Every day is opening night.

Contact:
Rick Miramontez / Molly Barnett / Andy Snyder
rick@oandmco.com / molly@oandmco.com / andy@oandmco.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE

COMPLETE CAST AND DESIGN TEAM
ANNOUNCED FOR
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE OF
NINA RAINE’S ACCLAIMED PLAY
“ T R I B E S ”
DIRECTED BY DAVID CROMER

PREVIEWS BEGIN FEBRUARY 16
AT BARROW STREET THEATRE

TICKETS NOW ON SALE

New York, NY (1/18/12) – Producers Scott Morfee, Jean Doumanian and Tom Wirtshafter today announced the complete cast for the North American premiere of Nina Raine’s new play Tribes, directed by multiple Lortel and Obie Award-winner David Cromer. The cast will feature Will Brill (Our Town), Russell Harvard (There Will Be Blood), Steppenwolf Theatre co-founder Jeff Perry (August: Osage County), Susan Pourfar (When the Rain Stops Falling), Gayle Rankin (The Illusion at Signature Theatre), and Academy Award® nominee and Emmy Award®-winner Mare Winningham (Georgia).  (This production marks a reunion for Mr. Perry, who hasn’t appeared Off Broadway in nearly thirty years, and Ms. Winningham.  They played husband and wife on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” and will also play husband and wife in Tribes.)  

Producers also announced today the design team for Tribes, which includes Scenic Design by multiple Tony Award®-winner Scott Pask (The Book of Mormon), Costume Design by Tristan Raines (The Merchant of Venice), Lighting Design by Keith Parham (Adding Machine), Sound Design by Daniel Kluger (The Temperamentals) and Projection Design by Jeff Sugg (Chinglish). 

Tribes will begin performances on Thursday, February 16, 2012 at New York’s Barrow Street Theatre (27 Barrow Street at 7th Avenue), and will officially open on Sunday, March 4, 2012.  Tickets are now on sale via SmartTix.

Mr. Morfee, Ms. Doumanian, Mr. Wirtshafter, who are general partners for Tribes, most recently collaborated with Mr. Cromer on the landmark, record-breaking production of Our Town, also at the Barrow Street Theatre.  Patrick Daly, of Jean Doumanian Productions, will be a producer on this production.

In Tribes, Billy was born deaf into a hearing family, and raised inside the fiercely idiosyncratic and unrepentantly politically incorrect cocoon of his parents’ house.  He has adapted brilliantly to his family’s unconventional ways, but they’ve never bothered to return the favor.  It’s not until he meets Sylvia, a young woman on the brink of deafness, that he finally understands what it means to be understood.   

During its sold-out world premiere run at London’s Royal Court London, Tribes garnered rave reviews and numerous honors, including an Olivier Award nomination for Best Play and, most recently, the Evening Standard Award nomination for Best Play.  Variety called the play “Extraordinarily funny, daringly non-PC” and “exhilarating,” going on to say, “Raine has the pleasing audacity to seduce her audience with what appears to be a smart and loud-mouthed comedy while quietly turning up the dramatic heat.”

Tickets for Tribes ($55 for preview performances and $75 for regular performances) can be purchased online at www.smarttix.com; on the phone at 212-868-4444, or in person at the Barrow Street Theatre box office, open at 1PM daily.  The performance schedule is Tuesday – Friday at 7:30 PM, Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 PM & 7:30 PM.  (There is no performance on 2/21.)

The Barrow Street Theatre is located at 27 Barrow Street at 7th Avenue South in the heart of Greenwich Village.  Nearby subway stops are the 1 at Christopher Street (walk 1 block South on 7th Avenue to Barrow) and the A, C, E, B, D, F and M at West 4th (walk West on 4th Street, left on Barrow).

For more information, visit www.barrowstreettheatre.com.

Bios

Will Brill is thrilled to be returning to Barrow Street, and working again with Cromer, on this play. He last had the opportunity to be here in Our Town in 2010. Other New York: Restoration Comedy (EPBB), Winnemucca, Three Days in the Belly (FringeNYC), and the sporadically ongoing Ephemerama (Shelby Co.). Regional: Translations and Goat Song for Asa Jacobs (Stanford), The Lieutenant of Inishmore (Pittsburgh Irish and Classical). TV and Upcoming Film: Louie, Boys Against Girls, King Kelly, and The Untitled David Chase Project for Paramount. Will is a founding member of Exit, Pursued By a Bear and Shelby Company and a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University.

Russell Harvard is well known for appearing in the award winning film, There Will Be Blood as Adult HW. He portrayed Matt Hamill, a UFC fighter retiree and former NCAA Wrestler in The Hammer based on a true story. He directed three high school musical productions such as Grease and The Wizard of Oz at Texas School for the Deaf. Theatre credits include Deaf West Theatre’s Aesop Who? (Aesop); Kennedy Center and VSA arts’ Nobody’s Perfect (Assistant Director); Center Theatre Group’s Sleeping Beauty Wakes (Groundskeeper’s Son/Orderly); Gallaudet University’s A Streetcar Named Desire (The Ghost of Allan Grey) and Amaryllis Theatre’s Much Ado About Nothing (Claudio). Film/Television credits include ASL films’ Versa Effect (Seth) and Gerald (Corey). Golden Summer Productions’ Words (Owen); FOX’s “Fringe” (Joe) and CBS’ “CSI: NY” (Cole). www.russellharvard.net

Jeff Perry is an actor, teacher and co-founder of the Steppenwolf Theater Company, the School at Steppenwolf, and Steppenwolf Films.  Some favorite theatre credits include August: Osage County (Pulitzer Prize), The Grapes of Wrath (1990 Tony for Best Play), Balm in Gilead, Time of Your Life, The Caretaker, Cloud Nine, True West, Picasso at the Lapin Agile (American Premiere), The Receptionist, and Uncle Vanya. Currently a series regular on Shonda Rhimes new ABC drama “Scandal,” other film and television credits include “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Lost,” “Nash Bridges,” “Wild Things,” “My So-Called Life,” “The West Wing,” “Prison Break” and “The Practice.”

