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Mouth Wide Open (A.R.T. First Look)

A.R.T. Breakout
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Soulful, transcendent, laugh-out-loud funny, Amy Brenneman (Private Practice, Judging Amy, Heat) returns to her theatrical roots in this exuberant theater piece drawn from her own life experience that juxtaposes a hunger for the spiritual with the externalized pressures of celebrity.

From a Tibetan temple in Kathmandu to an evangelical church in the Mississippi Delta, from the hype of the red carpet to the cold reality of a hospital room, Brenneman is our guide on an epic journey that takes us to the place where illness and spirituality collide.

This fearless look at the ecstatic, irreverent, and sometimes excruciating dance between the sacred and the profane harnesses the intimacy of a confessional and the heightened theatricality of the stage as Brenneman tells her story with dazzling candor.

Notable dates

Tickets on sale to members and subscribers: March 18

Tickets on sale to public: March 22

Press

Radio Boston, WBUR Radio

WBUR Radio Boston interview with Amy Brenneman

Amy Brenneman, star of the television series “Judging Amy” and “Private Practice,” and her longtime artistic collaborator Sabrina Peck are back at the A.R.T.’s Loeb Theatre.It’s a homecoming of sorts for both women, who first met as classmates at Harvard. While Brenneman has been back to Cambridge, it’s been 25 years since she’s returned to the theater.“The beginning of my life and my current life really started here artistically,” Brenneman told Radio Boston.Brenneman and Peck are in town for a short run of “Mouth Wide Open,” a play co-created by the women and opening at the A.R.T. on Tuesday, May 24. The play takes audience members on an exciting, yet tumultuous spiritual journey all based on Brenneman’s own experiences.We catch them in between rehearsals and learn about the play and the spiritual journey that made it happen. – WBUR Radio Boston

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Credits

Staff

Set & Video Design

Jim Findlay

Set & Video Design

Jim Findlay

A.R.T.: R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY (and Mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE. Jim Findlay works across specialties as a designer, director, performer and creator with a constellation of theater, performance and music groups. He was a founding member and primary collaborator in both the Collapsable Giraffe and Accinosco/Cynthia Hopkins, as well as being an associate member of The Wooster Group since 1994 and a frequent collaborator with Ridge Theater since 2001. Individual credits include set and video designs for Stew’s Brooklyn Omnibus (BAM) and Making It (St Ann’s Warehouse); How Can You Stay in the House All Day... (BAM and U.S. tour) and Rescuing the Princess (Lyon Opera Ballet) by Ralph Lemon; D.W. Jacobs’ R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY (and Mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE at Arena Stage and the A.R.T., DJ Spooky’s Terra Nova (BAM and world tour); Steel Hammer by Julia Wolfe (Carnegie Hall and U.S. tour); and Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island at the Vineyard Theater. Findlay’s awards include the Henry Hewes Design Award, Lucille Lortel Award, Princess Grace Awards in 1999 and 2010, Obie Awards in 2001 and 2008 and Bessie Awards in 1999 and 2008.

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Lighting Design

Maruti Evans

Lighting Design

Maruti Evans

A.R.T.: Alice vs. Wonderland, Mouth Wide Open. A.R.T. Institute: Hansel and Gretel. Work includes: Else Where, Leiderabend, BAM; Master and Margarita, Bard Summer Scape; An Oresteia, Classic Stage; Crowns, Goodman Theatre; Sweeney Todd, Virginia Opera. Maruti has received the Drama Desk Sam Norkin Award 2013 for Tiny Dynamite and Pilo Family Circus and Drama Desk nominations for: In the Heat of the Night, Slaughterhouse 5, and Blindness.

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Sound Design

Jill BC Du Boff

Sound Design

Jill BC Du Boff

Broadway: Good People, The Constant Wife, The Good Body, Bill Maher: Victory. Off-Broadway: Other Desert Cities, The Whipping Man, Cradle and All, The Divine Sister, Broke-ology, Lincoln Center, Atlantic, MTC, MCC, Playwrights Horizons, Public, Vineyard, Second Stage, NYTW, New Georges, Flea, Cherry Lane, Signature, Clubbed Thumb (Affiliate Artist), Culture Project, Adobe. Regional: Minneapolis Children’s Theatre, Bay Street, La Jolla, Cincinnati Playhouse, Westport, Berkeley Rep, Portland Stage, Long Wharf, The Alley, Kennedy Center, NYS&F, South Coast Rep, Humana, Williamstown. TV: Comedy Central, NBC. Radio: Studio 360, WNYC News. Nominations: Drama Desk, Henry Hewes. Recipient, Ruth Morley Design Award. Adjunct Professor: Sarah Lawrence College.

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Stage Manager

Chris de Camillis

A.R.T: thirty productions in fifteen years at A.R.T. as Artistic Coordinator/​​Resident Stage Manager. Broadway: Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Misery, It’s Only a Play, The Glass Menagerie. Off-Broadway: Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven; The Hard Problem, Pride’s Crossing, Lincoln Center; Much Ado About Nothing, NYSF/​Delacorte; The Total Bent, Public Theater; Parable of the Sower, Public Theater Under the Radar Festival; Oliver Twist, TFNA. For Esch, Tommy, Jeremy, and Jan.

