(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – Blood Play by The Debate Society concludes the Williamstown Theatre Festival’s summer 2013 season with a run on the Nikos Stage from Wednesday, August 7 through Sunday, August 18, 2013.
Named by New York Magazine as one of the Top 10 Plays of 2012, Blood Play is a darkly comic thriller created by the talented trio of Debate Society founders and Sundance Institute Fellows Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen (writers/performers) and Oliver Butler (director/developer).
Bos and Thureen star in Blood Play as Bev and Jeep, respectively. Butler returns to WTF after serving as a prestigious Bill Foeller Directing Fellow last year. Blood Play first premiered at The Bushwick Starr Theater and was subsequently produced at the Public Theater’s 2013 Under the Radar Festival. Of the show, the New Yorker exclaimed, “Unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I was blown away by the energy.”
Blood Play begins on a tranquil suburban evening in the early 1950’s: the kids are away on a Junior Cherokee camping trip and a string of coincidences leads to a spontaneous grown-up party in the basement of a new ranch house. Exotic cocktails are imbibed, raucous games are played, and new friends are made, but much is happening that no one is talking about. And something is stirring underground.
“While WTF is steeped in tradition, our legacy really began by bringing young actors and directors up to the festival to try daring work – Blood Play is part of this continuum,” said WTF artistic director Jenny Gersten. “As a festival, we believe that presenting new theatrical voices is very much a part of our mission. The Debate Society is a group of young artists (some of whom came up through WTF training programs) who are creating work that has one foot set in the mainstream theatrical tradition and the other foot squarely in the avant-garde. The result is a wonderful, quirky, unexpected evening of theatre.”
The Debate Society is an Obie Award-winning, Brooklyn-based “play company” that creates new plays through the collaboration of Hannah Bos, Paul Thureen (writer/performers), and Oliver Butler (director/developer). Winner of a “Village Voice Best of NYC Award,” the company specializes in creating unexpected stories set in supremely intricate, vividly theatrical worlds. The Debate Society shapes new plays through a rigorous 12-18 month development process. Time Out New York raves, “The Debate Society has emerged as the most beguiling and visually inventive experimental troupe in years.”
Blood Play features the original cast from the Bushwick Starr and Public Theater productions: Hannah Bos (The Eaten Heart, Lysistrata) as Bev, Michael Cyril Creighton (“30 Rock”) as Morty, Hanlon Smith-Dorsey (A Cadaver Christmas) as Sam, Emma Galvin (Our Town) as Ira, Birgit Huppuch (Telephone, 2009 Obie Award for Best Performance) as Gail, and Paul Thureen (A Thought About Raya, The Snow Hen) as Jeep.
Tickets to Blood Play are $50 ($45 for preview performances). Tickets for all Williamstown Theatre Festival productions can be purchased online at Williamstown Theatre Festival, by phone at 413-597-3400, or in person at the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance Box Office at 1000 Main St (Route 2).