The Electric Baby
Folk tales and folklore infuse this moving, powerful, and hopeful story about damaged people, unexpected relationships, and what it means to live in the center of your own life. A group of lost souls are brought together by an accident, and form unlikely connections that will change all of their lives. At the center of the play is the magical child of a Romanian mother and Nigerian father, who glows with unearthly light. The Electric Baby contains adult language.
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PHOTOS
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CRITICAL ACCLAIM
Lights up Two River Theater…a heartfelt entrancing production.
THE STAR-LEDGER
A richly imaginative, impressively expansive production.
TALKIN’ BROADWAY
A gently touching new drama.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
MEET THE ARTISTS
THE CAST
Oberon K.A. Adjepong
Oberon K.A. Adjepong is making his Two River Theater debut. He has performed Off-Broadway in Like I Say, Cellophane (The Flea Theater); Mother Courage, The Blacks (Classic Stage Company, Classical Theatre of Harlem); Wabenzi (Ohio Theatre); Hieroglyphic Graffiti (Hip-Hop Theater Festival); The Hamlet Project (La MaMa E.T.C.); Oya and Sango (National Black Theatre). Regional credits include Good Goods (Yale Rep); Ruined (La Jolla Playhouse, Huntington, Berkeley Rep, Philadelphia Theatre Company); The Piano Lesson, Our Town, James and the Giant Peach (Arden); Timon of Athens, Coriolanus (Shakespeare Theatre Company); and A Rhyme Deferred (National Black Theatre Festival, The Kennedy Center, Nuyorican Poets Cafe). He has also appeared in film and television projects such as Murder in Manhattan, Something Whispered, Smash, NYC 22, Margin Call, The Son of No One, The Onion News Network, Hope & Faith, and Law & Order: SVU. He has trained at Lola Louis’ Creative & Performing Arts Studio, Oxford University and Howard University.
Lucy DeVito
Lucy DeVito Theatre: The Bird and the Two-Ton Weight (EST), Nora and Delia Ephron’s Love, Loss, and What I Wore (NY and LA), The Shoemaker (Cause Celeb), Miracle at Naples (Huntington), The Diary of Anne Frank (Intiman), and Lucy (EST). Film: Sleepwalk With Me (dir. Mike Birbiglia), Leaves of Grass (dir. Tim Blake Nelson), Syrup, Beware the Gonzo, and A Quiet Little Marriage. TV: Melissa & Joeyand It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. She is a member of The Ensemble Studio Theatre and a graduate of Brown University.
Antoinette LaVecchia
Antoinette LaVecchia Broadway: A View from the Bridge. NY: Mamma Roma (Cherry Lane); A World Apart (The Flea); How to Be a Good Italian Daughter (in spite of myself) (Cherry Lane); The Bottle House (The Public); String of Pearls (Primary Stages); Magic Hands Freddy (Soho Playhouse); Kimberly Akimbo (MTC); The Sweepers (Urban Stages); The Tempest (Lincoln Center Inst.). Regional: I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti (Hartford TheaterWorks); You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up! (National Tour); Superior Donuts (Pittsburgh Public); Heartbreak House (Two River Theater); Little Dog Laughed (Portland Center Stage); Tough Titty (Williamstown). Film/TV: The David Dance, Delirious, Jesus’ Son, Blue Bloods, The Sopranos, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, Guiding Light, One Life to Live. Education: MFA – NYU Grad Acting, Moscow Art Theatre. Awards: 2012 BroadwayWorld CT Best Actress Award, Fox Fellowship, Anna Sosenko Assist Trust Grant, CT Critics Circle Award, and Drama League Directing Fellowship.
