A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick
- Written by Kia Corthron
- Directed by Chay Yew
KIA CORTHRON's A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick premiered at Playwrights Horizons in spring 2010. Other plays include Moot the Messenger; Light Raise the Roof; Snapshot Silhouette; Slide Glide the Slippery Slope; The Venus de Milo Is Armed; Breath, Boom; Force Continuum; Splash Hatch on the E Going Down; Seeking the Genesis; Digging Eleven; Life by Asphyxiation; Wake Up Lou Riser; Come Down Burning; Cage Rhythm. Awards include the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Creative Arts Residency, McKnight National Residency, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Award for Excellence in the Arts, Barbara Barondess MacLean Foundation Award, AT&T On Stage Award, Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, Mark Taper Forum's Fadiman Award, NEA/TCG, Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, New Professional Theatre Playwriting Award, Callaway Award, Connections Contest winner, and in television a Writers Guild Outstanding Drama Series Award and Edgar Allan Poe Award for The Wire.
CHAY YEW is a recipient of the Obie and DramaLogue Awards for Direction. His productions have been cited by the Los Angeles Times and New York Times as one of the “Ten Best Productions of the Year;” Seattle Times and Strangers’ Best Achievement in Theatre; and was named Best Director by Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He has directed world premieres by playwrights Jose Rivera, Naomi Iizuka, Kia Corthron, Julia Cho, David Adjmi and Jessica Goldberg, and performance artists Rha Goddess, Universes, Alec Mapa, Sandra Tsing Loh and Brian Freeman. He is the recipient of the London Fringe Award for Best Playwright and Best Play, George and Elisabeth Marton Playwriting Award, GLAAD Media Award, Asian Pacific Gays and Friends’ Community Visibility Award, Made in America Award, AEA/SAG/AFTRA 2004 Diversity Honor, and Robert Chesley Award; he has received grants from the McKnight Foundation, Rockefeller MAP Fund and the TCG/Pew National Residency Program. Chay is also an accomplished and widely respected playwright, and his plays are published in two titles,The Hyphenated American Plays and Porcelain and A Language of Their Own, by Grove Press; the latter was nominated for a Lamda Literary Award. He is presently editing a new anthology Version 3.0: Contemporary Asian American Plays for TCG Publications. An alumnus of New Dramatists, he has held residencies at Mu Lan Theatre Company, Northwest Asian American Theatre Company and East West Players. He serves on the National Advisory Board at the Playwrights Center and the Artistic Advisory Board of Partial Comfort Theatre. He is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect and Vineyard Theatre Community of Artists. He has also served on the Board of Directors of Theatre Communications Group and is presently on the Executive Board of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. Chay Yew joined Victory Gardens Theater in July 2011 as its first new artistic director in 34 years. (Spring 2012)
Co-produced with The Play Company and Culture Project
An African preacher-in-training arrives in drought-stricken rural America intending to further his studies in religion and water conservation. Hosted by a mother and daughter haunted by tragedy, he takes an interest in a young orphan starved for guidance – all the while maintaining an infectious optimism in the face of his obstacles. Undaunted, the preacher determines to battle – by any means necessary – the personal and political forces that threaten the ecology of his new home.
Featuring
Keith Eric Chappelle
William Jackson Harper
Joshua King
Kianne Muschett
Myra Lucretia Taylor
PH: A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick. Broadway: All the Way. Off-Broadway: Modern Terrorism (Second Stage); Massacre (Rattlestick); The Total Bent, Titus Andronicus (The Public); Ruined (MTC); Paradise Park, Queens Boulevard (the musical) (Signature). Other theater: You Got Older (HERE), Dance of the Holy Ghosts (NYS&F), Neglect (EST). Member of Ensemble Studio Theatre.
Playwrights Horizons: A Cool Dip…, Crazy Mary, Fabulation. Broadway: Nine, Macbeth, Electra, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Mule Bone, A Streetcar Named Desire. National tour: Wicked. Off-Broadway: Informed Consent; Bethany; The Little Foxes; Love, Loss, and What I Wore; Force Continuum; The American Clock; The Colored Museum. London: RSC. Film: Unfaithful, Everyone Says I Love You. TV: “Girls,” “The Big C.”
Creative Team
Kris Stone
Scenic DesignerAnita Yavich
Costume DesignerBen Stanton
Lighting DesignerDarron L West
Sound DesignerKasey Ostupchuck
Production Stage ManagerAnita Yavich has designed costumes for theater, opera, and dance across the US and internationally. Her costume designs for Broadway include: Fool for Love, Venus in Fur, Chinglish, and Anna in the Tropics.
Anita has received numerous awards for her designs: the Ovation Award, Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award, IRNE award, Obie award, Henry Hewes Award, and Irene Shariff Young Master Award.
In 2001, as the recipient of a NEA TCG career development grant, she traveled to India for three and a half months observing theater, dance, textile, and crafts traditions. She holds an MFA in costume design from Yale School of Drama.
Ben is a lighting designer for theater, concerts, dance, installations, and events. He is a five-time Tony Award nominee as well as an Obie, Lortel, IRNE, and Ovation Award winner. Ben is currently represented on Broadway by Maybe Happy Ending at the Belasco Theater. Recent Broadway credits include The Notebook at the Schoenfeld Theater; Mary Jane starring Rachel McAdams; Days of Wine and Roses Starring Kelli O'Hara & Brian Darcy James; Goodnight, Oscar starring Sean Hayes; The Collaboration Starring Paul Bettany & Jeremy Pope; Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol Featuring Jefferson Mays; The Rose Tattoo starring Marisa Tomei; Derren Brown: SECRET at the James Earl Jones Theater; Regina Spektor: Live On Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater; Ayad Akhtar’s JUNK at the Vivian Beaumont; Six Degrees of Separation starring Allison Janney, Corey Hawkins, and John Benjamin Hickey; Deaf West Theater’s Spring Awakening at the Lena Horne Theater; Fully Committed starring Jesse Tyler Ferguson; and Fun Home (Broadway, Off-Broadway, 1st National Tour, London).
Previously at the Friedman: The American Plan,To Be or Not To Be, The Royal Family, Top Girls, and Time Stands Still. He is a Tony and Obie Award-winning sound designer whose work for theater and dance has been heard in over 500 Productions nationally and internationally, on Broadway and off. His accolades for Sound Design include the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel and AUDELCO Awards. He a two-time Henry Hewes Design Award winner, and a proud recipient of the Princess Grace Award statue.
Photos of (1) Joshua King, William Jackson Harper, and Myra Lucretia Taylor; (2) Joshua King, William Jackson Harper, and Kianne Muschett; (3) Myra Lucretia Taylor, Kianne Muschett, and William Jackson Harper; and (4) Myra Lucretia Taylor, Keith Eric Chappelle, William Jackson Harper, and Kianne Muschett by Joan Marcus.
