SPMG Theater: Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Pepperdine Theatre Department
Tuesday, January 24–Saturday, January 28, 2023 by writer Sarah Ruhl, directed by Nicolas Ryan Few.
Lindhurst Theatre Tickets: $15 Show Time: 7:30 pmJust $48 for all four Theatre Department Series performances. Call 310.506.4522.
An incessantly ringing cell phone in a quiet café. A stranger at the next table who has had enough. And a dead man. So begins Dead Man’s Cell Phone, a wildly imaginative comedy by MacArthur fellow Sarah Ruhl.
When Jean finally picks up the dead man’s phone, her days become intertwined with his past and the life that goes on without him. As an employee at the Holocaust museum, Jean is well acquainted with the idea of morality and redemption—but the dead man’s funeral forces her to confront her long-standing assumptions.
With twists and turns and a bit of whimsy, this off-the-wall play explores our need to connect in a technologically-obsessed world.
This production contains profanity.
No late seating allowed. Join a talk back with the actors and director after the Wednesday, January 25 performance.
About Writer Sarah Ruhl
Sarah Ruhl is an award-winning American playwright, author, essayist, and professor. Her plays include The Oldest Boy, Dear Elizabeth, Stage Kiss, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2010); The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005; Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); Passion Play (Pen American Award, Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center); Dead Man’s Cell Phone (Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play); Melancholy Play;Demeter in the City (nine NAACP Image Award nominations); Scenes From Court Life; How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday; Eurydice; Orlando; and Late: a cowboy song.
Her plays have been produced on Broadway and across the country as well as internationally, and translated into fourteen languages. Originally from Chicago, Ms. Ruhl received her M.F.A. from Brown University, where she studied with Paula Vogel. She is the recipient of a Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a PEN Center Award for mid-career playwrights, a Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, and a Lilly award.
She is a member of 13P and New Dramatists and won the MacArthur Fellowship in 2006. She teaches at Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family. (Official Headshot by Greg Constanzo)
About Director Nic Few
Nic Few is a native of Atlanta, Georgia where he attended and graduated from Clark Atlanta University with a Master’s in Education Administration as well as a Masters in Fine Arts from Brown University in Rhode Island. While attending Brown, Nic was offered many opportunities to work at major flagship theaters nationally as well as internationally performing a variety of works from Shakespeare to August Wilson.
As a member of the Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), Nic has been afforded a variety of opportunities in film, television, and web series. Among his most recent projects are: NBC’s Chicago Med, ABC’s “The Catch”, Warner Brothers Picture’s “CHIPS” and InHale Entertainment & Full Frequency Media’s award-winning shorts, “90 Days” and “Burden” His past credits include, “Balls to The Wall”, “The Undying”, “The Chadwick Chronicles”, TV Land’s “The Exes”, CBS’s “Eleventh Hour”, NBC’s “Go On”, TNT’s “Major Crimes” and TBS’s “Blotter!”
His regional, national and international theater credits include, Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Nights Dream”, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, “Romeo and Juliet” and Julius Ceasar”, “Black Birds”, Molière’s “Misanthrope”, “Ends Eve”, “Sex Acts”, Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, “The Ballad of Emmit Till”, “Black Nativity”, “The America Play”, “Topdog Underdog”, “Confluence”, “Measure for Measure”, “Tartuffe”, “Tambourines to Glory”, “Spunk” and “The Cherry Orchard”.
Most importantly, Nic is a proud visiting professor of theatre at Pepperdine University.
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