Nick Lehane
NICK LEHANE (he/him) (PUPPET DESIGNER) is a theater maker and puppet artist based in Brooklyn NY. Select original work: Chimpanzee (Premiere: HERE/Dream Music; Touring: The World Puppet Theater Festival in Charleville-Mézières, France, Casteliers in Montreal, The London International Mime Festival at The Barbican Centre); Fly Away (co-created with Derek Fordjour, Petzel Gallery). Select puppet design: PigPen Theatre Co.’s The Tale of Despereaux (Old Globe, Berkeley Rep) and The Phantom Folktales (Virgin Atlantic). Select puppeteer credits: Robin Frohardt’s The Plastic Bag Store (Times Square Art Alliance) and The Pigeoning (HERE); Petrushka (Giants Are Small, NY Philharmonic, Barbican Centre); Doug Fitch’s El Retablo de Maese Pedro (American Symphony Orchestra, Bard SummerScape); Little Red Fish (NYC Children’s Theater/Puppet Kitchen); Pip’s Island; James Ortiz’s The Little Mermaid; “Lore” (Amazon). Select acting: This Is Our Youth (Broadway); The Old Man and the Old Moon (PigPen); Fidelis (The Public); The Electric Baby (Two River); Set in the Living Room… (Theater Reconstruction Ensemble). Nick studied at the Moscow Art Theatre School and received his BFA from The Carnegie Mellon School of Drama.
Lizbeth Mackay
Lizbeth Mackay is making her debut at Two River Theater. She recently played Delia in the George Street Playhouse and Williamstown Theatre Festival productions of Lewis Black’sOne Slight Hitch. Broadway:The Price,All My Sons,Picnic,The Heiress,Doubt, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Death and the Maiden, Crimes of the Heart (Theatre World, Outer Circle Critics and Hollywood Drama-Logue Awards). Off Broadway: Sons of the Prophet, Durang/Durang, The Forest, Sea of Tranquility, The Old Boy,Kate’s Diary. Regional: All My Sons; The Clean House; Faith Healer;‘night, Mother (Elliott Norton Award);The Heidi Chronicles; Toys in the Attic. Film: One True Thing, In & Out,Marvin’s Room,White Squall, Malcolm X.Liz is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama and Mom to Katie and John.
Steven Skybell
Steven Skybell returns to Two River, where he was previously seen in On Borrowed Time, The Electric Baby, Much Ado About Nothing, and Candida. Broadway: Pal Joey; Wicked; The Full Monty; Love! Valour! Compassion!; Café Crown; Ah, Wilderness!. Off-Broadway includes: Antigone in New York (Obie Award); Love’s Labor’s Lost (The Public); A Man’s a Man, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Galileo, and The Age of Iron (all CSC); The Lesson (Atlantic); The Controversy (The Public), What Didn’t Happen (Playwrights Horizons); numerous Shakespeare productions at the Delacorte, The Public, and Theatre for a New Audience. Regional credits include Arthur in Camelot (Helen Hayes nomination); title roles in Uncle Vanya (McCarter/La Jolla) and Hamlet (California Shakespeare); Berkshire Theatre Festival; Westport Country Playhouse; former company member of American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge, Mass.; inaugural season of Shakespeare’s Globe, London (PBS Great Performances). BBC radio drama: The Day That Lehman Died (Peabody Award). TV/Film: 666 Park Avenue, Elementary, Law & Order, Sex and the City, All My Children, Simply Irresistible, Cradle Will Rock, Tom and Francie.
THE CREATIVES
Playwright
Stefanie Zadravec
Stefanie Zadravec
Stefanie Zadravec is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and a 2012-2013 Playwright Fellow at the Lark Play Development Center. Her play Honey Brown Eyes (Theater J; Working Theater) received the 2009 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play. The Electric Baby (Quantum Theatre) received the Women in the Arts & Media Collaboration Award. Save Me (The Barrow Group) received the Phoenix Theatre’s National Playwriting Award. Stefanie’s collaborations include: We Play for the Gods (The Women’s Project), The Fear Project (The Barrow Group), and The Jackson Heights Trilogy (Theater 167). Stefanie has received commissions from Oregon Shakespeare Festival/Full Stage USA, The Working Theater/NYSCA and Epic Theatre Ensemble/Ford Foundation. Awards and residencies include a Playwrights Realm Fellowship, the 2012 Sustainable Arts Foundation Writing Award, a Dramatists Guild Fellowship, The Women’s Project Lab, Play Penn and Sewanee Writers Conference. Upcoming productions: The Electric Baby at Rivendell Theatre Ensemble in Chicago (June 2013). Stefanie teaches screenwriting and playwriting at Primary Stages (ESPA). www.szadravec.com
Director
May Adrales
May Adrales
