La Mirada Theater Presents NOISES OFF, Opens 9/23

LA MIRADA THEATRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS & MC COY RIGBY ENTERTAINMENT will open their 2011-2012 season with one of the funniest comedies of all time, NOISES OFF written by Michael Frayn and directed by Richard Seyd. NOISES OFF will open on Friday, September 23, 2011 (with a press opening on Saturday, September 24) and run through Sunday, October 16, 2011 at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, 14900 La Mirada Blvd in La Mirada.

One of the most inspired farces ever written presents a manic menagerie of itinerant actors rehearsing a flop. Out-of-control egos, memory loss and passionate affairs turn every performance into a high-risk adventure. Progressing from flubbed lines and missed cues in rehearsal to mounting friction between cast members in the final performance, Noises Off is a comic triumph of slamming doors, falling trousers and flying sardines!

ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM

Richard Seyd (Director) is currently directing a rock musical called The Twelve. Most recently directed By The Waters Of Babylon a new play by Robert Schenkkan the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of The Kentucky Cycle at the Geffen Playhouse and previously at Seattle Rep. He has directed productions of Noises Off at San Jose Rep, Pasadena Playhouse, Seattle Rep and commercially at the Marines Memorial Theatre in San Francisco, and a highly successful production of A Reckoning with Jonathon Pryce at the Soho Theatre in London's West End. Previously he directed A Feast of Fools (with Geoff Hoyle) at the Marines Memorial Theatre and at LaJolla Playhouse. Other regional theatre productions include: Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Dinner with Friends (Bay Area Critics Circle Award); The Beauty Queen Of Leenane (Bay Area Critics Circle Award), Collected Stories (Garland Award from BackStage West); Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf and A View From The Bridge. He has also received Drama-Logue, BackStage West and Bay Area Critics Circle Awards for his direction of Cloud Nine, About Face, Noises Off, Oleanna, A View From The Bridge, Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, and A Streetcar Named Desire.

From 1992 - 1997 he served as Associate Artistic Director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. For ACT he directed The Learned Ladies, Dario Fo's The Pope And The Witch, Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Oleanna, Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, Othello, The Matchmaker, and A Streetcar Named Desire.

In the 1980's Richard was Associate Producing Director of the Eureka Theatre, and directed many productions for the company including Cloud Nine (which ran commercially in San Francisco for a year and a half at the Marines Memorial Theater), The Wash, Threepenny Opera, and Dario Fo's About Face.

Other directing credits include The Pickle Family Circus (London Tour), King Lear at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, As You Like It for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, A Midsummer Nights Dream for the California Shakespeare Festival, The Lion In Winter at La Mirada Theatre, Present Laughter and The Presentment for the Pasadena Playhouse, and productions at the Classic Stage Company and the Wonderhorse Theatre's in New York. He has also directed an award-winning 35 mm short film entitled Brass Tacks. Richard holds classes for professional actors in San Francisco and Los Angeles at Richard Seyd Acting Studios.

Michael Frayn (Playwright) was born in London on September 8,1933. After two years of National Service, during which he learned Russian, he read Philosophy at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He then worked as a reporter and columnist for The Guardian and The Observer, publishing several novels including The Tin Men (1965), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award, The Russian Interpreter (1966), which won the Hawthornden Prize, and Towards the End of the Morning (1967). More recent novels include A Landing on the Sun (1991), which won the Sunday Express Book of the Year and Headlong (1999), the story of the discovery of a lost painting by Bruegel, shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. His latest novel, Spies (2002), a story of childhood set in England during the Second World War, won the 2002 Whitbread Novel Award and the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia region, Best Book), and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Book of the Year. Michael Frayn is also the recipient of the 2002 Heywood Hill Literary Prize. His plays include Alphabetical Order (1975), Clouds (1976), Donkeys' Years (1977), Make or Break (1980), Noises Off (1982) and Benefactors (1984). Copenhagen (1998), about the 1941 meeting between German physicist Werner Heisenberg and his Danish counterpart Niels Bohr, first staged at the Royal National Theatre in London, won the 1998 Evening Standard Award for Best Play of the Year and the 2000 Tony Award for Best Play (USA). His play Democracy (2003), is set in 1960s Berlin. His latest play for the Royal National Theatre is Afterlife (2008).

Recent books are Stage Directions: Writing on Theatre 1970-2008 (2008), and Travels with a Typewriter (2009). A book of memoir, My Father's Fortune: A Life, was published in 2010, was shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Biography Award, and won the 2011 PEN/Ackerley Prize.
He has also translated a number of works from Russian, including plays by Chekhov and Tolstoy. His films for television include First and Last (1989), for which he won an Emmy, and an adaptation of his 1991 novel A Landing on the Sun. He also wrote the screenplay for the film Clockwise (1986), a comedy starring John Cleese. Michael Frayn is married to the biographer and critic Claire Tomalin.

The cast of NOISES OFF will feature: Annie Abrams as Brooke, Rona Benson as Poppy, Leland Crooke as Selsdon, Joe Delafield as Tim, Bo Foxworth as Lloyd, James Lancaster as Freddie, Lori Larsen as Dotty, Jeff Marlow as Garry and Maura Vincent as Belinda.

NOISES OFF has assembled an award-winning design team. The Set Design is by John Iacovelli. The Lighting Design is by York Kennedy. The Sound Design is by Josh Bessom. The Costume Design is by Rose Pederson. The stage manager is Lisa Palmire.

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