Susan Pourfar recently appeared at The Public Theater in Lisa Kron's In the Wake.  Other NY credits:  When The Rain Stops Falling (Lincoln Center Theatre, David Cromer, dir), The Singing Forest (Public Theater, Mark Wing-Davey, dir), The Poor Itch (Public Theater, Lisa Peterson, dir), The Small (The Ohio, Les Waters, dir), Sasha in Chekhov's Ivanov (Lake Lucille, Brian Mertes, dir), Swimming In The Shallows, and The Dear Boy (Second Stage, Trip Cullman/Michael Garces, dir), Iron (Manhattan Theatre Club, Anna Shapiro, dir), The Last Sunday In June (Rattlestick Theatre and Century Center for the Performing Arts, Trip Cullman, dir) and multiple productions with the Atlantic Theatre Company.  Regional:  Knickerbocker (Williamstown, Nicky Martin, dir), Passion Play (Yale Rep, Mark Wing-Davey, dir), Los Angeles premiere of Judas Iscariot (Black Dahlia, Matt Shakman, dir) as well as Long Wharf, Denver Center, Alliance, and three seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Susan has developed new work at the prestigious Sundance Lab, CTG in LA, and most recently with Bill Cain and Sarah Treem at the Ojai Playwrights Conference, in Ojai, CA.  TV/Film:  “Nurse Jackie,” “Numbers,” “The Sopranos,” “Third Watch,” “Law & Order.”  Webisodes:  “The Suffersons.” BA, Brown University.  

Gayle Rankin. Off Broadway: The Illusion (Signature Theatre Company) Regional: Our Town, After The Revolution, Golden Gate: The Musical, Camp Monster (Williamstown Theatre Festival). Developmental work: Yale Rep, The Public Theatre, Red Bull Theatre Company, Ars Nova, Williamstown. At Juilliard: Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Arkadina in The Seagull, Catherine in Boston Marriage, and others. Film/TV: “Law & Order: SVU,” Frank the Bastard, The Warfields. UK Theatre: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (The Lyceum Theatre) Bat Boy The Musical (The Citizens Theatre), Copacabana (The Citizens Theatre). Gayle also recently played Nina in The Seagull for Brian Mertes’ Checkov at Lake Lucille and Bonnie in Beau Willimon and Brian Mertes' Balm in Gilead. She has workshopped plays and musicals for Yale Repertory Theatre, The Public Theatre (NYC) and Williamstown Theatre Festival. Gayle graduated from Juilliard in May 2011.

Mare Winningham has appeared in more than 50 television films and mini-series, most recently the critically acclaimed HBO mini-series “Mildred Pierce,” for which she received her 7th Emmy Nomination. She will next be seen as matriarch Sally Mccoy in the History Channel's mini-series “The Hatfields and McCoys” starring  Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton.  For her performance in the feature film “Georgia,” Ms. Winningham received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, a SAG award nomination and the Independent Spirit Award. Recent film credits include “Brothers” and “Swing Vote,” and upcoming release “Mirror, Mirror,” Relativity's movie of Snow White.  Ms. Winningham's stage work includes Atlantic Theater Company's new musical 10 Million Miles, for which she won the Lucille Lortel award for Best Featured Actress in a musical, and the Off Broadway hit After the Revolution, at Playwrights Horizons and Williamstown Theater Festival.

Nina Raine. After graduating from Oxford, Nina Raine began her career as a trainee director at the Royal Court Theatre. She dramaturged and directed the hard-hitting verbatim play Unprotected at the Liverpool Everyman, for which she won both the TMA best Director Award and the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award for an Outstanding Production on a Human Rights Theme. Her debut play, Rabbit, premiered at the Old Red Lion Theatre in 2006 and transferred to the Trafalgar Studios in the West End before being produced as part of the Brits off Broadway festival in New York. The play earned her the Charles Wintour Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright as well as the Critics Circle Award for most Promising Playwright.  Nina also directed her second play, Tiger Country, at Hampstead Theatre, where it enjoyed a sell-out run. Nina’s recent directorial efforts also include Jumpy at the Royal Court Theatre and Shades, which went on to win Critics Circle and Evening Standard Awards for Most Promising Newcomer. Her commission for the Royal Court Theatre, Tribes, directed by Roger Michel, won an Offie award and was also nominated for both Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for best new play.

David Cromer’s recent productions include John Guare’s House of Blue Leaves on Broadway, When the Rain Stops Falling (2010 Lortel Award) at Lincoln Center Theatre and A Streetcar Named Desire at Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Writers Theatre in Chicago.  His critically acclaimed production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, ran for over a year at the Barrow Street Theatre and he received the 2009 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Direction and Outstanding Revival, as well as a 2009 Obie Award for Best Director.  His New York production of Adding Machine: A Chamber Musical (based on the play by Elmer Rice), garnered him an Obie Award for Best Director, the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Direction, and ran at the Minetta Lane Theatre.  In his former home town, Chicago, David directed many award winning productions including Picnic, Our Town, and the World Premiere of Orson’s Shadow at Steppenwolf Theatre.    He was Artistic Director of Big Game Theatre from 1991-93. His productions in Chicago have won a total of 16 Joseph Jefferson Awards including Best Production and Best Director for The Cider House Rules, The Price, and Angels in America.  His regional credits include The Grapes of Wrath at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC, The Clean House, Farnsworth Invention and Santaland Diaries at the Alley Theatre.  David is a 2010 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship.

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