Pulitzer Finalist Marjorie Prime to Launch Central Square Theater's 2016-17 Season

The Nora Theatre Company presents Jordan Harrison's Marjorie Prime from September 8 - October 9, 2016. Marjorie Prime is directed by M. Bevin O'Gara. The press performance is Monday, September 12 at 7:30PM. Produced by The Nora Theatre Company, is Marjorie Prime a Catalyst Collaborative@MIT Production.

In the not too distant future in the time of Artificial Intelligence, 85-year-old Marjorie, a woman whose memory is fading, is kept company by a handsome, younger version of her husband Walter, programmed to talk with her about her past. What would we choose to remember - or forget - about our life, if given the chance? Jordan Harrison's Pulitzer Prize Finalist Marjorie Prime explores the mystery of human memory and the, perhaps unlimited, promises of technology.

Marjorie Prime plays at Central Square Theater, 450 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Thursday, Septmber 8 - October 9, 2016. Tickets may be purchased by calling 617.576.9278 x1, at the Central Square Theater box office, or online at CentralSquareTheater.org.

Jordan Harrison's play Marjorie Prime, a 2015 Pulitzer Prize finalist, premiered at the Mark Taper Forum and recently had its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons. A film adaptation is currently in production, directed by Michael Almereyda. Jordan's play Maple and Vine premiered in the 2011 Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville and went on to productions at American Conservatory Theatre and Playwrights Horizons, among others. His other plays include The Amateurs, The Grown-Up (2014 Humana Festival), Doris to Darlene (Playwrights Horizons), Amazons and their Men (Clubbed Thumb), Act A Lady (2006 Humana Festival), Finn in the Underworld (Berkeley Rep), Futura (Portland Center Stage, NAATCO), Kid-Simple (2004 Humana Festival), Standing on Ceremony (written with Paul Rudnick, Doug Wright, and others), The Museum Play, and a musical, Suprema (O'Neill Music Theatre Conference). Jordan is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship, the Kesselring Prize, the Roe Green Award from Cleveland Play House, the Heideman Award, a Theater Masters Innovative Playwright Award, the Loewe Award for Musical Theater, Jerome and McKnight Fellowships, a NYSCA grant, and a NEA/TCG Residency with The Empty Space Theater. His children's musical, The Flea and the Professor, won the Barrymore Award for Best Production after premiering at the Arden Theatre. A graduate of Stanford University and the Brown MFA program, Jordan is an alumnus of New Dramatists. He is an Affiliated Artist with Clubbed Thumb, The Civilians, and The Playwrights' Center. Jordan currently writes for the Netflix original series "Orange is the New Black."

M. Bevin O'Gara (Director) Credits include: Kirsten Greenidge's Milk Like Sugar and Melinda Lopez's Becoming Cuba (Huntington Theatre Company); appropriate, Tribes (Elliot Norton & IRNE Awards for Best Play), Clybourne Park, and the world premiere of A Future Perfect (SpeakEasy Stage Company); Phedre (Actors' Shakespeare Project); The Chronicles of Kalki, Brahman/i: A One-Hijra Stand-Up Comedy Show, You For Me For You, Love Person, and The Pain and the Itch (Company One); Translations (Bad Habit Productions); Matt & Ben (Central Square Theater); Two Wives of India and Gary (Boston Playwrights' Theatre); Fast Company (Lyric Stage Company); 2.5 Minute Ride (Downstage @ New Rep); Othello and The Crucible (New Rep On Tour); Melancholy Play (Holland Productions); Bat Boy: The Musical (Metro Stage); Tattoo Girl, Painting You, and Artifacts (Williamstown Theatre Festival Workshop); and ANTI-KISS (3 Monkeys Theatrical Productions). She has a BFA from Boston University in Theatre Studies and works as the Associate Producer at the Huntington Theatre Company.

ABOUT THE CAST & CREATIVE TEAM

Barlow Adamson (Jon) is happy to be back at Central Square Theater and working once again with the Nora Theatre Company (Operation Epsilon, On The Verge, The Swan, Stop Kiss). He has performed on many other local stages including, among others: Underground Railway (Yesterday Happened: Remembering H.M.); Speakeasy Stage Company (Kurt Vonnegut's Make Up Your Mind, Reckless, Almost Maine, Fuddy Meers); Huntington Theatre Company (The Maiden's Prayer, A Month In The Country); Lyric Stage Company of Boston (Chinglish, Time Stands Still, The Scene, Private Lives, Noises Off, Red Herring); Bridge Repertory Theater (Sixty Miles To Silver Lake); Gloucester Stage Company (The Norman Conquests, Dinner With Friends); New Repertory Theatre (A Christmas Story), Boston Playwrights' Theatre (Reconsidering Hanna/h, Matters Familias). Barlow is an artistic associate of the Mill 6 Collaborative and directed its productions of Shakespeare's R+J, Bunbury: A Serious Play For Trivial People, and The Monster Tales. He also directed the world premieres of John J King's From Denmark With Love and Bear Patrol for Vaquero Playground. He'll be back in the neighborhood this spring for Underground Railway Theater's Paradise.

Sarah deLima (Marjorie) has appeared at the The Lyric Stage where she appeared in Grey Gardens, A . . . My Name Is Alice, Nuncrackers, Inspecting Carol, and Blithe Spirit. More recently she has appeared in Steel Magnolias, Lettice and Lovage, Shear Madness, and My Fair Lady (North Shore Music Theatre). A graduate of The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, Sarah-mother of four, grandmother of six, and wife of one-lives on the South Shore and is a proud U.S. citizen.

