More Information About Blur

Description

When teenage Dot and her overprotective mother learn that Dot suffers from Leber's Optic Atrophy, a genetic disorder that causes the gradual loss of sight, the young girl is forced to grow up very quickly. Saddled with the frightening eventuality of her blindness, Dot is thrust into the threatening and ambiguous world of adolescence. As the safety of her family and her faith dissolve around her, Dot falls in love, breaks from her mother, and learns what it is to need help and to help others. Ultimately, it is her faith in those she loves that allows her to slow everything down, put everything in order, and finally to see the world with a serene clarity.

Blur initially caught the spotlight when it was included in the Public Theater's New Work Now Festival and then premiered at The Manhattan Theater Club in 2001. Since then Blur has proved a success at regional theaters across the country, and Meadows Basement is thrilled to bring Ms. Marnich's play to Los Angeles audiences for the first time.

Amy Feinberg, Producing Artistic Director of New York's Hypothetical Theatre explains, "Melanie Marnich belongs to that contingent of American playwrights whose trademark utilization of language weaves a tapestry that infuses the theatre with a poetic spell, enmeshing their characters and hypnotizing the audience."

Marnich's other plays include Quake, Beautiful Again, Season, and most recently Tallgrass Gothic, which premiered at the 2004 Humana Festival. Marnich's major awards include two Samuel Goldwyn writing awards, two Jerome Fellowships, a McKnight Advancement Grant, inclusion in Lincoln Center's American Living Room festival, and the Francesca Primus Award. She received her MFA in playwriting from the University of California, San Diego and now lives and teaches in Minneapolis, where she is a Core Member of The Playwrights' Center.

Meadows Basement's production will be directed by founding company member Ira Steck. Steck has been seen on stage in five of Meadows Basement's past six productions, and directed the company's 2003 production of Anton Chekhov's The Bear.
"What I initially found so refreshing about Blur was its playful energy and total lack of cynicism", explains Steck, "The play is at times beautiful, painful, poetic, and also completely silly. So, while the story is bold and moving - it's also funny and never takes itself too seriously".

Meadows Basement's previous productions have received impressive critical response, and according to LA WEEKLY "epitomize the best of the city's seat-of-the-pants theater-making". Los Angeles Times praised the "intrepid... nimble company" for its "crisp and funny staging" of Isabella's Fortune, and Eighteen was nominated for six LA Weekly awards including Production of the Year.

The cast includes (in alphabetical order): Brett Aune, Juliana Bellinger, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Jenni Kirk, and Matt Saunders.

About the Ticket Supplier: Meadows Basement

Formed in 2001 by graduates of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts in Dallas, Texas, Meadows Basement is a collective of artists bound by a common aesthetic and shared passion for live theatre. Meadows Basement is committed to sustaining the tradition of live theatre in Los Angeles through the production of new works - focusing primarily on world and west-coast premieres of exciting up and coming young playwrights' work.

Last year, Meadows Basement's was nominated for six LA Weekly Awards, including Production of the Year for their production of "Eighteen", and their hit "Isabella's Fortune" lead LA Weekly to feature the company in an article about "LA's best ensembles."