For Immediate Release: March 22, 2007
Media Contact: David Golston, InterAct Theatre Company, 215.568.8077

Wednesday, April 11, 2007, 7:00 p.m., marks Opening Night of a fascinating new drama making its World Premiere in InterAct Theatre Company’s continuing 2006/2007 Season. WHEN SOMETHING WONDERFUL ENDS, written by playwright Sherry Kramer, is a poignant, funny, edgy, and politically-astute one-woman tour-de-force that is a co-production between InterAct Theatre Company and Actors Theatre of Louisville’s renowned Humana Festival, where the show runs March 10 - April 1, 2007.

ABOUT THE PLAY
Over the past 50 years, the United States has supported its enormous oil-driven economy by maintaining extraordinary strategic, political, military, and economic investments in the Middle East. America has played a wide range of contradictory roles: protecting a democracy even when it instigates aggression; cooperating with countries that violate human rights; arming rogue dictatorships; orchestrating the overthrow of leaders; brokering peace agreements; and launching wars.

Tackling these issues from one woman’s perspective, WHEN SOMETHING WONDERFRUL ENDS spins a yarn that reveals the full extent of America’s consumerism and oil addiction, interweaving three seemingly unrelated threads – the death of the playwright’s Midwestern Jewish mother, the Barbie Doll craze of the early 1960’s, and the complex and insidious oil-driven global economy – into one astounding whole. When Sherry returns to the small Midwestern town to pack up her childhood home after the death of her mother, she finds herself searching for meaning in the world around her. While reminiscing over the toys she loved in her youth, she quickly begins to connect the dots between her vintage Barbie doll collection and America’s dependence on foreign oil. Harkening back to a time of seeming innocence, when anything seemed possible, WHEN SOMETHING WONDERFUL ENDS brings a deeply personal yet daringly global perspective to a time when Barbie represented a bright new future, while simultaneously pinpointing the exact moment the American dream lost its luster.

In describing the spark that inspired her to write WHEN SOMETHING WONDERFUL ENDS, playwright Sherry Kramer explains the epiphany she had while boxing up her vintage Barbie doll collection to sell on eBay, “I was listening to a CD about US policy in the Middle East since WWII … and it just amazed me. It turns out that the America you thought you grew up in, which you thought of as a flawed but progressive human rights champion, is instead an addict who doesn't care what he does to get more of what he's addicted to.”

When asked why he chose this play to be included in InterAct Theatre’s 2006/2007 season, one that has been billed as, “Stories Behind the Sound Bytes: Exploring the Human Drama Behind Today’s News Stories,” Producing Artistic Director Seth Rozin said, “When I first read WHEN SOMETHING WONDERFUL ENDS I was struck by the seamless interweaving of the deeply personal story with the overtly political purpose. In many ways this one-woman play echoes Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, but with far more humanity, humor and poetic imagination. I literally found myself laughing, crying and thinking throughout, which is a rare trifecta in the theatre.”

DATES, TICKETS & SUBSCRIPTIONS
WHEN WOMETHING WONDERFUL ENDS runs for 27 performances, April 6 – May 6, 2007, with Opening Night on Wednesday, April 11. Performances are Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at 7:00 p.m., Thursday through Saturday evenings at 8:00 p.m., and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m. Individual tickets are available. Tickets for preview performances are $15.00; Tuesday through Thursday performances are $22.00; Friday & Saturday evenings and Sunday matinees are $25.00. InterAct offers discounts for senior citizens and full-time students (with valid I.D.). Group rates are available, and students with proper I.D. may purchase Rush Tickets for $8.00 five minutes before curtain (based on availability). All performances take place at The Adrienne, 2030 Sansom Street, Philadelphia.

Partial Season Subscriptions are now available for the remaining shows in InterAct's 19th Season, ranging from $28 - $48 for a 2-Show Subscription. Reservations or more information can be obtained by calling 215-568-8079, by dropping by the InterAct Theatre Company box office at The Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., Philadelphia, PA, or by visiting InterAct Theatre Company's website at www.InterActTheatre.org.

RELEVENT BIOGRAPHIES
Actors Theatre of Louisville (Co-Producer), one of the nation's leading theatres prominent for its presentation of new works, has premiered over 300 new plays since 1976 in its world renowned Humana Festival of New American Plays. These premieres include three Pulitzer Prize winners — The Gin Game by D. L. Coburn, Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley and Dinner with Friends by Donald Margulies — as well as Marsha Norman's Getting Out, John Pielmeier's Agnes of God, William Mastrosimone's Extremities, Jane Martin's Keely & Du, Tony Kushner's Slavs! and Charles L. Mee’s Big Love and Hotel Cassiopeia. Actors Theatre has been the recipient of the prestigious Margo Jones Award, the Shubert Foundation's James N. Vaughan Memorial Award, and the 1980 Tony Award for exceptional achievement. During its season, the professional company presents a diverse array of contemporary and classical works.