Lee Mikeska Gardener (Tess, Artistic Director, The Nora Theatre Company) begins her third year at The Nora, where she directed Her Aching Heart, Grounded, Saving Kitty (with Jennifer Coolidge) and Arcadia, and performed in Emilie: La Marquise du Chatelet Defends Her Life Tonight, earning an Eliot Norton award for Outstanding Actress, Small Theatre. She also played Carla in the IRNE nominated Chosen Child at Boston Playwrights' Theatre. An Artistic Associate for ten years at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Lee directed After Ashley (Helen Hayes nomination for Outstanding Direction); Fat Men In Skirts; Life During Wartime (Helen Hayes nomination for Outstanding Direction); Goodnight, Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet (Helen Hayes nomination for Outstanding Direction); Doug Wright's Watbanaland; The Chinese Art of Placement; the world premiere of The Gene Pool; Stop Kiss and Fuddy Meers. As an Associate Artist with 1st Stage Lee directed Blithe Spirit; The How and The Why; Humble Boy and Fuddy Meers. Lee served as The Managing Director for Washington Shakespeare Company for five years and for them directed the world premieres of Caesar and Dada and Learning Curves; Equus; A Midsummer's Nights Dream and Deathwatch, a co-production with Actors' Theatre of Washington, with whom she directed the all-male Dangerous Liaisons. Other favorite directing projects include Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie at The Kennedy Center, Angels in America and Peristroika at Signature Theatre, T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party for the Washington Stage Guild (Theatre Lobby Award,) Golden Boy and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with the Keegan Theatre (Artistic Associate), The Butterfingers Angel..., Thom Pain (Based on Nothing,) Stones In His Pockets and Three Tall Women at Rep Stage, where Lee also served as Managing Director for two years. As a performer Lee has earned a Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Lead Actress for the role of Mary in A House in the Country with Charter Theatre, where she also performed the roles of Carla in A Taste of Fire (Helen Hayes nomination), Fran in Short Order Stories, and Susanna in Of A Sunday Morning, all of which were world premieres. Lee originated the role of Hettie in Julie Jensen's Two Headed, which she performed at Washington Shakespeare Company and Mill Mountain Theatre. Other favorite roles include Terry in Sideman at 1st Stage (Helen Hayes nomination,) Patricia Preece in Stanley at Potomac Theatre Project (Helen Hayes nomination,), Kimberly Bergalis in Patient A at Freedom Stage (Helen Hayes nomination,) Clare in Tennessee Williams's The Two-Character Play at Spooky Action Theatre, Gertrude in Hamlet and Luisa in A Shayna Maidel (Best Actress, Baltimore City Paper) at Rep Stage. Lee spent seven years as Associate Artistic Director with the Shenandoah Playwrights' Retreat working on plays in development. As an educator, Lee has taught or served as a Guest Artist at Emerson, the Catholic University of America, George Mason University, American University, Montgomery College, George Washington University, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, UVA, Charlottesville, University of Maryland, College Park, Middlebury College; National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, and Summer Rep Company (Columbia, MO) and founded the Acting Classes at Woolly Mammoth and Washington Shakespeare Company. Lee has a B.F.A. in the Performing Arts from George Mason University and an M.F.A. in Acting from The Catholic University of America.

Alejandro Simoes (Walter) is making his Central Square Theater debut. Recent credits include Peter and the Starcatcher, Light up the Sky, and One Man Two Guvnors (Lyric Stage), The Motherf**ker with the Hat (SpeakEasy Stage Co., IRNE Best Supporting Actor), Our Country's Good, Recent Tragic Events, and Aunt Dan and Lemon (Whistler in the Dark), Paperbag Princess, Shh! (New Exhibition Room), Travesties, Romeo & Juliet, and Misalliance (The Publick Theatre), Titus Andronicus (Actor's Shakespeare Project), The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth (Commonwealth Shakespeare Co.), King John (Shakespeare & Company), Olly's Prison, and Dido, Queen of Carthage (A.R.T.), as well as productions with Stoneham Theatre, Theatre on Fire, Holland Productions, Zeitgeist Stage, and Imaginary Beasts. He trained at Shakespeare & Company, Southwick Studio, and Northeastern University.

The production team includes Sara Brown (Scenic Designer), Wen-Ling Liao (Lighting Designer), Penney Pinette (Costume Designer), Arshan Gailus (Sound Designer), Sarah Winters (Properties Master), Dominique D. Burford is the Stage Manager and Quang Milligan is the Assistant Stage Manager.

Central Square Theater (CST) opened in 2008 through a groundbreaking partnership between The Nora Theatre Company (The Nora) and Underground Railway Theater (URT). This collaboration has been called a model for the arts community (The Boston Foundation, Culture is our Commonwealth, and The National Collaboration Prize), as it has paired two like-minded performing arts organizations in a strategic alliance with the City of Cambridge and MIT, resulting in the development of a state-of-the-art performing arts center in the heart of Central Square. CST has a mission to support its two theaters-in-residence while maintaining a shared vision of artists and audiences creating theater vital to their communities. The Nora and URT have a combined track record of over 50 years producing award-winning theater. Located in Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and steeped in its multiracial, intergenerational, ethnically and economically diverse neighborhoods, the CST theater experience exudes a democratic energy where classes, races and age groups come together to be inspired, entertained and energized.

Central Square Theater is accessible to persons with special needs and to those requiring wheelchair seating. For further information, please call 617.576.9278 or visit CentralSquareTheater.org.