Good Egg

By Dorothy Fortenberry
Directed by Kel Haney

Featuring Andrea Day and Dan McCabe*

Responsible Meg has always taken care of her bipolar younger brother Matt. But when she decides to get pregnant—and have her embryos screened for bipolar disorder—is she taking the idea of "being responsible" too far? A funny and surprising play about bioethics, siblings, and the limits of unconditional love.

Press Representation by Katie Rosin / Kampfire PR.
For press inquiries, please email katie@kampfirefilmspr.com or call 917-438-9223. www.kampfirefilmspr.com

*Actor Appears Courtesy of Actors Equity Association.  Equity Approved Showcase.

Good Egg was performed October 21 – November 7, 2010, at the LABA Theater located at the 14th Street Y at 344 East 14th Street between First and Second Avenues.

** On Thursday, October 28 we welcomed Dr. Igor Galynker, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Family Center for a talkback following the performance.

*** On Monday, November 1, we held Philanthropy Night at Red Fern.  At this performance, we welcomed our past philanthropic partners!

The reviews are in - Good Egg was a hit!

“Guided by an incisive script and Kel Haney's daring direction, McCabe's gigantically physical performance rings like clanging bells, insisting on making us understand, feel what it's like…The arc of this story should be experienced, not drawn in advance. The Red Fern Theatre Company specializes in "issue" plays, with each production raising funds for a related charity….This one is up there, with last year's Miss Evers' Boys, among their best. Go see it!.”  ~ Jon Sobel, Blogcritics

“The acting is effective and the science-driven arguments are refreshingly poignant….Kel Haney's direction is clean and clear, much like Scott Dougan's tidy set. Colin Wambsgans' musical composition is charming and interesting. Andrea Day and Dan McCabe as Meg and Matt do justice to the script and their representative ideologies.”
~ Rachel Merrill Moss, Theatre is Easy

“Andrea Day… is flawless.  Dan McCabe brilliantly essays the very difficult role of a bipolar patient…An engaging and thoroughly professional play with riveting performances and a powerful message that addresses important social themes that need much attention — Good Eggshould certainly be on your list of must-watches this weekend!” 
~ Anjali Koppal and Saurabh Paranjape, The Happiest Medium

Good Egg was registered with the New York Innovative Theatre Awards, new awards specifically for Off-Off-Broadway theatre, and your vote made a difference.  Vote for us at www.nyitawards.org!

We participate in the TDF voucher program.

The Family Center for Bipolar Disorder

For this production, the RFTC has chosen to partner with The Family Center for Bipolar Disorder. The Family Center for Bipolar Disorder is dedicated to the compassionate support, treatment and understanding of bipolar illness within the context of the family. We treat patients and their families with our Family-Inclusive Treatment (FIT) program.

This program was supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

This program was also made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency.

Good Egg was made possible by generous grants from the following foundations:

The Dramatists Guild Fund

The Puffin Foundation

The Josephine Foundation

Cast Bios:

Andrea Day, Meg

New York credits include MIDSUMMER: A Study (new theater house); Live Broadcast (FringeNYC); +30 NYC, The Long Christmas Ride Home (Red Fern Theatre); Macbeth (American Globe Theater) The Cherry Orchard (Columbia Shapiro Theater); The One Minute Play Festival at HERE Arts and Vampire Cowboy's Saloon Series. Regionally Andrea has been seen at Pennsylvania Centre Stage, California Shakespeare Theater, Berkeley Rep, Napa Valley Shakespeare Festival, and Sonoma County Rep. She is an alumna of UC Davis and received her MFA from Penn State University.  Andrea is a producing member of new theater house (www.newtheaterhouse.org) and is TDF's Broadway audiodescriber for the visually impaired.