Actors’ Equity Association member

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Stage Manager

Katherine Shea

A.R.T.: Stage Manager: Prometheus Bound; The Blue Flower; Cabaret; Johnny Baseball; Paradise Lost; Best of Both Worlds; Romance; Endgame; The Communist Dracula Pageant; When It’s Hot, It’s Cole; Donnie Darko. Assistant Stage Manager: The Seagull; Oliver Twist; The Onion Cellar. Production Associate: Island of Slaves; Desire Under the Elms. A.R.T. Institute: Stage Manager: The Front Page; Arabian Night; Zoya; Mayhem; A Bright Room Called Day; The Island of Anyplace; The Bacchae; Spring Awakening; Donnie Darko. Gloucester Stage Company: Production Stage Manager: The Woman in Black. Lyric Stage Company: Production Stage Manager: Kiss Me, Kate; Three Tall Women; Adrift in Macao. Actors’ Shakespeare Project: Stage Manager: King John.

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Dramaturg

Andrea Thome

Assistant Stage Manager

Taylor Adamik

Assistant Sound Designer

Ien Denio

Cast

Performed by

Amy Brenneman

A.R.T.: Measure for Measure. Theater: Romeo & Juliet, The Oresteia, Three Sisters, Sincerity Forever, St. Joan of the Stockyards, YaleRep; God’s Heart, Lincoln Center; A Nervous Smile, Williamstown Theater Festival. Credits with Sabrina Peck include Working (when Brenneman was 18), The Maske Family Musical, Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella and the original work Interstates, which they co-created. She is a founding member of the award-winning Cornerstone Theater Company. Film: Casper, Bye Bye Love, Heat, Daylight, Your Friends and Neighbors, Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, Off the Map, Nine Lives, 88 Minutes, Jane Austen Book Club, Downloading Nancy and Mother & Child. Television: "NYPD Blue" (two Emmy nominations), "Judging Amy" (co-creator, executive producer and star; three Emmy nominations, three Golden Globe nominations, winner of three TV Guide Awards for Best Actress), "Private Practice" (Violet Turner). Amy Brenneman has a degree in Comparative Religion from Harvard University. She is married to film director Brad Silberling and splits her time between Los Angeles and Chilmark, Mass. Her writing can be found on her blog at Momlogic.com and www.theamybrenneman.com.

Actors’ Equity Association member

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Performed by

Ashley Bryant

Broadway: A Free Man of Color. New York theater: In the Cypher, Cornbury: The Queen’s Governor, Obama Drama. Regional theater: Ruined, Shelia’s Day, King John. Other theater: Romeo and Juliet, Baal, Marat/Sade, Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet, In the Red and Brown Water, Godspell, Children of Eden, Agamemnon, The Darker Face of the Earth. BFA: University of Utah. MFA: Yale School of Drama. Ashley would like to thank her family for their support.

Actors’ Equity Association member

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Performed by

Page Leong

Theater: Member of Cornerstone Theater Company for 17 years, performing, writing, directing and choreographing more than 50 productions, at Arena Stage, Hasty Pudding, The Public Theater, Classical Stage Company, Long Wharf, Pasadena Playhouse, MOCA, Actors’ Gang and in vibrant communities across Los Angeles and the nation. She’s also performed at the Joyce Theater, Mark Taper Forum, LATC, Doolittle Theater, Getty Center, Singapore Rep, East West Players and Highways. Favorite roles include Shishir Kurup’s An Antigone Story (Antigone), Bill Rauch and Tracy Young’s Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella (Medea), Alison Carey’s A California Seagull (Nina/Maddy), Carey’s Twelfth Night (Olivia), Chay Yew’s Red (Ling), Murray Mednick’s Coyote Cycle (Cosmic Clown) and Kurup’s On Caring for the Beast (Mae/Kali), garnering Dramalogue, Garland and Ovation awards. Film: Another 48 HRS, Ghostbusters II, the upcoming Bourne Legacy. Television: "Three Rivers," "ER," "Dragnet," "Drive," "The Practice," "7th Heaven," "Judging Amy," "JAG," "Strong Medicine," "Star Trek TNG." As a writer, Page adapted her play In a WORD for HIV/AIDS communities across the country. She directed the short films Head Trip and Long Term for this project as well. Her play attraction was featured on the cover of American Theatre Magazine last year. She holds a Master’s degree in Dance from UCLA.

Actors’ Equity Association member

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Performed by

Robert Montano

Broadway: Kiss of The Spider Woman, On The Town dir. by George C. Wolfe, Cats, Chita +2, Legs Diamond. Theater: Created the roles of Anibaland Benito for the Academy Award-nominated writer Jose Rivera’s Cloud Tectonics and References To Salvador Dali Make Me Hot; Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation (Herve); Richard Vetere’s One Shot One Kill (Sgt. Nick Harris); Edwin Sanchez’s Diosa (Miguel); Marty (Ralph, opposite John C. Reilly); East Of Eden dir. Jon Jory (Cal), Comedy Of Errors, Actors Theatre Of Louisville. Film: The Yards (Hector Gallardo, opposite Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix), Academy Award-winner Chicago, It Runs In The Family, Center Stage, Fresh Cut Grass, Passionada, Second Best and the soon-to-be-released Shame, High Maintenance and The Normals. Television: "Army Wives," "CSI: Miami," "Sex In The City," "Law & Order," "Third Watch," "Six Degrees," "Without A Trace," "Law & Order: SVU" and "Undefeated." As a first time writer, his screenplay Under The Wire, inspired by his trials, tribulations and addictions when he was a professional racehorse jockey, has recently garnered attention from Hollywood. www.robertmontano.com

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