May Adrales is a director, artistic leader, educator and mother; she has directed over 25 world premieres. Her work has been seen most recently at Second Stage (Rajiv Joseph’s Letters of Suresh) Manhattan Theater Club (Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone, and Poor Yella Rednecks, Felicia Anchuli King’s Golden Shield) Signature Theater, LCT3, The Public Theater, WP, New York Theater Workshop, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Rep, Milwaukee Rep and South Coast Rep. She was awarded the prestigious Ammerman Award at Arena Stage and Theater Communications Group’s Alan Schneider award for freelance directors. She is a Drama League Directing Fellow, Van Lier Directing Fellow, WP Lab Director, SoHo Rep Writers/Directors Lab and New York Theater Workshop directing fellow, TCG New Generations Grantee, SDC Denham Fellowship and Paul Green Directing Award. She served as an Associate Artistic Director at Milwaukee Rep; Artistic Associate at The Playwrights Center; Artistic Associate at The Public Theater; and Director of Artistic Programs and Artistic Director at The Lark. She serves on the board of Theater Communications Group. May has directed and taught at Juilliard, Harvard/ART, ACT, Fordham, NYU and Bard College. May has served on faculty at the Yale School of Drama and Brown/Trinity MFA program. MFA, Yale School of Drama. She is currently the Director of the Theatre Program/Assistant Professor at Fordham University. (www.mayadrales.net)
Scenic Designer
Mimi Lien
Mimi Lien
Mimi Lien is a New York-based designer of sets and environments for theater, dance, and opera. She is an artistic associate with Pig Iron Theatre Company and The Civilians. Recent work includes The Dance and the Railroad(Signature), Luck of the Irish(Lincoln Center), Zero Cost House(Pig Iron), Pierre, Natasha, & The Great Comet of 1812 (Ars Nova), and The Whale(Playwrights Horizons). Regionally, her work has been presented at Berkeley Rep, A.R.T., Wilma Theater, Long Wharf Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Center Stage, Alliance Theatre, and PlayMakers Rep, among others. Mimi’s designs for dance have been presented in the Netherlands and Russia, and she was a semifinalist in the Ring Award competition for opera design in Graz, Austria. Her work has been recognized by an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence, a Barrymore Award, four Barrymore nominations, Hewes Design Award nomination, and Bay Area Critics Circle nomination. She was a recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program, a MacDowell Colony fellow, and her sculptures were featured in the exhibition Landscapes of Quarantineat the Storefront for Art and Architecture. MFA: NYU, BA: Yale.
Costume Designer
Alixandra Gage Englund
Alixandra Gage Englund
Lighting Designer
Gina Scherr
Gina Scherr
Gina Scherr previously designed In This House and The Electric Baby at Two River. Recent credits include On Golden Pond at Bucks County Playhouse and Awake and Sing for NAATCO at The Public Theater. New York designs include productions at Roundabout Underground, City Center, The Women’s Project, The Kitchen, Merce Cunningham, Alvin Ailey, PS122, La MaMa, Clubbed Thumb, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Company XIV and The New School. Regional credits include productions at Williamstown Theatre Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Old Globe, Milwaukee Rep, Asolo Rep, Weston Playhouse, and Yale Rep. Internationally, Gina’s designs have been seen in Ireland, Sweden, Edinburgh, South Korea, Canada, and Romania. Gina is a member of Wingspace Theatrical Design. MFA: Yale School of Drama.
Origin Music/Sound Design
Nathan A. Roberts
Nathan A. Roberts
Nathan A. Roberts is happy to be returning to Two River, where he and Charles have designed The Electric Baby, On Borrowed Time and Third. Off-Broadway—WP Theater: Natural Shocks; TFANA: The Servant of Two Masters; The Acting Company: Julius Caesar, Macbeth; The Playwrights Realm: Crane Story, Dramatis Personae; HERE: Olives and Blood. Regional—Oregon Shakespeare Festival: The Way the Mountain Moved, Sense and Sensibility; Baltimore Center Stage: Fun Home, The Christians, Les Liaisons Dangereuses; Dallas Theater Center/Guthrie Theater: Sense and Sensibility; The Old Globe: Tokyo Fish Story; Ford’s Theatre: The Widow Lincoln, Our Town; Yale Rep: Assassins, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, The Servant of Two Masters; Hartford Stage: Twelfth Night, The Tempest; Long Wharf Theatre: It’s a Wonderful Life. Other—designs and builds musical instruments, with a special emphasis on flutes and hurdy-gurdies. Education—MFA, Yale School of Drama. Teaching—Director of Undergraduate Studies, Theater Studies, Yale University.
