The final plays in Richard Nelson’s Apple Family quartet explore the immediate present and evolving future of the United States. Over meals at the family homestead, the tensions and compromises, affections and resentments of the Apple family’s lives play out against a rapidly changing America. The Apple Family Cycle reunites the “generous, feisty ensemble of DC’s finest acting talent” (DC Metro Arts) from Studio’s 2013 production.
Sorry (10/28/15 – 12/13/15): It’s 5am on Election Day 2012. Obama’s bruised reelection campaign is almost won and the Apple siblings have gathered to move their ailing Uncle Benjamin into an assisted care facility. Over orange juice and cold Chinese food, they grapple with their unease about the paths they are taking, as a family and a nation.
Regular Singing (11/4/15 – 12/13/15): Late into the night, the Apple Family keeps vigil for a beloved family member on the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination and raise their voices together one last time—in discussion, dissent, hope, and song.
Explore the first half of The Apple Family Cycle in Studio's 2013-2014 season.
Runtime: This production of Sorry will run approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes with no intermission. Regular Singing will run approximately 2 hours with no intermission
Sorry is generously underwritten
by Stanley and Rosemary Marcuss.
Regular Singing is generously underwritten
by Joan and David Maxwell.
Studio Theatre is also grateful
to John Horman and Toni Ritzenberg
for their additional support.
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)
Serge Seiden directed Studio’s hit production of Bad Jews (which broke Studio box office records) and returned by popular demand in the 2015-2016 season. Bad Jews was nominated for 4 2015 Helen Hayes Awards including Outstanding Director. Seiden also directed all four plays in the Apple Family Cycle: That Hopey Changey Thing and Sweet and Sad (2013) and Sorry and Regular Singing (2015). Seiden is now the Managing Director/Producer of Mosaic Theater Company of DC, the area's only theater devoted to social justice. Seiden directed Everett Quinton's A Tale of Two Cities at Synetic Theater and Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing! at Olney Theatre Center. From 1990 to 2015 Seiden held many positions at Studio Theatre including Production Stage Manager, Literary Manager, and Producing Director. In 2013 he received the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Director/Resident Musical for Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris… at MetroStage. Other Studio Theatre credits include The Motherfucker with the Hat, The Golden Dragon, Superior Donuts, In the Red and Brown Water, Grey Gardens, and My Children! My Africa! He also directed Souvenir: A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins, which received three Helen Hayes Awards and five Helen Hayes Award nominations including Outstanding Director and Outstanding Resident Play; A New Brain, which received a Helen Hayes Award nomination for Outstanding Resident Musical; and Old Wicked Songs, which received seven Helen Hayes nominations, including Outstanding Director. Additional Studio credits include The Long Christmas Ride Home, Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, Black Milk, The Cripple of Inishmaan, The York Realist, Two Sisters and a Piano, Blue Heart, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, and A Class Act. For Studio 2ndStage, Mr. Seiden directed Sixty Miles to Silver Lake, All That I Will Ever Be, This Is Our Youth, Ecstasy, Mad Forest, Hot Fudge, Sincerity Forever, and Durang/Durang. His theatre for young audiences productions at Adventure Theatre MTC—A Little House Christmas and Charlotte’s Web—were both nominated for Helen Hayes Awards for Outstanding Production/Theatre for Young Audiences. He has directed several readings for the annual Zeitgeist Festival at the Goethe-Institut and Moth for the National New Play Network. For 20 years Seiden has been a member of the faculty of the Studio Theatre Acting Conservatory, where he trained as an actor and director. Serge is a graduate of Swarthmore College.
(As of December 2015)
Rick Foucheux appeared at Studio Theatre in The Apple Family Cycle: Sorry, Regular Singing, That Hopey Changey Thing, and Sweet and Sad; Far East; and Take Me Out. He was featured in Signature Theatre's acclaimed revival of Cabaret, and in Freud's Last Session at Theater J and Awake and Sing at the Olney Theatre Center, both directed by Serge Seiden. Mr. Foucheux is a company member at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and also appears regularly at Arena Stage, Shakespeare Theatre Company, and Round House Theatre, where he will appear in Spring 2016 with Sarah Marshall in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. He is a Helen Hayes Award recipient, a Lunt-Fontanne Fellow of the Ten Chimneys Foundation, and teaches acting at George Washington University.
(As of October 2015)
Ted van Griethuysen returns to Studio for The Father after appearing in Sorry, Regular Singing, That Hopey Changey Thing and Sweet and Sad (Helen Hayes Award), The Habit of Art, The Walworth Farce, Moonlight, Rock ‘n’ Roll, The Invention of Love, A Number, The Steward of Christendom, and The Life of Galileo, a role he also played in London, both productions directed by David Salter. He was recently seen on the West End in three one-act plays by Tennessee Williams. A member of the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s permanent acting company since 1987, he has appeared in more than 50 productions, including as Philip II in Don Carlos, John of Gaunt in Richard II, the title role in King Lear, Prospero in The Tempest, Andrew Undershaft in Major Barbara, and Malvolio in Twelfth Night, also at the McCarter Theatre. He spent twenty-five years in New York, appearing on Broadway in Gore Vidal’s Romulus, The Moon Besieged, and Inadmissible Evidence (Drama Desk Award). In 1968, he and his wife Rebecca Thompson founded the Opposites Company, an acting company based on the Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel. He has taught acting privately in New York and at Columbia University, the University of South Carolina, and Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the recipient of seven Helen Hayes Awards, the Will Award, and the Richard Bauer Award for Outstanding Contribution to Washington Theatre.
