THEATER J PRESENTS A READING OF KATHLEEN TOLAN’S NEW PLAY, DIRECTED BY REBECCA BAYLA TAICHMAN

Please note change: There will only one performance on Monday, November 12

(Washington, DC) – As the second offering in Theater J’s Incubator Series, Rebecca Bayla Taichman directs a staged reading of Kathleen Tolan’s new play WHAT TO LISTEN FOR with piano accompaniment by Alvin Smithson on Monday November 12, 2007 at 7:30 in the Aaron & Cecile Goldman Theater at the Washington DCJCC.  Tickets are available for $15 through www.boxofficetickets.com or at (800) 494-TIXS. 

Developed at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, Kathleen Tolan’s delicate play about cultural history and the challenge of modern music and its meaning interweaves encounters with famous musical figures and renegades, including Arnold Schoenberg, Gustav Mahler, Sigmund Freud and Glenn Gould. The play follows a middle-aged divorcée named Margret whose daughter Hannah has serious musical aspirations amidst a life wracked by rejection, both romantically and professionally. Margret finds succor in reading music while contemplating her own emotional renewal with a bookish librarian. Romantic, wise, winsome, and full of lyrical associations that interlace critical surliness and human tenderness, Kathleen Tolan’s play is a beautiful piece of modern language for the stage.  This reading will feature a cast including Kathryn Kelley, Reqina Aquino and Danton Stone.

Kathleen Tolan’s work (A Weekend Near Madison, Kate's Diary, Approximating Mother, A Girl's Life and The Wax) has been previously seen at the Trinity Repertory Theatre, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Playwrights Horizons, and The Public Theatre.  Director Rebecca Bayla Taichman, in her first project with Theater J, will work with Tolan to lead the five-day rehearsal and workshopping process that will precede the reading. Taichman most recently directed Dead Man’s Cell Phone at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and The Taming of the Shrew at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. 

The Incubator Series is part of the Arlene & Robert Kogod New Play Development Program, which also includes Friday afternoon Tea @ 2 monthly readings and Theater J’s commissioning initiatives.  As one of the nation’s premiere playwrights’ theaters, Theater J is dedicated to providing a nurturing home for the development and production of new work. 

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