Origin Music/Sound Design
Charles Coes
Charles Coes
Charles Coes is happy to be returning to Two River where he and Nathan have designed The Electric Baby, On Borrowed Time and Third. Off-Broadway: Tales of the Washer King (Playwrights Realm), Servant of Two Masters (TFANA), Robber Bridegroom (Roundabout), For Peter Pan… (Playwrights Horizons), Natural Shocks (WP Theater), Macbeth and Julius Caesar (Acting Company). Regional: OSF, Milwaukee Rep, Yale Rep, Seattle Rep, Baltimore Center Stage, South Coast Rep, The Old Globe, Guthrie, Shakespeare Theatre Company, ArtsEmerson, Wilma Theater, Berkeley Rep, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Ford’s Theatre, Dallas Theater Center, the Huntington. He has also designed Puppet UP! at the Venetian in Las Vegas; robotic and aquatic spectaculars for Royal Caribbean; and collaborated on installations with artists Ann Hamilton, Abelardo Morell, and Luis Roldan. He teaches at the Yale School of Drama and has worked as an associate on many Broadway shows including Peter and the Starcatcher (Tony Award-winning Sound Design), The Great Comet of 1812 and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Vocal/Dialect Coach
Jaime Lincoln Smith
Jaime Lincoln Smith
Jaime Lincoln Smith fell in love with Voice, Speech, and Diction while studying for his MFA in Acting at Rutgers University. He has a love for the clarity of speech in any language or dialect; the attraction and attention that good speech brings to an individual is like no other. Thus far he has done coaching for the U.S. Premiere of Born Bad at Soho Rep in NYC, the world premiere of Katori Hall’s Whaddabloodclot!!! at Williamstown Theatre Festival, and a staged reading of Radha Blank’s HappyFlowerNailat the New Black Arts Festival. As an actor he has performed at numerous regional theaters around the country, as well as New York City, and also appeared on TV/film in numerous TV shows and commercials.
Casting
Cindy Tolan & Adam Caldwell
Cindy Tolan & Adam Caldwell
Cindy Tolan & Adam Caldwell Broadway: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Betrayal, Cinderella, The Performers, Lysistrata Jones, Relatively Speaking, That Championship Season, A View from the Bridge, All My Sons, Avenue Q, and Xanadu. Previous productions with Vineyard Theatre, Bay Street, Dallas Theater Center, Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theater, and Lincoln Center Theater. Film: The Place Beyond the Pines, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Winter’s Tale, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Blue Valentine, Another Happy Day, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Letters to Juliet, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Starting Out in the Evening, Death of a President, The Darjeeling Limited, The Namesake, Sherrybaby, Kinsey, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, Personal Velocity. Upcoming films: This Is Where I Leave You, Gods Behaving Badly. Television: Curb Your Enthusiasm, Flight of the Conchords, Fringe, The Return of Jezebel James, and multiple HBO pilots. Members of CSA.
Production Stage Manager
Lori Amondson
Lori Amondson
Lori Amondson is delighted to be working for the first time at Two River Theater. New York credits include: Volpone and The Witch of Edmonton (Red Bull Theater); Tomfoolery andThe Housewives’ Contata (York Theatre Company); plus various readings and workshops at Ars Nova, Playwrights Horizons and others. Regional credits include: Lend Me a Tenor at Paper Mill Playhouse; Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Hello, Dolly!, West Side Story at 5th Avenue Theatre; Red, Three Tall Women, The Cure at Troy at Seattle Rep;Redat Arizona Theatre Company; Miss Witherspoon at ACT Theatre; The Lion in Winter, A Midsummer Night’s DreamandBach at Leipzig at Shakespeare Santa Cruz; along with productions at Intiman Theatre, Arkansas Rep, Village Theatre, Chester Theatre Company.