(As of April 2017)
Sarah Marshall returns to Studio Theatre for Doubt: A Parable after appearing in Admissions last season. Sarah has the honor of having performed at Studio Theatre more than any other performer in its history. Some of her Studio credits include The Apple Family Cycle, Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Prometheus, Betty’s Summer Vacation, Three Sisters, Miss Margarida’s Way, Sylvia, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, The Baltimore Waltz, When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout, My Sister in this House, Playing for Time, A Taste of Honey, The Visit, and Medea. She has performed at many Washington theatres including Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Ford’s Theatre, Round House Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Arena Stage, Folger Theatre, Washington Stage Guild, Signature Theatre, and The Kennedy Center. Sarah has taught acting for 30 years and currently teaches at Georgetown University.
(As of September 2019)
Elizabeth Pierotti's Studio Theatre credits include The Apple Family Cycle: Sweet and Sad, That Hopey Changey Thing, Sorry, and Regular Singing; The Steward of Christendom; and Silence, Cunning, Exile. Other credits include The Women and The Time of Your Life at Arena Stage; The Grapes of Wrath and Inherit the Wind at Ford’s Theatre; The Glass Menagerie and The How and the Why at 1st Stage; Never Swim Alone at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company; The Well of Horniness, Shaker Heights, The Art of Dining, Little Criminals, and Beyond the Pale at Source Theatre; After the Orgy, The Supper, and Come and Go at Scena Theatre; The Taming of the Shrew at Washington Shakespeare Company; Marathon 33 at Horizons Theatre; Etta Jenks at Fourth Wall Productions; Under a Mantle of Stars at Contemporary Arts Theatre; and Hubris at New Playwrights Theatre. Ms. Pierotti trained at the Studio Theatre Acting Conservatory.
(As of October 2015)
Kimberly Schraf has appeared in a number of Studio Theatre productions in her 30 years as a Washington actor, including all four of the Apple Family plays (That Hopey Changey Thing, Sweet and Sad, Sorry, and Regular Singing), The Women, Skylight, The Bacchae, Frozen, and Crestfall (by Hedda Gabler adaptor Mark O’Rowe). Other area productions include The Laramie Project, Our Town, Sabrina Fair, and The Carpetbagger’s Children at Ford’s Theatre; Ah, Wilderness!, The Women, and Molly Sweeney at Arena Stage; Measure for Pleasure (Helen Hayes Award nomination), The Gigli Concert, Freedomland, and Watbanaland at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company; Show Boat (Helen Hayes Award nomination) and Angels in America, Parts I and II at Signature Theatre; The Sisters Rosensweig, After the Fall, Mikveh, and Hannah and Martin at Theater J; The Misanthrope, Better Living, and A Prayer for Owen Meany at Round House Theatre; and Proof, You Can’t Take It With You, Going to Saint Ives, and Light Up the Sky at Everyman Theatre. Her television credits include Homicide: Life on the Street. In the fall, Ms. Schraf will appear in The Diary of Anne Frank at Olney Theatre Center.
(As of April 2016)
Jeremy Webb returned to Studio Theatre for Regular Singing, having played the role of Tim in That Hopey Changey Thing and Sweet and Sad in 2013 (Helen Hayes Award nomination). His previous DC credits include The Visit at Signature Theatre (Helen Hayes Award nomination) and both the title role in Don Juan and Victor in Private Lives at Shakespeare Theatre Company. New York credits include The Visit on Broadway/Actor’s Fund, The Glorious Ones at Lincoln Center Theater (Original Cast Recording), Tabletop for The Working Theatre (Drama Desk Award), The Baltimore Waltz at Signature Theatre, Photograph 51 at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Reading Under The Influence at DR2 Theater, and BFF for Women’s Expressive Theatre. His regional credits include productions at Williamstown Theatre Festival, McCarter Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, The Old Globe, Alley Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, New York Stage and Film, Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, LA Theatre Works, and Hangar Theatre. His film and television credits include Law and Order (guest star, twice), Law and Order: Criminal Intent (twice), Law and Order: SVU, Guiding Light, and Love Walked In. Mr. Webb is a graduate of The Drama School, The North Carolina School of the Arts.
