How to Build a City

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2016-Play-CHOW TO BUILD A CITY

Written by JEFF TALBOTT+
Directed by WES GRANTOM

Featuring: CHAD GOODRIDGE*, AMELIA MCCLAIN*, ANTHONY NEWFIELD*, WILL ROGERS*, RICHARD THIERIOT*+

+TACT Company Member
*Member, Actors Equity Association

Performances:
Wednesday, June 22, 7:00pm
Thursday, June 23, 7:00pm

Synopsis:

What happens when you have to balance the needs of a parent against the needs of your partner and your friends – and both are pulling you apart? In the middle of the night, Davis grapples with trying to shoulder the weight of making everyone happy and keeping everyone safe. But will trying to do it by himself cut him off from his loved ones and leave him truly alone?

How to Build a City is a serious comedy about the family we have and the family we make, and how to recognize they’re exactly the same thing.

About the Playwright:
JEFF TALBOTT’S play The Submission was the inaugural recipient of the Laurents/Hatcher Award in 2011 and was produced off-Broadway by MCC Theater; it went on to receive the Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award for New American Play in 2012.  It was also a semi-finalist for the 2010 O’Neill Playwrights Conference.  TACT will present the world premiere of his play The Gravedigger’s Lullaby this winter off-Broadway at Theatre Row.  Three Rules for the Dragon was a finalist for the 2016 O’Neill Conference and will have a workshop in June at Premiere Stages at Keen University in New Jersey.  Other plays include:  A Public Education (finalist for the 2015 O’Neill Playwrights Conference; workshops at Pioneer Theatre Company and TACT), How to Build a City (reading – Route 66 in Chicago), Elliot (readings – Crowded Outlet, MCC Theater), All the Stars in the Midnight Sky (workshops – MCC, TACT) and the just-completed i.  He writes musicals with composer Will Van Dyke.  Their musical Imagine Harry was presented in the 2015 NAMT Festival of New Musicals, and was a semi-finalist for the 2015 O’Neill Musical Theatre Conference as well as a finalist for the 2014 Rheinbeck Writers Retreat.  They released an EP of their work in September of 2015 called A View of the River (available on iTunes or wherever digital music is sold).  They recently were part of the Goodspeed’s 2016 Jonny Mercer Writers Colony finishing a draft of their latest musical, Wintersong.  Jeff graduated with honors from the Yale School of Drama.  www.jefftalbott.com