January 28, 2022 – The 2021/22 reIGNITE Live Arts Season continues with THE LEGEND OF GEORGIA MCBRIDE, Matthew Lopez’s fabulously flamboyant comedy. GEORGIA MCBRIDE will have 12 performances, March 4 through March 27, 2022, at Live Arts Theater, 123 E. Water Street, in Charlottesville. Tickets are $30 for adults or $25 for students and senior citizens, available through the Box Office at 434-977-4177 or livearts.org/tix. Pay-What-You-Can tickets are available on select Wednesday night and Saturday night performances.
Live Arts will host three special events for THE LEGEND OF GEORGIA MCBRIDE: an opening night reception following the performance on March 4; a post-show audience talk-back on Thursday, March 17; and a Boozy Drag Brunch fundraiser on Sunday, March 20, 2022 (1-4pm at Vault Virginia). Audiences are welcome to enjoy the bar and concessions one hour prior to the show and during intermission.
ABOUT THE SHOW
“Stitch-in-your-side funny … full of sass and good spirits.” – New York Times
THE LEGEND OF GEORGIA MCBRIDE is a gender-defying, sweet and campy, hilarious, and heartfelt celebration of divas and difference! It’s showtime at Cleo’s Lounge, a dilapidated, small-time club in the Florida Panhandle. Casey’s got to get a new act together fast—he’s broke and his wife just told him there’s a baby on the way. Can a young Elvis impersonator transform himself into a platform-pump-pantyhose-wearing drag queen? In a wild flurry of costume magic and lip sync coaching, “Georgia McBride” is born—a little bit country and a little bit rock ‘n’ roll.
Live Arts’ production of THE LEGEND OF GEORGIA MCBRIDE is directed by Perry Medlin, and showcases five fabulous local performers: Brandon Bolick as Casey, Danait Haddish as Jo, Marc Schindler as Eddie, Randy Risher as Miss Tracy Mills, and Jude Hansen as Rexy/Jason. Live Arts’ production also features a dynamic creative team with impressive local credits: Jason Elliott (producer consultant); Edwina Herring (assistant director); Liz Howard (production stage manager); Dan Feigert (scenic design); Michael Giovinco (lighting design); Bruce Young (costume design); Miriam Halpern (properties design); In2gr8ion LLC (wig design); and Raja Benz (intimacy choreographer).
Live Arts is especially excited to announce THE LEGEND OF GEORGIA MCBRIDE as the reIGNITE Season mentor/apprentice show, with teens apprenticing in the areas of stage management, scenic design, lighting design, sound design, costume design, and properties design. Our Mentor/Apprentice Program provides a unique, hands-on opportunity for teens to work on a mainstage production, alongside experienced designers and staff, to create the look, sound, and feel of a production.
“ … a cheering portrayal of what it means to be fully human and loving while celebrating the positive audacity and triumph of individuality and difference.” – DC Metro Theater Arts
“‘GEORGIA MCBRIDE’ is about a group of people who don’t really fit in anywhere else. I call them my misfit toys, and they build a home together at the bar,” playwright Lopez said in an interview with the LA Times. “Drag, as it’s practiced in these small Southern gay bars, enables a sense of transgression, a sense of rebellion, a sense of resistance. And it’s also a hell of a lot of fun.”
PERFORMANCE HISTORY
THE LEGEND OF GEORGIA MCBRIDE was originally commissioned by the Old Globe in San Diego, and developed and produced at the Denver Center Theatre Company in January 2014. The show premiered in New York at the MCC Theater in September 2015, winning Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Circle nominations, including Best Play. THE LEGEND OF GEORGIA MCBRIDE had its Virginia premiere at the Virginia Stage Company in March 2020.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Matthew Lopez is an award-winning American playwright and screenwriter whose plays include: The Whipping Man, one of the most celebrated and widely produced new American plays of the last decade (world premiere at Luna Stage; NY premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club; winner of Obie, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, and John Gassner Memorial Playwriting awards); The Legend of Georgia McBride (Denver Center for the Performing Arts, off-Broadway at MCC Theatre); Somewhere (Old Globe, world premiere); Reverberation (Hartford Stage, world premiere); The Sentinels (London’s Headlong Theatre); and Zoey’s Perfect Wedding. Lopez holds commissions from Roundabout Theatre Company, Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, Williamstown Theatre Festival and Hartford Stage, where he recently served as the Aetna New Voices Fellow. Lopez was a
writer on the HBO series “The Newsroom” and recently adapted the Javier Marías book trilogy Your Face Tomorrow for the screen along with the biopic Dr. Q for Disney. Lopez’ Olivier and Drama Desk-Award winning The Inheritance (a two-part epic based on E.M. Forster’s Howards End) premiered at the Young Vic, transferred to London’s West End, and ran on Broadway September 2019-March 2020.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Perry Medlin’s choreography and directing work with Live Arts includes FOLLIES, PIPPIN, 13, and GYPSY, as well as many summers working with summer teen theater programs. Other local credits include Young Frankenstein and The Laramie Project with Four County Players. Perry holds a BFA in musical theater from Elon University.They currently teach theater and public speaking at Tandem Friends School, where they have directed productions of Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Little Women, 26 Pebbles, and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged, among others.
