Third

Wendy Wasserstein was the first woman to win a Tony Award for Best Play for her landmark 1989 drama The Heidi Chronicles, which Two River Theater produced as the second play of its 1994/95 debut season at Monmouth University. The Heidi Chronicles also won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize and Susan Smith Blackburn Prize; the New York Drama Critics Circle, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards; and earned a grant from The Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays. For The Sisters Rosensweig she received the 1993 Outer Critics Circle Award, a Tony Award nomination, and the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in American Theatre. Her other plays include Uncommon Women and Others, Isn’t It Romantic, An American Daughter and Old Money;  a musical, Miami (with Jack Feldman and Bruce Sussman); and Waiting for Philip Glass, which was included in The Acting Company’s Love’s Fire. Third was produced at Lincoln Center Theater in the fall of 2005, just months before her untimely death on January 30, 2006 at the age of 55, after a bout with lymphoma. Her screenplays include The Object of My Affection, which starred Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd. For PBS Great Performances she wrote Kiss, Kiss Darling; Drive, She Said; and adaptations of John Cheever’s The Sorrows of Gin and her own Uncommon Women and Others. She adapted The Heidi Chronicles for TNT (1996 Emmy Award nomination for Best Television Movie) and An American Daughter for Lifetime Television. Her adaptation of The Nutcracker was performed at the American Ballet Theatre at the Met, and her adaptation of The Merry Widow premiered at San Francisco Opera. She was the librettist for the original opera Festival of Regrets: Central Park, which had runs at Glimmerglass Opera and New York City Opera. Wasserstein wrote Pamela’s First Musical, a children’s book, which she adapted with Cy Coleman into a musical that premiered in 2006. Her other books include the essay collections Shiksa Goddess and Bachelor Girls, and a novel, Elements of Style. She contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York Woman, and Harper’s Bazaar, among many other publications. She was the recipient of an NEA Grant, Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. She served on the Council of the Dramatists Guild; taught at Columbia University, New York University, Juilliard School, and Princeton University; and held an Honorary Doctorate from Mount Holyoke College. Wasserstein was born in Brooklyn and raised in Manhattan. She was a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and the Yale School of Drama.

Michael Cumpsty has appeared in The Lion in Winter, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Absurd Person Singular, Present Laughter and Much Ado about Nothing at Two River Theater, where he also directed The Importance of being Earnest and Third. Broadway credits include Machinal, The Winslow Boy, End of the Rainbow (Tony nomination), Sunday in the Park with George, The Constant Wife, Democracy, Enchanted April, 42nd Street, Copenhagen, Electra, 1776, Racing Demon, The Heiress, Translations, Timon of Athens (Bayfield Award), La Bête and Artist Descending a Staircase. Off-Broadway credits include Hamlet (Obie Award), Richard II and Richard III (all for Classic Stage Company); Twelfth Night, Timon of Athens, All’s Well That Ends Well, Hamlet, Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale (all for the New York Shakespeare Festival); The Body of an American (Primary Stages and Hartford Stage). He has appeared in many of America’s premiere regional theaters, and played Leontes in The Winter’s Tale for the Royal Shakespeare Company at their home in Stratford-upon-Avon. TV: recurring roles on Boardwalk Empire, Nurse Jackie and Star Trek: Voyager; L.A. Law (series regular); Red Oaks, The OA, Madam Secretary, The Good Wife, Law & Order and Elementary. Film: Eat Pray Love, Wall Street 2, Starting Out in the Evening, The Ex, Flags of our Fathers, The Visitor, The Ice Storm, Fatal Instinct, State of Grace, Downtown Express and Collateral Beauty.