Dan McCabe*, Matt

Theatre: Saving Throw Versus Love (Fringe), Len, Asleep in Vinyl (2nd Stage), Tea and Sympathy (Keen Company), Pen (Playwright's Horizon), The Dear Boy (2nd Stage) The Fear Project (Barrow Group), Trust (Play Company) Kimberly Akimbo (Hartford Theatreworks), Donnie Darko (A.R.T), The Lieutenant Of Inishmore (St. Louis Rep)

Film and TV: War Eagle, Arkansas, The Namesake, The Cake Eaters, Stephanie Daly, "Nurse Jackie" "Law and Order", "Hope and Faith"

Artistic Team Bios:

Dorothy Fortenberry, Playwright

Dorothy Fortenberry is a Los Angeles-based playwright, originally from Washington, DC. Her work has been developed at Arena Stage, Ars Nova, Geva Theatre, New Jersey Rep, Perishable Theatre, and Studio 42, and produced by Chalk Rep, The Management, and Vital Theatre Company. She is the winner of the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama, and has been nominated for the PONY Fellowship, the Weissberger Award and the Wasserstein Prize. Her plays include Good Egg, Caitlin and the Swan, Bibles and Candy, and the play with music Status Update (aka Large as Life and Twice as Natural) which will be workshopped this winter at the Odyssey Theatre in LA. She received an EST/Sloan commission, a residency at the Djerassi Program, and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Dorothy is an alumna of Youngblood and a member of the Playwrights Union. MFA, Yale School of Drama.

Kel Haney, Director

Kel has directed and developed new work with such theatres as Ensemble Studio Theatre, Youngblood, New Dramatists, New Georges, Ars Nova, The Directors Company, 52nd Street Project, Ma-Yi Theater Company, Vampire Cowboys, Emerging Artists Theatre, Desipina & Company, the NY Fringe Festival & Westport Country Playhouse. She has collaborated with such playwrights as Robert Askins, Nikole Beckwith, Laura Maria Censabella, Carla Ching, Emily Conbere, Dorothy Fortenberry, Mira Gibson, Eric March, Rehana Mirza, Mrinalini Kamath, Jon Kern, Patrick Link, Eugene Oh, Kyoung H. Park, Erica Saleh, Matt Schatz, Emily Chadick Weiss and composer Michael Kooman. Kel was a '08-'09 Ensemble Studio Director in Residence, is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and she served as the SDC Observer on the 2007 Broadway revival of INHERIT THE WIND (Doug Hughes, dir.). Associate Member of SDC. This winter, Kel will serve as the Jonathan Alper Directing Fellow on THE WHIPPING MAN at Manhattan Theatre Club. For more information: www.kelhaney.com

Melanie Moyer Williams, Executive Artistic Director

Melanie, a cum laude graduate of Duke University, is also Founder and Executive Artistic Director of the Red Fern Theatre Company.  Her credits for the company include the New York Premiere of Shirley Lauro’s ALL THROUGH NIGHT, +30NYC, MISS EVERS' BOYS (NYIT and AUDELCO Nominations), AN IDEAL HUSBAND, A PIECE OF MY HEART, WHO WILL CARRY THE WORD?, THE EXONERATED, THE LONG CHRISTMAS RIDE HOME, FOUND A PEANUT, TWO ROOMS, AND PATIENT A.  Most recently, she directed in the ONE MINUTE PLAY festival at the APAC.  In the last year, Melanie has also directed a staged version of Handel’s MESSIAH for Pocket Opera NY and worked with Shirley Lauro on a reading of her new play, THE RADIANT at the Actors’ Studio and Ensemble Studio Theatre.  Other NY Credits include MEMORIAL DAYS and the World Premiere of HENRY KISSINGER (FringeNYC) by John Attanas; MEDEA excerpts for CYPRECO and the New York Public Library; FIVE WOMEN WEARING THE SAME DRESS, WHEN THE WORLD WAS GREEN and ICARUS’S MOTHER.  She directed THAT IS THE QUESTION in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival (named one of the Best in the Festival).  Internationally, she has directed A TRIBUTE TO ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER with the Youth Symphony Orchestra of El Salvador in El Salvador with Wanderlust Theatre Company.  Prior to moving to New York, Melanie was also a founder and Managing Director of the Camden Shakespeare Company in Camden, Maine. 

