Feed your secret voyeur with an inside look at the twisted and incisive mind of Kenneth Tynan, arguably the 20th century’s greatest theatre critic. Through his incomparable wit, stellar taste, and a fair bit of controversy, Tynan shaped the landscape of theatre in his native Great Britain and the United States. In this revealing adaptation of his diaries, the critic focuses his razor-sharp words on his own life. Tynan divulges all—from his own scandalous behavior and love affairs to the best celebrity dirt. Beloved Washington actor and New York stage star Philip Goodwin plays Kenneth Tynan in an unforgettable performance.
Studio Special Events bring unique performances and one-of-a-kind events from around the world to DC.
The inaugural 2010-2011 season of new Artistic Director David Muse was generously underwritten by Jaylee Mead, and Robert and Arlene Kogod, with additional underwriting from The Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation, Stanley and Rosemary Marcuss, and Vicki and Roger Sant.
This production of Venus in Fur was generously underwritten by an Anonymous Donor.
Richard Nelson’s plays have been produced on Broadway, Off Broadway, in the West End, by numerous national theatres across Europe, and at major theatres in Japan, Israel, and Russia. Ten of his plays have been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he is an Honorary Associate Artist.
The Public Theater commissioned a four-play cycle about the Apple family, which includes That Hopey Changey Thing, Sweet and Sad, Sorry, and the upcoming Regular Singing. Mr. Nelson’s other plays include Tynan (Studio Theatre, 2011), Principia Scriptoriae (Studio Theatre, 1989), Farewell to the Theatre, Nikolai and the Others, Frank’s Home, Goodnight Children Everywhere (Olivier Award, Best Play), The General From America, New England, Two Shakespearean Actors, and Some Americans Abroad. He has written the musicals Unfinished Piece for a Player Piano, James Joyce’s The Dead (Tony, Best Book of a Musical), and My Life with Albertine.
Mr. Nelson has translated numerous plays and co-translated a series of Russian classical plays with the eminent translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. His screenplays include an adaptation of Ethan Frome, starring Liam Neeson and Patricia Arquette, and Hyde Park on Hudson, starring Bill Murray and Laura Linney. His honors include two Obie Awards, a Lucille Lortel Award, a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lila Wallace-Readers’ Digest Writers Award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, and the PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award.
(As of November 2013)
Colin Chambers is a former journalist and drama critic who served as Literary Manager for the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1981-1997. With Richard Nelson, he co-wrote Kenneth's First Play and Tynan (Royal Shakespeare Company 1997 and 2004). Chamber’s translations and adaptations include The Learned Ladies (Royal Shakespeare Company), the three Figaro plays by Beaumarchais, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Treasure, and The Mad World of John Maddison Morton. His books include The Story Of Unity Theatre; the award-winning Peggy: The Life Of Peggy Ramsay, Play Agent; The Continuum Companion to Twentieth-Century Theatre (Editor); and Inside The Royal Shakespeare Company. He is Senior Research Fellow in Theatre at De Montfort University, Leicester.
(As of January 2011)
Paul Mullins returns to The Studio Theatre, where he directed The Solid Gold Cadillac, The Seafarer, This Is How It Goes, Fat Pig, and The Russian National Postal Service. He is a company member of The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, where he has directed The Lion in Winter, Noises Off, Private Lives, The Time of Your Life, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Richard II, Illyria, King John, The Illusion, Tartuffe, Rhinoceros, Measure for Measure, and The Threepenny Opera. Other regional work includes Twelfth Night, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure, and Macbeth at The Old Globe; You Can’t Take it With You at the Chautauqua Theatre Company; The Comedy of Errors at the Connecticut Repertory Theatre; Twelfth Night at The State Theatre; Third, Trying, True West, and Lettice and Lovage at Portland Stage Company; Reckless, The Swan, and All’s Well That Ends Well at American Stage; A Month in the Country and Summerfolk at The Yale School of Drama; and As You Like It at The Juilliard School.
