Gigi Fusco Meese Directs Olio Theatre Works' INTIMATELY WILDE, Now thru 1/27

Olio Theatre Works welcomes award-winning director Gigi Fusco Meese as director when it brings back the timely drama INTIMATELY WILDE to the Long Beach Playhouse's Studio Theatre tonight, January 11th - 27, 2013 as a part of the 2nd Annual "People's Theatrical Collaborative".

In addition to her accomplishment as a theatre director, Ms. Fusco Meese also served as the Managing Director of the Long Beach Playhouse for eight years and now serves as Director of Community/Public Relations for Musical Theatre West, Long Beach's premiere Broadway musical theatre company. She was also recently elected to the Board of Directors for the Long Beach Arts Council and was the "Distinguished Arts Professional of the Year" recipient from the Arts Council in 2006. Ms. Fusco Meese has directed dozens of productions in theatres across Southern California including the Newport Beach Theatre Arts Center, The Huntington Beach Playhouse, The Long Beach Playhouse and the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse. Olio Theatre Works is thrilled to be added to this prestigious list.

INTIMATELY WILDE explores contemporary issues concerning art, equality and sexual politics through the unique lens of England's Victorian age. In the late 19th century, Oscar Wilde, famed poet and playwright, was the central figure in a turbulent love affair with the young and rebellious aristocrat Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, and as a result was thrown into the center of three highly publicized trials during the height of the Victorian era in London.

In the final hours of Wilde's imprisonment for "gross indecency", INTIMATELY WILDE examines the choices he made for honor, the destruction of his fragile egg-shell world, and the reality of what one will do when he becomes a "slave to love." But INTIMATELY WILDE is not a story of punishment or regret. Rather, it celebrates the force of Wilde's spirit and his determination to remain true to himself, his art and the two people he cherishes above all else: his wife and his lover.

For the first time since the Los Angeles Premiere in 2009, audiences can explore the passion, wit, struggle and earnestness of one man's journey to demand freedom of expression in the face of an oppressively conservative society. INTIMATELY WILDE offers a hauntingly contemporary voice of experience from an age when the cost of love was very often one's entire life.

Intimately Wilde was written by Olio Theatre Works Founder/Artistic Director Terra Taylor Knudson with direction by Gigi Fusco Meese. Set Design is by Timothy P. Thorn. The cast features Ryan Michael Hartman, Pete Stone, Terra Taylor Knudson and Timothy P. Thorn as "Oscar Wilde".

Performances run from tonight, January 11-27 on Fridays and Saturdays at 8PM and on Sundays at 2PM. General admission tickets are $22 and available by calling 562-494-1014 (option 1) or visiting www.lbplayhouse.org/box-office.

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