The Wild Duck

RICHARD NELSON is the author of many plays, including Conversations in Tusculum, Frank’s Home, How Shakespeare Won the West, Rodney’s Wife, Franny’s Way, Madame Melville, Goodnight Children Everywhere (Olivier Award Best Play), The General From America, New England, Left, Misha’s Party (with Alexander Gelman), Columbus and the Discovery of Japan, Two Shakespearean Actors (Tony Nomination, Best Play), Some Americans Abroad (Olivier Nomination, Best Comedy), Principia Scriptoriae. His musicals include James Joyce’s The Dead (with Shaun Davey, Tony Award Best Book of A Musical), My Life With Albertine (with Ricky Ian Gordon), Paradise Found (with Hal Prince, Ellen Fitzhugh and Jonathan Tunick). He has adapted and/or translated numerous classical and contemporary plays including Chekhov’s The Seagull, The Wood Demon, Three Sisters, Strindberg’s Miss Julie, The Father, Goldoni’s Il Campiello, Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro, Pirandello’s Enrico IV, Moliere’s Don Juan, Erdman’s The Suicide, Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist, and Jean-Claude Carriere’s The Controversy of Valladolid. His work for film and television includes Ethan Frome (Miramax Films), Sensibility and Sense and The End of a Sentence (American Playhouse). He has written numerous radio plays for the BBC. He is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a recipient of the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the 2008 PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award. He was born in Chicago.

CHARLES NEWELL has been Artistic Director of Court Theatre since 1994, where he has directed over 40 productions. He made his Chicago directorial debut in 1993 with The Triumph of Love, which won the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Production. Directorial highlights at Court include Porgy & Bess, Three Tall Women, The Illusion, The Year of Magical Thinking, The Wild Duck, Caroline, Or Change, Titus Andronicus, Arcadia, Man of La Mancha, Uncle Vanya, Raisin, The Glass Menagerie, Travesties, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Hamlet, The Invention of Love, The Little Foxes, Nora, and The Misanthrope. Charlie has also directed at the Goodman Theatre (Rock ‘n’ Roll), the Guthrie Theater (Resident Director: The History Cycle, Cymbeline), Arena Stage, John Houseman’s The Acting Company (Staff Repertory Director), the California and Alabama Shakespeare Festivals, Juilliard, and New York University. He is the recipient of the 1992 TCG Alan Schneider Director Award and has served on the Board of Theatre Communications Group, as well as on several panels for the National Endowment for the Arts. Opera directing credits include Marc Blitzstein’s Regina at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Rigoletto at Opera Theatre of St. Louis. Charlie is a multiple Joseph Jefferson Award nominee and recipient. His production of Caroline, or Change at Court was the recipient of 4 Joseph Jefferson Awards, including Best Production and Best Director. This spring at Court Theatre, he will direct both parts of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.

LEIGH BRESLAU is not a set designer. He is design partner at the architecture, engineering & planning firm of Trahan Architects of Chicago and Baton Rouge. Leigh has designed many performing arts venues including Symphony Center in Chicago and the Long Center in Austin, Texas. He has also been involved in renovations of Avery Fisher Hall in New York and the Lyric Opera and Ravinia Festival in Chicago, and was the master planner for Chicago’s Millennium Park. He continues to design theatres and other assembly buildings as well as institutional projects around the country with his new partner, the award-winning architect Trey Trahan. This is his fourth scenic design for Court Theatre, returning to join Charlie after having worked on Uncle Vanya, Titus Andronicus, and The Wild Duck.

JENNIFER TIPTON is well known for her work in theater, dance and opera. Her recent work in opera includes Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette directed by Bart Sher at the Salzberg Festival, La Traviata for the Scottish National Opera directed by David McVicar and the Wooster Group’s La Didone. Her recent work in dance includes Balanchine’s Jewels for the Royal Ballet in London, Jerome Robbins’ Les Noces for the NYC Ballet and Paul Taylor’s Beautiful Renegade. In theater her recent works include David Gordon’s Uncivil Wars at the Kitchen in New York, Beckett Shorts directed by JoAnne Akalaitis at the New York Theater Workshop and Conversations in Tusculum written and directed by Richard Nelson at the Public Theater. Ms. Tipton teaches lighting at the Yale School of Drama. She received the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 2001, the Jerome Robbins Prize in 2003 and in April 2004 the Mayor’s Award for Arts and Culture in New York City. This year she was made a USA Gracie Fellow and a MacArthur Fellow.

JACQUELINE FIRKINS is pleased to return for her seventh season at Court Theatre. She also designed costumes for last season’s production of Porgy and Bess. Design work includes: sets and/or costumes for Victory Gardens Theater, TimeLine Theatre Company, House Theatre of Chicago, Marin Theatre Company, Hartford Stage, Dallas Theater Center, Portland Center Stage, Goodman Theatre, Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Westport Playhouse, Shakespeare & Company, Shakespeare Festival of Tulane, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Yale Repertory Theater, New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, Brave New Repertory, About Face Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Yale School of Drama, and Dorset Theatre Festival. Jacqueline is a recipient of a 2001 Princess Grace Award and heads the design program at Loyola University Chicago.

KATE BREDESON is Resident Dramaturg at Court Theatre and Lecturer in the Theatre and Performance Studies Program at the University of Chicago. She comes to Chicago after working as Assistant Professor of Theatre at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and living in Paris for several years before that. She has earned awards including a Fulbright, a residency at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, and fellowships from the Killam Foundation, Mellon Foundation and the Institut Français de Washington. She is currently working on a book about theatre and performance surrounding the May 1968 events in France. Kate holds an MFA and a doctorate in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from the Yale School of Drama, regularly presents at international conferences, and has published articles in Theater, Theatre Symposium, Modern and Contemporary France, The Tennessee Williams Literary Journal, and Time Out Paris. As a dramaturg, she has worked at theatres such as the Guthrie and the Yale Repertory Theatre, and with the Ensemble Company of Performing Arts.