(As of January 2011)
Philip Goodwin was last seen at The Studio Theatre in The Seafarer. Previous Studio credits include Ivanov, The Play About the Baby, The Lisbon Traviata, and The Puppetmaster of Lodz. Mr. Goodwin has been seen on Broadway in The Diary of Anne Frank, The School for Scandal, and Tartuffe. Off Broadway he has appeared in Cymbeline, Pericles, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear (with Kevin Kline) for the Public Theater; The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek and A Light Shining in Buckinghamshire at New York Theatre Workshop; Drowning at Signature Theatre; as Henry VI for Theatre for a New Audience (Drama Desk Nomination) and Grace at MCC. He is a company member at The Shakespeare Theatre Company, where he has appeared in many roles including Malvolio in Twelfth Night (Helen Hayes Award) and the title characters in King John and Timon of Athens (Helen Hayes Award). Other Washington appearances include Golden Child at The Kennedy Center and Passion for The Kennedy Center’s Sondheim Celebration. Other regional theatre includes the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Hartford Stage, Great Lakes Theatre Festival, Guthrie Theater and Intiman Theatre of Seattle. He has appeared in the films Diary of a City Priest, Men in Black II, The Pink Panther, and The Pink Panther 2, the television adaptation of Hamlet for PBS, and in the television series Law & Order and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
(As of January 2011)
Luciana Stecconi’s previous designs for Studio Theatre include The Effect, Cloud 9, Hedda Gabler, Bad Jews, An Iliad, Lungs, The History of Kisses, In the Red and Brown Water, The Year of Magical Thinking, Amnesia Curiosa, Souvenir, Contractions, and Crestfall, among others. She has designed for Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Round House Theatre, Signature Theatre, The Kennedy Center Theatre for Young Audiences, Mosaic Theater, Theater J, Everyman Theatre, Olney Theatre Center, Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Georgetown University, Catholic University, American University, Imagination Stage, and many more. She’s the Assistant Professor in Scenic Design at Emerson College. Stecconi holds an MFA in design from Brandeis University and is a member of USA Local 829.
(As of December 2018)
Michael Giannitti was Resident Lighting Designer at Studio Theatre from 2006-2010; since 1991 he has designed 45 productions at Studio, including The Hard Problem, Jumpers For Goalposts, Water by the Spoonful, The New Electric Ballroom, American Buffalo, Reasons to Be Pretty, Rock ‘n’ Roll, The Pillowman, and Seven Guitars (Helen Hayes Award nomination). He designed lighting for the Broadway premiere of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. His Off Broadway credits include Cross That River and Sounding Beckett. He has designed extensively for Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Dorset Theatre Festival, Capital Rep, Trinity Rep, Shakespeare & Company, and the Weston Playhouse. Giannitti has also designed for Arkansas Rep, Barrington Stage, Chautauqua Theatre Company, Virginia Stage, Indiana Rep, Portland Stage, George Street, Yale Repertory Theatre, Olney Theatre Center, and the Spoleto Festival. He has been on the faculty at Bennington College in Vermont since 1992. As a Fulbright Specialist, he taught in Romania and New Zealand, and has been a guest lecturer at the Guangxi Arts Institute in China.
(As of August 2018)
Brandee Mathies has been Studio’s Costume Shop Manager since 1994. He has designed MotherStruck, This Is Our Youth, The Year of Magical Thinking, Stoop Stories, Rimers of Eldritch, A Number, The Syringa Tree, and Comic Briefs for Studio Theatre, as well as Moth, Contractions, A Beautiful View, Crestfall, and Polaroid Stories for Studio 2ndStage. DC area credits include Satchmo at the Waldorf at Mosaic Theater Co (Costume Designer); Anything Goes and Spunk (Assistant Designer) at Howard University; The Wiz at Duke Ellington School of the Arts (Costume Designer); Blues for an Alabama Sky and Sunday in the Park with George (First Hand) at Arena Stage; and Black Nativity (Assistant Designer) at The Kennedy Center.
(As of September 2016)
Gil Thompson designed more than 70 productions at The Studio Theatre over the last 20 years, for which he received six Helen Hays Award nominations. He was awarded the Helen Hayes Award for The Studio Theatre’s Indian Ink. More recently, his work was heard at The Studio Theatre in Superior Donuts, Moonlight, Rock’n’Roll, Grey Gardens, The Road to Mecca, The History Boys, Shining City, The Pillowman, Souvenir, and A Number. He was sound engineer for The Passion of the Crawford, and he also designed lights and sound for Crestfall, directed by Joy Zinoman, for The Studio 2ndStage. Other credits include Black Milk, Far Away, Privates on Parade and The Invention of Love at The Studio Theatre; Angel’s Voices and Children of the Sun at The Kennedy Center and several productions at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. He has also worked at The Shakespeare Theatre Company, Source Theatre, Horizons Theatre, Theater of the First Amendment and The Opera Camerata of Washington. He is Production Stage Manager for The Christmas Revels and Resident Lighting Designer and Technical Director for Sidwell Friends School.
(As of November 2010)
Erik Trester previously designed projections for the Studio Theatre productions of The Night Watcher, Rock ‘n’ Roll, Grey Gardens, A Number, This Is How It Goes, and The Long Christmas Ride Home. His Studio 2ndStage credits include The Rocky Horror Show, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Passing Strange, Fucking A, Jerry Springer: The Opera, Reefer Madness: The Musical, Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, and autobahn. Mr. Trester is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin.
(As of January 2014)
Sarah Wallace is The Studio Theatre’s Associate Literary Manager/Dramaturg and has served as dramaturg for Adding Machine, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Blackbird, among others. She has also worked with American Repertory Theater, Guthrie Theater, and Seattle Repertory Theatre. She has lectured on theatre at Harvard, Brandeis, and Boston Universities. Ms. Wallace holds an M.F.A. from the American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art Theatre Institute at Harvard University and a B.A. from Oberlin College.
(As of April 2011)