Pocatello
- A new play by Samuel D. Hunter
- Directed by Davis McCallum
Samuel D. Hunter’s (Playwright) plays include The Whale (Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, GLAAD Media Award, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play) and A Bright New Boise (Obie Award, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), and his newest plays include The Few, A Great Wilderness, Rest, and Pocatello. He is the recipient of a 2014 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, a 2012 Whiting Writers Award, the 2013 Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, the 2011 Sky Cooper Prize, and the 2008 PONY/Lark Fellowship. His plays have been produced in New York at Playwrights Horizons, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Clubbed Thumb and Page 73, and around the country at such theaters as Seattle Rep, Victory Gardens, South Coast Rep, Williamstown Theater Festival, The Old Globe, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Denver Center Theatre Company, Marin Theater Company, and elsewhere. His work has been developed at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, Seven Devils, and PlayPenn. A published anthology of his work, including The Whale and A Bright New Boise, is available from TCG books. He is a member of New Dramatists, an Ensemble Playwright at Victory Gardens, a member of Partial Comfort Productions, and was a 2013 Resident Playwright at Arena Stage. A native of northern Idaho, Sam lives in NYC. He holds degrees in playwriting from NYU, The Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and Juilliard.
Photo by Zack DeZon
Davis McCallum (Director) directed the award-winning New York premiere of Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale at Playwrights Horizons (Callaway Award nomination). Other recent productions include London Wall (Mint Theater Company), Henry IV (Pearl Theatre Company), Quiara Alegria Hudes’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Water By the Spoonful (Second Stage, Hartford Stage Company), Gabriel Kahane and Seth Bockley’s February House (The Public); Samuel D. Hunter’s A Bright New Boise (Partial Comfort, Drama Desk nomination) and Five Genocides (Clubbed Thumb); Michael Mitnick’s Sex Lives of Our Parents (Second Stage); Gregory S. Moss’s punkplay (Clubbed Thumb); Charles Mee’s Queens Boulevard (Signature Theater); Hudes’s Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue (P73, Pulitzer Prize finalist); Henry V (New Victory); Jane Eyre, The Tempest and The Turn Of The Screw (The Acting Company). Regional: The Guthrie, The Old Globe, Humana, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Williamstown, Alliance Theater Company, Chautauqua Theater Company, the O’Neill, Playmakers Rep, Two River, New York Stage & Film, others. Other: Drama League Fellowship (2001), Phil Killian Fellowship (2003), NEA/TCG Career Development Program (2007), Boris Sagal Fellowship (2010), Princess Grace Honoree (2011). He has taught directing at Princeton University and the New School for Drama. He trained at LAMDA and studied at Princeton and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is the Artistic Director of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (www.hvshakespeare.org).
Photo by Zack DeZon
WORLD PREMIERE
Eddie manages an Italian chain restaurant in Pocatello—a small, unexceptional American city that is slowly being paved over with strip malls and franchises. But he can’t serve enough Soup, Salad & Breadstick Specials to make his hometown feel like home. Against the harsh backdrop of Samuel D. Hunter’s Idaho, this heartbreaking comedy is a cry for connection in an increasingly lonely American landscape.
Featuring
Jessica Dickey
Crystal Finn
Jonathan Hogan
Brian Hutchison
Leah Karpel
T.R. Knight
Cameron Scoggins
Brenda Wehle
Danny Wolohan
Elvy Yost
Playwrights Horizons debut. Broadway: Wit. Off-Broadway: Iron, Hit the Wall, The Amish Project. Other New York: Angel in the Trees, Keep Your Baggage with You, The Fourposter, Against the Rising Sea, Nobody, Angel Mountain, Communion, Elephant, Pains of Youth. Regional: Proof (McCarter); The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters (Huntington), A Month in the Country (Denver Theater Center). Television: “The Big C, “Law & Order.”
Playwrights Horizons: Pocatello. New York Theater: 16 Words or Less, Breaking the Spell, La Brea, Bird in the Hand, Becoming Liv Ullman, Mr. Schmoll’s production of Luther, Some Women, Five Genocides, What Happened to Bill Viola, Bracks’ Last Bachelor Party, Julius By Design. Regional: Fairfield, Rich Girl, A Thousand Clowns, Beasley’s Christmas Party, The Hollow, The Cherry Orchard, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Henry V.
Playwrights Horizons debut. 40+ year career on stage, including a Tony Award nomination for As Is. Broadway: The Homecoming, Taking Steps, Burn This, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, Fifth of July, Otherwise Engaged, Comedians. Off-Broadway: London Wall, A Picture of Autumn, Molly Sweeney, Book of Days, The Red Address, Balm in Gilead (Drama Desk Award), Getting Out, The Hot L Baltimore.
Playwrights Horizons debut. PS 122/HERE Arts: Evanston, A Rare Comedy. Regional: 4000 Miles (Long Wharf); Appropriate, The Whale, We Are Proud to Present… (Victory Gardens); Buena Vista, The Glass Menagerie, Hot L Baltimore (Steppenwolf); Punk Rock (Jefferson Award, Best Ensemble; Griffin Theatre); Feet of Clay (Royal George); Ten Chimneys (Milwaukee Rep).
