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| | Pacific Resident Theatre Presents
Mrs. Warren's Profession
by George Bernard Shaw
Directed by Michael Rothhaar
In Victorian England, where women enjoy few legal rights, Kitty Warren has built an international business empire. When her daughter Vivie graduates from Cambridge, she presses her mother for answers as to their family background. The truth of how her mother survived poverty is difficult to hear; but it’s not the whole story. Shaw’s 1893 play takes a surprisingly modern view of the choices a woman must make, faced with little or no options before her, and the moral implications of economic survival.
Mrs. Warren’s Profession is a witty, brilliant, and insightful account of two women (PRT’s production features real-life mother and daughter Cyndy Fujikawa and Nell Murphy) at different points in life, who insist on choosing their own destinies. The play remains every bit as resonant and essential as it was 130 years ago. That these strong women, mother and daughter, stand opposed to each other equally armored, makes for a thrilling, poignant and unforgettable evening of one of Shaw’s greatest plays. | Buy Tickets |
| | The Co-op of Pacific Resident Theatre Presents
Poor Poor Lear
A ONE-WOMAN SHOW
by Nina Sallinen and Katja Krohn
with passages by William Shakespeare
Translation and adaptation by Nina Sallinen
Directed by Katja Krohn
Performed by Nina Sallinen
Produced by Scott Jackson and Nina Sallinen
In this original dark comedy, actress Nina Sallinen portrays a 90 year-old Grande Dame (also named Nina Sallinen) of the Scandinavian Theater. The old actress has brazenly chosen Shakespeare’s King Lear as the material for her final artistic farewell performance. She has a special interest in the theme as she believes her own two daughters to be just as greedy and neglectful as King Lear’s. The performance, which she stages in her own apartment, unintentionally highlights the artist’s own life story, as she gradually becomes cognizant of the deeper parallels between her life and that of King Lear’s. Instead of shaking up her own daughters with her performance, the old diva shakes up herself. Her priorities and past choices come into question. | Buy Tickets |
| | Last Night Was Only A Comedy
by Greer Sinclair
-FIRST LIGHT FESTIVAL-
Summer in Los Angeles, 1932. Film star Jean Harlow prepares to marry producer Paul Bern, their romance a mystery at the intersection of public and private life, and an exercise in what the studio system (and her mother) can control. As Jean and Paul try to protect each other from the gears of show business, a surprising series of revelations brings the darkness straight to their doorstep: the secret past Paul Bern has tried desperately to escape.
LAST NIGHT WAS ONLY A COMEDY investigates love and murder, film history and the making of iconography, in a darkly comedic and Gothic interpretation of the crime and cover-up that shaped early Hollywood. | Buy Tickets |
| | The Foursome of the Apocalypse
by Matt Letscher
-FIRST LIGHT FESTIVAL-
The Big Duffer has been a golf tournament among friends for 30 years, but what was once a group of forty has been whittled down by time, death and disinterest to a final four players in the very last Big Duffer.  Instead of a fond farewell, the day turns into a revelation of secrets and grievances that have long been brewing. When the gambling reaches an untenable number, an unlikely winner emerges, but these “friendships” might not. | Buy Tickets |
| | Roy Schtickle's Finest Moments
by Vince Melocchi
-FIRST LIGHT FESTIVAL-
When a collector finds a rare baseball card, his life changes in ways he never imagined. | Buy Tickets |
| | The Change
by Tracy Poverstein
-FIRST LIGHT FESTIVAL-
Four longtime friends trade their luxury spa weekend for an Outward Bound adventure in Joshua Tree. Armed with menopausal rage and absolutely no survival skills, they brave the desert, confront their fears, and discover what it really means to let go. The Change is a funny and heartfelt new play about friendship, becoming vintage, and proving that the next chapter might be the wildest one yet. | Buy Tickets |
| | Mansplaining Menopause
by Joe Gold
-FIRST LIGHT FESTIVAL-
When Kelly wakes Paul at three in the morning, fanning herself by the window during a hot flash, she informs him that she intends to go on hormone replacement therapy. But Paul knows that Kelly’s primary care doctor is against that due to Kelly’s medical history - she had a life-threatening blood clot. Since Kelly has a follow-up with her gynecologist the next morning, Paul insists on staying up through the night researching the history of hormone replacement therapy, the flawed Women’s Health Initiative study, and navigating multiple conflicting medical opinions from Kelly’s various doctors. Meanwhile, Kelly fights for her right to make her own medical decisions while she learns about the misogynistic history of women’s health. But since Paul is the playwright, literally putting words into Kelly’s mouth, can she gain autonomy over her body and her decisions, or is she at the mercy of her husband, like so many generations before her? | Buy Tickets |