Powerful Storytelling Meets Contemporary Dramedy
Live Arts Theater launches the 2024/25 VOYAGES Season this fall with two plays alternating performances in rotating repertory: AN ILIAD by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, directed by David Minton, and WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME by Heidi Schreck, directed by Cady West Garey. AN ILIAD is sponsored by The Caplin Foundation; WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME is presented by Pamela Friedman and Ronald Bailey, and sponsored by The Caplin Foundation, and Molly and Matt Shadel. AN ILIAD and WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME have 11 performances each in the Founders Theater, September 27 through October 27, 2024, at Live Arts Theater, 123 E. Water Street, in Charlottesville. Tickets are $28 for adults and $25 for students and senior citizens and are available through the Box Office at boxoffice@livearts.org, by phone at 434-977-4177 x123, or online at livearts.org/tix.
Live Arts will host two special events for AN ILIAD and two special events for WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME: Opening night receptions following the performance of AN ILIAD on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, and for WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024; and post-show audience talk-backs for AN ILIAD on Thursday, Oct. 17, and for WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME on Thursday, October 10 (7:30pm curtain). Audiences for AN ILIAD are welcome to enjoy beverages and concessions one hour prior to the performance and post-performance. WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME audiences are welcome to enjoy beverages and concessions one hour prior to the performance and during intermission.
AN ILIAD
“AN ILIAD is pure theater: shocking, glorious, primal and deeply satisfying.” —Time Out New York
A Poet wearily enters with a suitcase, having endured an eon of traveling, reciting an age-old epic tale. Every time I sing this song I hope it’s the last time. A brilliant, spellbinding, modern retelling of Homer’s classic The Iliad, in a translation by Robert Fagles, AN ILIAD is a play about war and rage that resonates all-too-vividly today. We listen rapt to the Poet’s songs, of Achilles’ wrath, of heroism, loyalty and love, and are enveloped by this timeless story filled with dark humor, cruelty and pathos. The playwrights say in their foreword: “AN ILIAD started out as an examination of war and man’s tendency toward war. In the end, it also became an examination of the theater and the way in which we still tell each other stories in order to try and make sense of ourselves, and our behavior.”
WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME
“Endearingly funny and deeply affecting … It would be hard to identify a work for the theater with its finger more on the pulse of America right now.”
—The Washington Post
Winner of 2019 and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for Best New American Play, Heidi Schreck’s WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME is at once hilarious, touching, inspiring and thought-provoking. The playwright takes us back to her teenage years when she traveled the country giving speeches about the Constitution at American Legion halls to help her pay for college. Using her very personal journey, along with the stories of her mother and grandmother, she dissects the document penned by our “founding fathers” over 200 years ago. Act Two forefronts a live debate judged by an audience member: Should we keep or abolish the United State Constitution?
Cast and Production Team
Live Arts production of AN ILIAD is directed by David Minton, and showcases Minton as The Elder Poet, alongside powerhouse local actor Jesse Timmons as The Younger Poet. WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME, directed by Cady West Garey, features stellar local talent: Tovah Close as Heidi; Jim Dulaney as Legionnaire/Mike; Aafreen Aamir and Cleopatra Howell as Debaters; Mandy Shuker as Heidi (US); and James Scales as Legionnaire/Mike (US).
The productions’ dynamic creative team includes: Maia Adolphs and Khadijah Williams, assisted by Abby Milne (production stage managers); Kerry Moran (scenic design); Rachel Pfundstein (lighting design); Becky Brown (sound design); Chase Carson (assistant sound designer); Anna Stockdale (costume design); Morgan Hall (properties design); and dramaturgs Jon Mikalson (AN ILIAD) and Ashton Botts (CONSTITUTION).
Performance History
AN ILIAD was originally produced by Seattle Repertory Theatre in 2010, directed by co-playwright Lisa Peterson. The play was produced later that same year at the McCarter Theatre Center in New Jersey featuring Stephen Spinella as The Poet. In 2012, AN ILIAD was produced at New York Theatre Workshop featuring Denis O’Hare (also co-playwright) and Stephen Spinella alternating nights as The Poet.