Eliza Brown, Press Photographer

Eliza is a photographer and set designer. www.elizabrownphotography.wordpress.com

Katherine A. Buechner, Sound Designer

Katherine is a sound designer, composer, and engineer based in Providence, Rhode Island. Recent credits include: Pop!, Lydia, Tartuffe (associate designer, Yale Repertory Theatre); Othello, American Catnip, Three Sisters (Yale School of Drama); Wuthering Heights, Babs the Dodo, The Apocryphal Project (Yale Cabaret); Crime and Punishment (Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre); Speech & Debate (world premier, Brown Summer Playwrights Repertory); Medea, Macbeth, Glass Menagerie (Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium). This is her first time working at Red Fern.

Daniel Cantada, Graphic Designer

Daniel owns and runs Crooked Modern - Visual Communication out of his Jersey City, NJ studio. Crooked Modern specializes in print, identity, book, and apparel design. Daniel has experience working for multitude of distinguished clients with varied demands, always showcasing his talents through his unique and diverse designs. crookedmodern.com

Chuan-Chi Chan, Lighting Designer

Chi is originally from Taiwan. She received her M.F.A. in lighting design from Yale School of Drama, where her design credits include The Servant of Two Masters (Yale Repertory theater), The Bedtrick(Carlotta Festival of New Plays), The Robbers, and Peer Gynt. Other theatre design credits include Woyzeck (Tainan Jen Theater) and The One Jailed by Moonlight (Taiwan Artist Theater). She has worked as a designer, master electrician, and programmer with Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, Assembly Dance Theater, Tainan Jen Theater as well as other performing arts groups.

Katherine Akiko Day, Costume Designer

Katherine has a B.A. in Art History and Film Studies from Dartmouth College and an M.F.A. in Stage Design from the Yale School of Drama where she was the recipient of the Donald and Zorca Oenslager Fellowship in Design.  Her mother being a painter, she has been a lifelong student of Studio Art and Art history.  She had a musical career with the violin, viola, and piano for seventeen years before changing direction in college.  Katherine studied foreign languages abroad in Spain and Italy and taught language and dance at Dartmouth.  There she assisted scenic designers Gerogi Alexi and Pavel Dobrusky.  At Dartmouth, she received the George Schoenhut Service Award for excellence in theater and the Adelbert Ames Fine Arts Award for excellence in the study of Art History.  Her most recent designs include costumes for The Master Builder and the set for The Servant of Two Masters at The Yale Repertory Theater.

Scott Dougan, Scenic Designer

Scott is an artist living and working in New York City, producer and founding member of new theater house (nth).  In film he was an art director for The Back-Up Plan and Downtown Express; he has also worked on First Daughter, Flightplan, Southland Tales, and the upcoming (RED).  In the theater at Yale School of Drama designed sets for Ghost Sonata (2007) and I am a Superhero (2008), in addition to designing sets, costumes and/or projections for 11 productions and serving on the board of the Yale Cabaret.  Scott designed sets and costumes for What You Will: The Twelfth Night Parking Lot Project (new theater house, Ashland, Oregon 2008) and Eurydice (Amherst College, 2008). In 2009, he designed sets for Death of a Salesman (Yale Repertory Theatre), In The Cypher (Nuyoricans Poetry Café), The Seagull (Columbia University), Kafka Parables (Columbia University), The Whale Play (new theater house), and in 2010 sets for Three Sisters (The Studio New York), Are We Here Yet? (PS122), The Blood Dazzler (Voice and Vision, Harlem Stage upcoming),  sets and costumes for Century Egg (Columbia University), costumes for 34 Prayers (Harlem Stage), +30 NYC (The Red Fern Theater), and was associate costume designer on Graceland (LCT3).  He has assisted designers Ming Cho Lee, Derek McLane and Santo Loquasto, at venues including Shakespeare in the Park, The Joffrey Ballet, The New Group, Los Angeles Opera, Williamstown Theater Festival, and the Intiman Theater.   He is the 2008 recipient of the Donald Oenslager Scholarship in Stage Design and the 2009 Donald M. Oenslager Fellowship Prize.  He is a graduate of Amherst College 2004, Yale School of Drama 2009.

Megan Eileen Kosmoski, Assistant Director

Megan Eileen Kosmoski received her BA in Drama from the Catholic University in Washington DC with her thesis in directing. She has also studied at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-Upon-Avon with an emphasis in Shakespeare in Performance. Her most recent directing credits include: Fallen Angels (TheaterVision) and Crumble, Lay Me down Justin Timberlake (CUA). She has worked with theatres in both DC and New York, including Washington Shakespeare Company, Raise/Raze, OperAlterna, Active Cultures, Hudson Stage Guild, TheatreVision, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Mad Cap Players and Summer Opera Theatre Company (DC). Visit her at http://megankosmo.webs.com.