Playwrights Horizons debut. Broadway: A Life in the Theatre opposite Patrick Stewart. Off-Broadway: Romeo and Juliet, Boy, Scattergood, This Lime Tree Bower, Macbeth. Regional: starring as Leo Frank in Rob Ashford’s production of Parade at The Mark Taper Forum. He is well-known to TV audiences co-starring as George O’Malley on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.” Other Film/Television: 42 and the CBS series “Charlie Lawrence.”
Playwrights Horizons: Pocatello, The Big Meal. Off-Broadway: Lovers (Becket Theatre). Regional: On Golden Pond (Triad Stage). Juilliard Theatre: Proof, Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Ionescopade, American Clock, Hedda Gabler and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Film/TV: Ironweed, Hunter and Game, The Happy Sad, “The Blacklist,” “Only Human,” “Black Box,” “Person of Interest,” “Elementary,” “The Good Wife.”
Playwrights Horizons debut. Broadway: The Big Knife, Come Back Little Sheba, Pygmalion. Off-Broadway: The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide… (Obie Award), The Grand Manner, Stuff Happens (Drama Desk Award, Best Ensemble), Cycling Past the Matterhorn, Talking Heads, Spinning into Butter, Waste, The Chemistry of Change. Film/TV: American Beauty, Winter’s Tale, Soldier, Bug, “Mildred Pierce,” “Malcolm in the Middle.”
Playwrights Horizons: The Patron Saint of Sea Monsters. New York Theater: An Octoroon (Soho Rep); Im Pretty F#cked Up, Baby Screams Miracle (Clubbed Thumb). Regional: Gnit (Humana Festival); Body of an American, Cymbeline (Portland Center Stage); Concerning Strange Devices…, Lieutenant of Inishmore, Tragedy: A Tragedy (Berkeley Rep); Jack Goes Boating, Sex (Aurora Theatre). TV: “Trauma.”
Playwrights Horizons debut. New York theatre: Black Tie (Primary Stages); The Belle of Belfast (Cherry Lane); Balm in Gilead, music for Ivanov and The Seagull (Lake Lucille). Regional: Romeo and Juliet (Actors Theatre of Louisville); Curse of the Starving Class (Long Wharf); Richard III, The Merchant of Venice (California Shakespeare); Arcadia (Pear Avenue). Film/TV: Oldboy, Bandslam, “Mildred Pierce,” “The Office.”
Creative Team
Lauren Helpern
Scenic DesignJessica Pabst
Costume DesignEric Southern
Lighting DesignMatt Tierney
Sound DesignLisa Ann Chernoff
Production Stage ManagerRecent theatre design projects: LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD by Samuel D. Hunter directed by Joe Mantello and starring Laurie Metcalf; INHERIT THE WIND by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, directed by Henry Godinez, at the Goodman’s Albert Theatre. THE COST OF LIVING by Martyna Majok, directed by Jo Bonney on Broadway at the Samuel Friedman Theatre; Other Broadway credits include The Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of MARVIN'S ROOM by Scott McPherson directed by Anne Kauffman starring Lili Taylor, Celia Weston, and Janeane Garofalo and THE HEIDI CHRONICLES by Wendy Wasserstein, directed by Pam MacKinnon starring Elisabeth Moss, Jason Biggs, and Bryce Pinkham.
Eric Southern is a lighting designer for theater, opera, and dance. Recent projects include: The Good Swimmer, a pop requiem created by Heidi Rodewald, Donna DiNovelli, and Kevin Newbury (BAM Next Wave); After the Blast, Ghost Light, Bull in a China Shop, and The Harvest (Lincoln Center); Sarah Jones' Sell/Buy/Date (Manhattan Theater Club, New York Live Arts); Indian Summer and Pocatello (Playwrights Horizons); Kate Hamill's adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (Primary Stages, HVSF); Buyer and Cellar (Barrow Street Theater, Mark Taper Forum, London and National Tour); The Heidi Chronicles directed by Leigh Silverman (The Guthrie Theater). He is a longtime collaborator with the award-winning theater group 600 HIGHWAYMEN where he has designed The Fever, Employee of the Year, The Record, Empire City, This Great Country, and Everyone is Chanting Your Name.
Matt Tierney is an American actor with a diverse range of credits on stage, television, and film. Born and raised in New York City, Tierney discovered his passion for acting at a young age and began performing in local theater productions. He went on to study theater at the prestigious Juilliard School, where he honed his craft and developed his unique style.
Special thanks to the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation for its generous support of Pocatello.
Pocatello is the recipient of an Edgerton Foundation New American Plays award.
Production photos by Jeremy Daniel. Artist photos by Zack DeZon.
SKILLFUL AND MOVING, Samuel D. Hunter’s writing strikes
keen, ringing notes.
T.R. Knight is TERRIFIC in his best stage outing since Noises Off.
“DARING PERFORMANCES from everyone in the cast under Davis McCallum’s fearless direction.”