Commissioned by True Love Productions, WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME was produced by Clubbed Thumb and True Love at the Wild Project in New York City in 2017. The play premiered on the West Coast at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2018, and received its Off-Broadway premiere later that same year at New York Theatre Workshop, transferring to Broadway in 2019. The Broadway production subsequently opened at Washington DC’s Kennedy Center and began a national tour in 2021 at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
About the Playwrights
Lisa Peterson is an award-winning American director and playwright/adapter and a two-time Obie winner for her productions of AN ILIAD (adapted with actor Denis O’Hare) and Light Shining In Buckinghamshire. She was Resident Director at the Mark Taper Forum for ten years, and previously Associate Director at La Jolla Playhouse. Directing credits include the world premieres of works by Donald Margulies (Collected Stories, The Model Apartment), Tony Kushner (Slavs!), Naomi Wallace (Trestle at Pope Lick Creek), Beth Henley, Caryl Churchill, Janusz Glowacki, Marlane Meyer, Culture Clash, Jose Rivera, and many others. She has worked at theaters around the country including New York Theater Workshop, The Public, Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, Guthrie Theater, Seattle Rep, Berkeley Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Arena Stage, and the McCarter Theatre.
Denis O’Hare has appeared numerous times on Broadway in such pieces as Inherit The Wind, Sweet Charity (Drama Desk Award), Assassins (Tony nominee), Take Me Out (Tony, Drama Desk awards), Major Barbara, and Cabaret. His regional work includes Seattle Rep, Arena Stage, Goodman Theatre, Victory Gardens Theatre, Remains Theatre and the McCarter Theatre. A prolific film and T.V. actor, Denis appeared in two seasons of “True Blood” as King Russell Edgington, on the premiere season of “American Horror Story,” and as Judge Abernathy on “The Good Wife”. Film work includes “C.O.G.”, “The Eagle”, “Changeling”, “Milk”, “Michael Clayton”, “A Mighty Heart”, “Duplicity”, “The Proposal”, “Charlie Wilson’s War”, and “Garden State” among others.
Heidi Schreck is a writer and performer whose critically-acclaimed play WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME was nominated for two Tony Awards and named Best of the Year by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, Time Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, and The New Yorker. A filmed version of the play premiered on Amazon Prime Video, and was nominated for a Critics Choice Award, a PGA Award and DGA Award. Schreck’s other plays include Grand Concourse, Creature, and There Are No More Big Secrets. Screenwriting credits include I Love Dick, Billions, Nurse Jackie, Dispatches from Elsewhere and shows in development with Amazon Studios, Plan B and A24. She is the recipient of three Obie Awards, a Drama Desk Award and a Theatre World Award, as well as the Horton Foote Playwriting Award, the Hull-Warriner Award from the Dramatists Guild and Smithsonian Magazine’s 2019 American Ingenuity Award for her work in the Performing Arts.
About the Directors
Cady West Garey (Director, WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME) has been a Director, Actor, and Theatre Educator for the last thirty plus years. She has worked on the East coast and Midwest in artistic areas including stage, film, podcast voice over, radio drama, and improvisation. Currently, Cady teaches in the UVA Department of Drama and Dance. The last Live Arts production Cady acted in was THE MEMORY OF WATER, many, many seasons ago. She is excited to work with Live Arts again and to share WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME with the Charlottesville Community.
David Minton (Director, AN ILIAD) is a director, actor, producer, instructor, and playwright with over 45 years of professional theater experience in Dallas, New York, and Washington DC. In Dallas, David was instrumental in the conception and management of the new Addison Theatre Facility, called by Theatre Crafts Magazine “a Theater for the 21st century.” David was the co-founder of Lumina Studio Theatre in the DC area, a high-concept youth Shakespeare company currently celebrating its 27th year of operation which performs in Silver Spring’s Black Box Theatre. With Live Arts, he directed MARRIAGE WARS for the 2021 Locally Sourced, UNABASHEDLY in the 2023 WATERWORKS Festival, and SHADES AND SHADOWS and AN ODD CONFLUENCE in the 2024 WATERWORKS. David appeared in THE CHILDREN (2022) and LOVE AND INFORMATION (2023), and has taught three acting workshops at Live Arts.
About Live Arts
Founded in 1990, Live Arts is celebrating more than 34 years of forging theater and community. Powered by more than 1,000 volunteers, Live Arts is a national model for engaged community theater, known for exceptionally high caliber productions, provocative programming and for supporting new works. Live Arts is guided by these organizational priorities: Artistic Integrity; Educational Excellence; Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion; and Volunteer & Community Engagement. As the anchor tenant in a four-story space, Live Arts proudly serves as a vital cultural resource in the heart of downtown Charlottesville with two state-of-the-art stages, rehearsal studio space, a library, and a rooftop event space.
The 2024/25 VOYAGES Season is made possible by:
The generous support of C-VILLE Weekly, WTJU 91.1FM, Ting, PJ Networks Computer Services, the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle County and by hundreds of theater lovers. Live Arts is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts, which receives support from the Virginia General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
For more Information please contact Marketing Coordinator Madison Patterson by email at madison@livearts.org or 540-447-4563; or phone at 434-977-4177 x103, or visit livearts.org.