Karl Maier, Choreographer

As a performer Karl has worked with many great directors and choreographers including: Robert Lepage, Andrei Konchalovsky, Mark Dendy, Josh Rhodes, Lisa Rinehart, and Franco Zeffirelli.  He can currently be seen as an aerialist in Lepage’s restaging of Das Rheingold at the Metropolitan Opera.  As a choreographer Karl has presented new works in theatre, concert dance, and children’s theatre throughout New England.  Karl is excited to be working with Red Fern Theatre and Good Egg.

Michal V. Mendelson*, Production Stage Manager

Spacebar (Studio 42); Lenin’s Embalmers, Princes of Waco, Heaven Knows, End Days, Stockton, Thicker Than Water, Lucy, (all Ensemble Studio Theatre); Antigone (Phoenix Theatre Ensemble); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, American Girls, Twelfth Night, Men of Clay (Dog-Run Repertory); Happy Days, The Moonlight Room, The Mystery of Attraction, As You Like It, Four, Isn’t It Romantic, Small Craft Warnings (all Worth Street Theatre); Our Place in Time (Women’s Project); Sophie, Totie, and Belle (Theater 4); Henry V (La Mama, Etc). Regional: Move It and It’s Yours (Passage Theatre Co, Trenton, NJ) The Internationalist, The Moonlight Room (both Fairfield Theatre Co.), Off the Hook (Oldcastle Theatre, VT). Ms. Mendelson has a BA from Brandeis University. She is a proud member of Actors’ Equity.

Kate Pressman, Rehearsal Stage Manager

Kate Pressman is a playwright, stage manager, and puppet maker who received her BFA in Dramatic Writing from SUNY Purchase. At Purchase, her works were featured in a number of showcases and performed in the Thesis Reading series. Her ten minute play Between Moments was presented as part of Make It Play '09 (Playwrights Horizon). She has stage managed for HB Playwright's Foundation, At Hand Theater Company, Strain Theatre Company, and the Ensemble Studio Theatre.

Katie Rosin, Press Representation

Katie Rosin/Kampfire PR was instrumental in the launch of the Broadway musical Brooklyn and the National Tour of Mother Load. She worked on the publicity team for the comedian, Jerry Seinfeld, and his movie Comedian. Off-Broadway highlights include: Modotti, Acorn Theater; GLAAD Award Winner, She Like Girls, Ohio Theater; …Another Man’s Poison, Jay Sharp Theater; Swimming With The Polar Bears, 45 Bleecker Street; Glimpses of the Moon, Algonquin Hotel; NY IT Awards recipient Elizabeth Rex, Center Stage; Mother Load, Sage Theater; Wasps in Bed, Beckett Theater; Anaïs Nin: One Of Her Lives, Beckett Theater; Triple Threat: 2007 Drama Desk Nominee (mis)UNDERSTANDING MAMMY: The Hattie McDaniel Story, Theatre 5.  Kampfire clients include: 3Graces Theatre Co., Astoria Performing Arts Center, Maieutic Theatre Awards, New York Innovative Theatre Awards, Nicu's Spoon, and Planet Connections Theatre Festivity. www.kampfirefilmspr.com For information, discounts and more text KAMPFIRE to 99222.

Colin Wambsgans, Original Music

Colin was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA and grew up playing jazz piano. Currently, he composes music for electronics and assorted ensembles. His work explores the interactions of memory, translation, and timbres, and he often uses field recordings as a basis for composition. This past July, he presented original electronic work at the Darmstadt Summer Music Courses. Recent works for theatre include songs for the play Status Update (workshop at Odessey Theatre, Santa Monica, CA, December 2010) and original music for the play Caitlin and the Swan (The Management, New York, April 2009). He is currently based in Los Angeles, where he performs in the improvisation duo Water + Power, and is pursuing an MFA in composition at CalArts, studying with Michael Pisaro.