Anthony Heald. Prior to City Theatre, Tracy served on the artistic staffs of Manhattan Theatre Club and Hartford Stage Company. She recently received her MFA in Dramatic Writing from Point Park University and finished her first full-length play, Stage Struck, about the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker. 

 

Jenny Giering (What We Leave Behind, Book, Music, & Lyrics). Jenny Giering’s current musical commissions include Summerland (book & lyrics by Sean Barry) for Chicago Shakespeare Theater; and Alice Bliss (book by Karen Hartman, lyrics by Adam Gwon, directed by Mark Brokaw; 2019 Weston Award; 2019 Orchard Project Residency recipient) for Playwrights Horizons. Her other scores include The Mistress Cycle(produced at the New York Musical Theater Festival, also produced at Apple Tree Theater, Jeff Award Nomination); Crossing Brooklyn (commissioned and produced by The Boston Music Theater Project, also produced by The Transport Group; Kleban Award for best libretto, ASCAP/Dreamworks Musical Theater Workshop); Alice Unwrapped(commissioned by Premieres, Inc. and produced at the Zipper Theater with Jennifer Damiano); Saint-Ex (2011 World Premiere at The Weston Playhouse Theater Company, Weston VT, Weston Playhouse New Musical Award, ASCAP/Dreamworks Musical Theater Workshop, Sundance’s White Oak Workshop). Her incidental scores includeGertrude & Claudius (Barrington Stage Company, directed by Julianne Boyd), Red Velvet(Chicago Shakespeare Theater, directed by Gary Griffin), The Tempest (Shakespeare Theater, directed by Ethan McSweeney), Long Day’s Journey into Night (Weston Playhouse, directed by Ethan McSweeney), As You Like It (Chicago Shakespeare Theater, directed by Gary Griffin, Jeff Award Nomination), Elizabeth Rex (Chicago Shakespeare Theater, directed by Barbara Gaines, Jeff Award Nomination), Silent Sky (Theaterworks/Palo Alto, written by Lauren Gunderson, directed by Meredith McDonough). Jenny has participated in the Sundance UCross and Theater-Maker’s Residencies, The TheaterWorks/Palo Alto Festival of New Musicals, Goodspeed Opera House’s Mercer Colony, and the Weston Playhouse and Rhinebeck Writers’ Retreat. She was artist in residence at Harvard 2003 and at the York Theater Company in 2012. Her awards include The Jonathan Larson Prize, The Constance Klinsky Prize from Second Stage Theater Company, The National Art Song Award, New Dramatists’ Frederick Loewe Award, and several NEA and NAMT production grants. She is the only artist to receive Chicago Shakespeare’s Tilles Music Chair twice. She and Adam Gwon are the only artists to win the Weston Award multiple times as well. Jenny has an AB from Harvard and an MFA from the Graduate Musical Theater Program at New York University. More info at: www.jennygiering.com.

 

Sean Barry (What We Leave Behind, Book, Music, & Lyrics) wrote the book and lyrics for Saint-Ex (music by Jenny Giering), which was selected by the Sundance Institute for the 2008 Theatre Lab at White Oak, awarded the 2010 Weston Playhouse New Musical Award, and received a 2011 NEA grant and a NAMT New Musical Development award.Saint-Ex premiered in 2011 at the Weston Playhouse in Weston, VT and was selected in 2012 by the York Theatre Company for the NEO (“New, Emerging, Outstanding”) Reading Series and in 2013 for the ASCAP/DreamWorks Musical Theatre Workshop hosted by composer Stephen Schwartz. Sean’s fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications, including Mississippi Review, Smoke, and Boston Review. He has been in residency at the Southampton Writers Conference, the Ucross Foundation, the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, the Rhinebeck Writers’ Retreat, and the Johnny Mercer Writers’ Colony at Goodspeed, and was writer-in-residence at CAP21 in New York. Sean is currently at work on Summerland, a new musical commissioned by Chicago Shakespeare Theatre (Jenny Giering, music). What We Leave Behind originated in 2016 at the Sundance Institute Theatre Program in Utah and was developed at the 2018 Weston Playhouse Writer’s Retreat. He is also the author of Cuttings, a novel.

 

Courtney Baron (When It’s You, Playwright). Baron’s play Eat Your Heart Out, developed with Primary Stages at Perry Mansfield, premiered as part of the Humana Festival of New American Plays (Adam Greenfield, dir.) and was subsequently produced regionally. Her play A Very Common Procedure was produced at MCC (Michael Greif, dir.), the Magic Theater (Loretta Greco, dir.) and as part of the Cherry Lane Theater Mentor Program. Here I Lie was produced as part of Rising Phoenix Rep’s Cino Nights. Consumption and Purge are both commissions from the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Consumption was produced at the Guthrie Theater Lab. She previously collaborated with the Keen Company on her plays To Know Know Know You for Keen Teens and John Brown’s Body with Keen Americana. Her short film 18 (Michelle Bossy, dir.) premiered at the Austin Film Festival. She was co-executive producer/writer for “Almost There” on DirecTV’s Audience Network.

 

Kent Nicholson (When It’s You, Director). With a hand in nearly three decades of new works development on both coasts with pioneering organizations such as Playwrights Horizons and TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Nicholson’s New York directing credits include 9 Circles (The Sheen Center), Long Story Short (Prospect Theater), Five Flights(Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), Wet (Summer Play Festival), and Marry Harry (NYMF, American Theater Group). Regional: Sweeney Todd, Once, Amadeus and A Light in the Piazza (South Coast Repertory), How to Write a New Book for the Bible (South Coast Repertory, Berkeley Repertory, Seattle Repertory), CUBAMOR (Village Theatre), Lizzie(Theatre Under The Stars, Village Theatre), Grey Gardens, Vincent in Brixton, Ambition Facing West, and All My Sons (TheatreWorks Silicon Valley), Saint Ex (Weston Playhouse), 9 Circles, The Good German, and Jacques Brel (Marin Theater Company),Small Tragedy and Satellites (Aurora Theater Company). Kent created the New Works Initiative at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in Palo Alto, The Uncharted Writers Group at Ars Nova, and he serves on the boards of Musical Theatre Factory and Old Sound Room. Kent currently serves as Associate Producer of Musical Theater at Playwrights Horizons in New York.

 

* * *

 

The Theatre Aspen Mainstage 2019 summer season begins performances this Friday, June 21 with the Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling, and Abe Burrows Tony Award-winning musical Guys and Dolls, directed by Tony Award nominee Hunter Foster and choreographed by Lisa Shriver, continues with a newly reimagined production of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s Little Shop of Horrors directed and choreographed by Theatre Aspen stalwart Mark Martino, and also includes the Tony-winning Best Play God Of Carnage, by Yasmina Reza directed by Karen Azenberg, Artistic Director of the Pioneer Theatre Company.

 

Since 1983, Theatre Aspen has been rekindling a sense of discovery in audiences who live in and visit the Roaring Fork Valley by producing big theatre in a small space with intimate storytelling. Each season at Theatre Aspen promises to bring world-class theatre dramatically closer, with innovative and imaginative productions of both plays and musicals, complemented by an assortment of community events including late-night cabarets, educational programs and performances, collaborations with other Aspen arts organizations, and new works presentations. Theatre Aspen also boasts an impressive Apprentice Program, one of the largest in the country, devoted to training the next generation of theatrical artists and administrators. To learn more about Theatre Aspen visitwww.TheatreAspen.org or call 970 925 9313.

 

# # # #