Sherry Kramer (Playwright) is the author of works that have been seen in theatres across the country and abroad, including The Yale Repertory Theater, Soho Repertory Company, Ensemble Studio Theater, New York's Second Stage Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and The Theatre of the First Amendment. Ms. Kramer is a recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts and McKnight Fellowships. She was also the recipient of the Weissberger Playwriting Award and a New York Drama League Award for What a Man Weighs, the L.A. Women in Theater New Play Award for The Wall of Water and the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award for David’s Red Haired Death. Ms. Kramer was the first national member of New Dramatists and teaches playwriting at Bennington College as well as at the Iowa Playwrights Workshop and the Michener Center for Writers at University of Texas, Austin. Her other plays include The Ruling Passion, Napoleon’s China (collaboration with Ann Haskell and Rebecca Newton), Partial Objects, The World at Absolute Zero, About Spontaneous Combustion, Nano and Nicki in Boca Raton, The Release of a Live Performance, The Law Makes Evening Fall, and a music/theater adaptation of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita with composer Margaret Pine.

Tom Moore (Director) has been the director of many regional theatre productions, including multiple productions at the Mark Taper Forum/Ahmanson Theatre, American Conservatory Theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Guthrie Theater, Arena Stage, Old Globe Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Santa Fe Stages, American Repertory Theatre, Peterborough Players (Artistic Director) and The Antaeus Company. Broadway: ‘Night Mother (Pulitzer Prize and Tony nomination); the original Grease, Over Here (Tony nomination), Once in a Lifetime, Division Street, Moon Over Buffalo, Octette Bridge Club and Frankenstein. Film: Including ‘Night Mother and Geppetto. Television: including E.R. (Emmy Nomination), L.A. Law (Emmy nomination), Mad about You (Emmy nomination), Huff, Gilmore Girls, Cheers, Ally McBeal, Wonder Years (Humanitas Prize), Northern Exposure, Dharma and Greg, Picket Fences, Cybill, Felicity and Suddenly Susan. Other Theatre: Peterborough Players (Artistic Director). Additional Credits: B.A. Purdue University, D.F.A. (Honorary), M.F.A. Yale School of Drama, American Film Institute.

Lori Wilner (playing Sherry), who recently completed her Actors Theatre of Louisville debut in this production of WHEN SOMETHING WONDERFUL ENDS, has been seen on Broadway in The Diary of Anne Frank, Awake and Sing, Those Were the Days and Fiddler on the Roof, where she played Golde opposite Tony Award winner Harvey Fierstein's Tevye. Ms. Wilner received a Goldy Award, Drama-Logue Award, and a Drama Desk Award nomination for her performance in Off-Broadway’s Hannah Senesh, a one-woman show she co-created. Her other Off-Broadway credits include The Yiddish Trojan Women; Bubbe Meises, Bubbe Stories; Hannah… 1939; The Witch; Milk and Honey; and Cricket on the Hearth. Regionally, Ms. Wilner has appeared in Brighton Beach Memoirs, Broadway Bound, The Glass Menagerie, Conversations with My Father, The Heidi Chronicles, Lost in Yonkers, The Sisters Rosensweig, The Memory of Water, The Immigrant, Broken Glass, The Sweepers, The Butterfingers Angel, Waiting for the Parade and Quilters. She also appeared in Woody Guthrie’s ‘American Song,’ The Last Survivor and Swing Alley; and at Lincoln Center, Ms. Wilner was featured in Everett Beekin, Carmen (Zefirelli) and Tribute to Rabin.

The design team for WHEN SOMETHING WONDERFUL ENDS includes Scenic Design by Paul Owen, Costume Design by Lorraine Venberg, Lighting Design by Brian J. Lilienthal, Video Design by Jason Czaja, and Properties Design by Mark Walston. The production will be Stage Managed by Michele Traub. Andy Campbell will serve as Technical Director.

ABOUT INTERACT THEATRE COMPANY
Founded in 1988, InterAct is a theatre for today's world, producing new and contemporary plays that explore the social, political, and cultural issues of our time. InterAct's aim is to educate as well as entertain its audiences by producing world-class, thought-provoking productions, and by using theatre as a tool to foster positive social change. Through its artistic and educational programs InterAct seeks to make a significant contribution to the cultural life of Philadelphia and to the American theatre.

WHAT’S COMING UP NEXT AT INTERACT
InterAct concludes its 2006/2007 Season in May 2007 with the East Coast Premiere of SKIN IN FLAMES, written by Guillem Clua and translated by DJ Sanders.

Due to the nature of live theatre, play selection, performance and casting are subject to change.

Go to News Releases»