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The Cripple of Inishmaan

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Written by one of the world’s most celebrated young playwrights, this ingeniously funny, suspenseful, and moving play centers on Billy, a disabled boy living on a barren island off the Irish coast during the 1930s. Billy’s parents died at sea when he was a baby, and he has been raised by two soft-hearted foster-aunts. Relentlessly ridiculed by the other islanders, “Cripple Billy” seizes a chance to escape his confined life on Inishmaan when an American film crew arrives to make a documentary.

SYNOPSIS

Excitement hits the island of Inishmore and the sleepy village of Inishmaan when the local gossip, Johnnypateeenmike, announces that a Hollywood film crew is coming to film a movie on a nearby island. No one wants to go more than the orphaned Cripple Billy. After a life of teasing from his neighbors like the tempestuous Slippy Helen and her brother Bartley, Cripple Billy longs to escape the island and his life with his well-meaning but crazy foster aunts. When he sets sail for the film set to chase his dreams, he finds answers to questions he never could have found in Inishmaan, but finds that those same answers lead him home.

Credits

Creative team

By

Martin McDonagh

Playwright Martin McDonagh's first play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, premiered in Dublin in 1996, transferred to London's Royal Court Theatre, and then to Broadway, where it won four Tony awards. The play is the first in his Connemara Trilogy, which also includes A Skull in Connemara and The Lonesome West, which will recieve its Broadway premiere this spring. The Cripple of Inishmaan, the first of his trilogy of Aran Island plays (which also includes The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Banshees of Inisheer), opened at Britain's National Theatre, also transferred to New York, and received productions in several American cities, including Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Mr. McDonagh is resident playwright at the Royal National Theatre and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright.

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Directed by

Scott Zigler

Scott Zigler

Directed by

Scott Zigler

Director of the American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art Theatre School Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University. Founding member and past Artistic Director of New York’s Atlantic Theater Company and past Director of the Atlantic Theater Acting School, where he still serves as Senior Acting Teacher. Co-author of the widely used text A Practical Handbook for the Actor.  Mr. Zigler has taught acting at universities around the country as well as in Canada, Italy, and Australia.  Directing:  Broadway: The Old Neighborhood by David Mamet; Off-Broadway: Dust (World Premiere); Atlantic Theater Company: Premiere of Tom Donaghy’s adaptation of The Cherry Orchard; The Woods; Sure Thing; Strawberry Fields; Suburban News; As You Like It; National Tour: Oleanna; Regional: Phildelphia Theatre Company: Race; Steppenwolf Theatre Company: The Cryptogram; A Fair Country; American Repertory Theater: Romance; world premiere of Ellen McLaughlin’s Ajax in Iraq (ART Institute); Copenhagen; Animals and Plants; Absolution; The Cripple of Inishmaan; The Old Neighborhood (world premiere); Other Regional: Glengarry Glen Ross (McCarter Theatre); The Cryptogram (Alley Theatre); Spinning Into Butter (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis).

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Set design by

Christine Jones

Set design by

Christine Jones

Christine Jones, the set designer for Nocturne, previously designed The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, Man and Superman, When the World Was Green (A Chef's Fable), Hot 'n' Throbbing, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Silence, Cunning, Exile, and The L.A. Plays for the American Repertory Theater. Her other credits include The Green Bird (for which she received Drama Desk and Outer Critics' Circle Award nominations) for the New Victory Theatre in New York, Texts for Nothing and Richard II for the New York Shakespeare Festival, Tartuffe and Richard III for Hartford Stage, and sets and costumes for Iolanthe at Glimmerglass Opera.

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Costume design by

Catherine Zuber

Costume design by

Catherine Zuber

Catherine Zuber has created the costumes for Richard II, The Doctor's Dilemma, and over forty other A.R.T. productions including Three Farces and a Funeral, Antigone, Loot, The Idiots Karamazov, Ivanov, Phaedra, The Merchant of Venice, Valparaiso, The Imaginary Invalid, The Taming of the Shrew, Peter Pan and Wendy, The Bacchae, Man and Superman, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, Woyzeck, The Wild Duck, The Naked Eye, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Tartuffe, Ubu Rock, Waiting for Godot, The Oresteia, Shlemiel the First, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, A Touch of the Poet, What the Butler Saw, The Cherry Orchard, and Orphée. Ms. Zuber's credits include work at Lincoln Center, The Joseph Papp Public Theater, Goodman Theatre, The Guthrie Theater, Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage Company, La Jolla Playhouse, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Houston Grand Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera, among others. Her Broadway credits include The Triumph of Love (Connecticut Critics Circle Award and Drama Desk nomination), Ivanov (Drama Desk nomination), The Sound of Music, Twelfth Night, The Red Shoes, London Assurance, The Rose Tattoo, and Philadelphia Here I Come. Ms. Zuber was the recipient of the 1997 Obie Award for sustained achievement in design. She is the costume designer for La Fête des Vignerons de 1999, the massive Festival of the Winegrowers in Vevey, Switzerland.

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Lighting design by

John Ambrosone

Lighting design by

John Ambrosone

Lighting Designer John Ambrosone has designed over thirty productions for the American Repertory Theater, including Lysistrata, Absolution, Marat/Sade, Othello, Animals and Plants, Mother Courage (2001 Elliot Norton Design Award), The Doctor's Dilemma, Three Farces and a Funeral, Nocturne, IvanovThe Cripple of Inishmaan, The King Stag, Boston Marriage, Charlie in the House of Rue, Valparaiso, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, How I Learned to Drive, Nobody Dies on Friday, Man and Superman, The Old Neighborhood, When the World Was Green (A Chef's Fable), Alice in Bed, Slaughter City, and Buried Child. On Broadway he designed The Old Neighborhood. Work in resident theaters includes the Alley Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, the Coconut Grove Playhouse, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Walnut Street Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, and Arena Stage. Mr. Ambrosone also has designed in Singapore, Moscow, Japan, Brazil, Taiwan, Mexico, Germany, and France.

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Sound design by

Christopher Walker

Sound design by

Christopher Walker

Christopher Walker has composed music and designed sound for We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!, Phaedra, Beckett Trio: Eh Joe, Ghost Trio, and Nacht und Traüme, and An Evening of Beckett, and designed sound for The King Stag, Loot, The Idiots Karamazov, Ivanov, The Cripple of Inishmaan, Charlie in the House of Rue, The Merchant of Venice, Valparaiso, The Taming of the Shrew, The Bacchae, The Wild Duck, Woyzeck, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Wild Duck, Alice in Bed, Slaughter City, Buried Child, Ubu Rock, The Threepenny Opera, The Accident, Demons, Waiting for Godot, The Oresteia, Hot 'n' Throbbing, The America Play, A Touch of the Poet, The Cherry Orchard, What the Butler Saw, and Those the River Keeps at the A.R.T. Previously he composed music and designed sound for productions at the Intiman Theatre, the Bathhouse Theatre, and the Alice B. Theatre. He also scores for dance and has composed for the Allegro Dance Festival, the Bumbershoot Festival, and On The Boards.

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Kate Randy Danson
Eileen Karen MacDonald
Johnnypateenmike Jeremy Geidt
Billy Sean Dugan
Bartley Bryan Taylor
Slippy Helen Kristin Flanders
Babbybobby Ben Evett
Doctro McSharry Will LeBow
Mammy Evelyn Page