SWING STATE - STAGED READING | NEW WORKS
(Pay What You Wish Enabled on ALL Performances)
This new American play recently closed in New York City and is making its way to our stage in a professional stage reading directed by Vito Zingarelli. In ‘Swing State,’ Rebecca Gilman looks for hope to outweigh despair in this contemporary portrait of America’s heartland in a time when it feels like everyone’s way of life is in danger of disappearing.
Recently widowed, Peg tends to the 40 acres of native prairie that rises behind her rural Wisconsin home. Her solitary days are interrupted only by visits from Ryan, a family friend with a checkered past. When her late husband’s footlocker is ransacked in her barn, she places a call to the local authorities—unwittingly setting off a series of events that will forever change their lives. As Peg and Ryan fight to regain each other's trust, they learn how to help one another in a new and meaningful way and how to forge a sense of hope.
Tickets Available:
WICA Star: $30
Standard: $20
Youth 18 and Under: Free
THURSDAY
JUNE 20TH
(Opening)
FRIDAY
JUNE 21ST
SATURDAY
JUNE 22ND
SUNDAY
JUNE 23RD
(Closing)
cast
Peg Smith, played by Marianne Owen
Ryan Severson, played by Jameson Cook
Sheriff Kris Callahan Wisnefski, played by Melanie Lowey
Deputy Dani Wisnefski, played by Valerie Ryan Miller
Stage Directions, by Helen Roundhill
Special Event | Show Dates
THURSDAY, JUNE 20TH (Opening NIGHT):
JOIN US FOR A post-play discussion featuring playwright Rebecca Gilman!
sUNDAY, JUNE 23RD (cLOSING NIGHT):
FINAL SHOW followed BY a community conversation featuring staff froM Whidbey Environmental Action Network, Pacific Rim Institute and Whidbey Camano Land Trust!
MEDIA REVIEWS
“Swing State—frugal with themes, meticulous about motivation, minutely sensitive to the timing of revelations—could serve as a case study in dramatic construction.”
—The New York Times
“This deeply complex … play, peopled with characters and ideas that gradually rise to the surface in a surprising climax, will leave audiences moved and saddened, only to be assuaged during the play’s gentler final moments.”
—Chicago Theatre Review
“Perfect for this divisive and antagonistic point in history, where good intentions are often nowhere near enough.”
—ChicagoOnStage
“Swing State focuses, with refreshing directness and immense grace, on issues that have been dividing humankind since long before our republic was formed: community and loss, and how we all struggle to sustain a sense of the former and deal with the latter.”
—The New York Sun
“Gilman’s drama takes audiences on a wayward chase through the pits and peaks of humanity to find the culprit.”
—New York Theatre Guide
“Like the dwindling prairie land, of which there is only four percent remaining in the U.S., the characters in the play must learn to fight the droughts and fires of life in order to regrow and survive.”
—New York Theatre Guide
“Swing State is perhaps the first of the great American post-COVID plays, the first work I’ve seen not just to wrestle with what happened during the pandemic but also to explore, and call out, the fundamental changes it has wrought on our collective psyche.”
—Chicago Tribune
Vito Zingarelli
(Director)
Vito Zingarelli is a director and producing director who championed new play development and mounted dozens of seasons of Classical, Contemporary and Musical Theater across North America since 1980. On the WICA stage he has directed love is a place: an e.e cummings cabaret, The Understudy, Red and the premiere of Apostrophe. Vito also served as Executive Director for WICA when it was first opening in 1997/98. He served more recently as program director at Hedgebrook for 13 years and prior to that, taught at NYU-Tisch School of the Arts and was Director of Production for North America's largest resident theatre company, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada. Vito served as Seattle Repertory’s first Production Manager when the Bagley Wright Theater was built and where he worked with Robert Egan to create their new play development program, NP3, New Plays in Process Project.
Rebecca Gilman
(Playwright)
Rebecca Gilman’s plays include Swing State, Luna Gale, Boy Gets Girl, Twilight Bowl, Spinning Into Butter, Blue Surge, The Glory of Living, The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Dollhouse, The Crowd You’re in With and A Woman of the World. Her plays have been widely produced, including by the Goodman Theatre, the Royal Court Theatre, Lincoln Center Theater, Audible Theater, the Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Hampstead Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, The Acting Company, New York Theatre Workshop and MCC Theater. Among her many awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award, the Harper Lee Award, the Scott McPherson Award, the Prince Prize for Commissioning New Work, the Roger L. Stevens Award, the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright and the George Devine Award. Boy Gets Girl received an Olivier nomination for Best New Play, and she was a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for The Glory of Living. Gilman received her MFA in playwriting from the University of Iowa, and she is an artistic associate at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.