Michael Carnahan previously designed The Ballad of Little Jo, Your Blues Ain’t Sweet Like Mine, Third, On Borrowed Time, and August Wilson’s Seven Guitars and Two Trains Running at Two River. Off-Broadway—Atlantic Theater Company: Skeleton Crew; 59E59: I and You; Second Stage: The Happiest Song Plays Last; Signature Theatre: The Piano Lesson, The First Breeze of Summer; Life Could Be a Dream, The Marvelous Wonderettes, Three Mo’ Tenors, Pygmalion, Howie the Rookie, Brando. Tours—Cheers, Live On Stage; A Christmas Story The Musical, Peter & The Starcatcher. Regional credits include Mark Taper Forum, Arena Stage, American Conservatory Theater, The Kennedy Center, McCarter Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Baltimore Center Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Pasadena Playhouse, Two River Theatre, Chautauqua Theater Company, Cleveland Play House, Detroit Public Theater, Laguna Playhouse, Utah Shakespearean Festival, Northlight Theatre, Signature Theatre, Bucks County Playhouse, Ogunquit Playhouse, Arsht Center, Musical Theatre West, San Jose Repertory, Center Repertory. michaelcarnahandesign.com Instagram: Carnypics Twitter: @mike_carnahan

Rui Rita (Lighting Designer) (he/him) Selected Broadway: Skeleton Crew, Velocity of Autumn, Trip to Bountiful, Present Laughter, Dividing the Estate, Enchanted April. Off-Broadway premieres: Paradise Blue; Horton Foote’s Old Friends and Orphans’ Home Cycle (Hewes Award) (Signature); Happiest Song Plays Last (Second Stage); Just Jim Dale (Roundabout); Nightingale, Moonlight and Magnolias (Manhattan Theatre Club); Carpetbagger’s Children, Far East (Lincoln Center Theater). Off-Broadway revivals: The Piano Lesson (Signature), Talley’s Folly (Roundabout), Engaged (TFANA; Obie Award). Recent regional credits: Alley, Asolo, Center Stage, Center Theatre Group, Dallas Theater Center, Ford’s, Guthrie, Huntington, Oregon Shakespeare, The Old Globe, Pasadena Playhouse. designbyrui.com.

KAREN PERRY (Costume Designer) previously designed August Wilson’s King Hedley II, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Jitney, Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars and Radio Golf at Two River, as well as Love in Hate Nation, Oo-Bla-Dee, Lives of Reason, Your Blues Ain’t Sweet Like Mine, Guadalupe in the Guest Room, Third and Trouble in Mind. Her most recent credits include Run-Boy-Run & In Old Age (New York Theatre Workshop), Mothers (Playwrights Realm), Jazz (MTC), Lackawanna Blues with Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Mark Taper Forum), Fun Home (Baltimore Center Stage), Steel Magnolias, Hair, Dreamgirls (DTC), Oklahoma! (Houston Ballet at TUTS) and Cinderella Ballet (Eglevsky Ballet Company). Other credits include Danai Gurira’s Familiar (Woolly Mammoth, Guthrie, Seattle Rep), Cabin in the Sky (Encores!), Pearl Cleage’s Blues for an Alabama Sky (Pasadena Playhouse), John Grisham’s A Time to Kill, dir. Ethan McSweeny (Arena), Crowns, stop. reset, Trinity River Trilogy by Regina Taylor (Goodman, STC, DTC/Arena), The Trip to Bountiful, Walter Mosley’s The Fall of Heaven, dir. Marion McClinton (Cincinnati Playhouse), The Brother/Sister Plays by Tarell McCraney, dirs. Tina Landau and Robert O’Hara (The Public/McCarter), Having Our Say by Emily Mann (McCarter), and Resurrection by Daniel Beaty (Arena). She has designed every play in August Wilson’s American Century Cycle except Fences. Film/TV credits include Gregory Hines Show, Saturday Night Live, and The Brother from Another Planet by director John Sayles. Wine in the Wildness is proudly Karen’s 14th production with TRTC. Currently: Raisin in the Sun @ the Public Theater.

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.

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.

Laura Wilson Previously at TRT: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Seven Guitars, Your Blues Ain’t Sweet Like Mine, Third, No Place to Go. Broadway: Roman Holiday (OOT Tryout), Jitney, All The Way, First Date, A Free Man of Color, The People in the Picture. Off-Broadway: Paradise Blue (Signature Theatre); School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play (MCC); Skeleton Crew (Atlantic Theater Company); Exit Strategy (Primary Stages); The Really Big Once, A Family of Perhaps Three (Target Margin Theater). Regional: Bull Durham (Alliance Theatre); Guys and Dolls (Riverside Theatre); The Three Sisters, The Boys from Syracuse, and Things of Dry Hours (Centerstage, Baltimore); Tom Stoppard’s On the Razzle (Clarence Brown Theatre).