About the Artists

Ellen McLaughlin* (Playwright & Performer) is an award-winning playwright whose plays have received numerous national and international productions, including A Narrow Bed, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Tongue of a Bird, The Trojan Women, Helen, The Persians, Oedipus, Ajax in Iraq, Penelope, Septimus and Clarissa, Blood Moon, and most recently, the critically acclaimed The Oresteia. Ellen is also an actor who has worked on and Off Broadway as well as extensively in regional theater. She is most well known for having originated the part of the Angel in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, appearing in every U.S. production from its earliest workshops through its Broadway run.

Lisa Rothe** (Director) is a New York based theater director, acting coach, and intuitive healer. Recent directing work: Steel Magnolias (Guthrie Theatre); Fun Home and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Kansas City Repertory Theater), Indecent (Chautauqua Theatre); Another Revolution (GulfShore Playhouse); Shared Sentences (Houses on the Moon); Audio play: Pericles (Next Chapter Podcasts); Drama League nominated Belly of the Beast by Margaret Vandenburg (TodayTix, NYTW & 3AD/Daniel Dae Kim); The Names We Gave Him by Ellen McLaughlin & composer Peter Foley; Award Winning Hold These Truths by Jeanne Sakata; productions at Cincinnati Playhouse, Theatreworks Silicon Valley, Two River Theater, People’s Light, Playmakers Repertory Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Irish Repertory Theatre, and more. Previous: Director of New Works at Kansas City Repertory Theatre; Director of Global Exchange at The Lark; co- Artistic Director of The Actor’s Center; co-President of the League of Professional Theatre Women; Drama League and Fox Fellow alum. www.lisarothe.com

*Member Actors Equity Association
**Member Stage Directors and Choreographers Society

Synopsis

In Co-Production with BootStrap Theater Foundation

Penelope, a music-theater piece, begins with a woman’s husband appearing at her door after an absence of 20 years, suffering from brain damage. A veteran of a modern war, he doesn’t know who he is and she doesn’t know who he’s become. While they wait together for his return to himself, she reads him The Odyssey, and in the journey of that book, she finds a way into her former husband’s memory and the terror and trauma of war.

“Ellen McLaughlin is one of America’s most brilliant actresses... she unfolds a story in absolute grace and brilliance until you feel your own soul very raw yet luminous.” - Red Hen Review

“Penelope is a gorgeous piece of music, but it is more -- it is also a hauntingly vivid psychological portrait, one that explores a dark scenario with a light, almost quizzical touch, finding poetic resonances everywhere.” - Pitchfork Review

“Penelope may be the best thing to happen to Homer since Joyce.” - A Fool in the Forest

Cast

Ellen McLaughlin…. PENELOPE

Production Team

Director: Lisa Rothe
Composer: Sarah Kirkland Snider
Musicians: Ives Collective String Quartet
Stage & Production Manager: Kelly Weber Barraza
Set Design: Louis Stone-Collonge
Video & Lighting Design: Sinjin Jones

Rating

TBD

Runtime

TBD

Reviews & Press

Coming soon!