(As of October 2015)
Debra Booth is Director of Design at Studio Theatre, where she has designed If I Forget, Translations, The Wolves, The Father, The Hard Problem, Moment, Constellations, The Apple Family Cycle, Jumpers for Goalposts, Belleville, Cock, Edgar & Annabel, Bachelorette, Moonlight, Blackbird, My Children! My Africa!, The Pillowman, and many others. Her international work includes premiere opera Marco Polo (Tan Dun/Martha Clarke) in Munich, Hong Kong, and New York. Regionally, Debra’s credits include Small Mouth Sounds at Round House Theatre; Richard III, The Collection, and The Lover at the Shakespeare Theatre Company; Marisol at Hartford Stage and The Public Theatre; Trying, The Illusion, and Happy Days at Portland Stage Company; the New York premiere of Angels in America at The Juilliard School; Broken Glass at Philadelphia Theatre Company (Barrymore Award nomination); and Moon for the Misbegotten at Yale Repertory Theatre. Debra is the recipient of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Artist Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Design Grant, and a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.
(As of October 2019)
Daniel MacLean Wagner served as Resident Lighting Designer at Studio Theatre from 1984-1997, designing more than 50 productions. He recently designed The Apple Family Cycle (2015) in the Milton Theatre, Bad Jews in the Mead Theatre, The Apple Family Plays (2013) in the Milton Theatre, and 4000 Miles in the Mead Theatre. He has designed more than 400 productions at many other theatres, including Arden Theatre Company, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Boston Lyric Opera, New Repertory Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Portland Stage Company, Arena Stage, Shakespeare Theatre Company, The Kennedy Center, Signature Theatre, Round House Theatre, Theatre of the First Amendment, Horizons Theatre, Potomac Theatre Project, Rep Stage, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, and Olney Theatre Center. He is an eight-time recipient of the Helen Hayes Award, for which he has received 28 nominations. Recent designs include Awake and Sing! at Olney Theatre; Fool for Love, Seminar, and This at Round House Theatre; and Freud's Last Session at Theater J; upcoming productions include Freud’s Last Session at New Repertory Theatre. Mr. Wagner holds the rank of Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland, where he served as Professor of Lighting Design from 1990-2014 and Director of the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies from 2001-2012.
(As of October 2015)
Helen Huang designs her 29th production at Studio with White Pearl. Her regional credits include Alice in Wonderland at Oregon Shakespeare Festival; The Great Leap at Guthrie Theater; Matilda the Musical at The Children’s Theatre, Minneapolis; and Miss Bennet and Christmas at Pemberley at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. DC area credits include JQA at Arena Stage; A Doll’s House, Part 2 at Roundhouse; Fences at Ford’s Theatre; Me…Jane at The Kennedy Center; and Fickle: A Fancy French Farce at Olney Theatre Center. She has received a Helen Hayes Award and an Ivey Award. Helen is a professor of MFA Costume Design at University of Maryland, College Park.
(As of October 2019)
Palmer Hefferan returns to Studio Theatre after previously designing Moment, Sorry, Regular Singing, Bad Jews, and Edgar & Annabel. Other select DC credits include Baby Screams Miracle (Helen Hayes nomination), Guards at the Taj (Helen Hayes nomination), Women Laughing Alone With Salad, and Cherokee at Woolly Mammoth; Urinetown, Equus (Helen Hayes nomination), Absolutely! {Perhaps}, and 36 Views at Constellation Theatre Company; and Everything Is Illuminated, The Call, and Yentl at Theater J. Select Off Broadway credits include Charm and School Girls at MCC; Orange Julius (Henry Hewes nomination) at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre; The Death of the Last Black Man… at Signature Theatre; Friend Art at Second Stage; Samara and Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again (Henry Hewes nomination) at Soho Rep; and Important Hats of the Twentieth Century at Manhattan Theatre Club. Select regional credits include Henry V and Henry IV, Part One at Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Romance Novels for Dummies at Williamstown Theatre Festival, Tiger Style! at Alliance Theatre and Huntington Theatre, peerless at Marin Theatre Company, Twelfth Night at Baltimore Center Stage. She has her MFA from Yale School of Drama.
(As of March 2018)
Adrien-Alice Hansel is the Literary Director at Studio, where she has dramaturged the world premieres of Queen of Basel, The Remains, No Sisters, I Wanna Fucking Tear You Apart, Animal, Laugh, Red Speedo, Dirt, Lungs, and The History of Kisses as well as productions of Cry It Out,Translations, Curve of Departure, The Effect, Wig Out!, Straight White Men, Cloud 9, Hedda Gabler, Constellations, Jumpers for Goalposts, Bad Jews (twice), The Apple Family Plays, Invisible Man, Sucker Punch, The Golden Dragon, and The New Electric Ballroom, among others. Prior to joining Studio, she spent eight seasons at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, where she headed the literary department and coordinated project scouting, selection, and development for the Humana Festival of New American Plays. She also served as production dramaturg on roughly 50 new, contemporary, and classic plays there, including premieres by Naomi Wallace, Gina Gionfriddo, Kirk Lynn and Rude Mechs, Rinne Groff, The Civilians, Anne Bogart and SITI Company, Jordan Harrison, and John Belluso. She is the co-editor of eight anthologies of plays from Actors Theatre and editor of eight editions of plays through Studio. Adrien-Alice holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama.
(As of April 2019)
William E. Cruttenden III has been stage managing in DC and across the country for ten years. The Apple Family Cycle was his first production at Studio. He recently stage managed Little Bee at Book-It Repertory Theatre in Seattle, WA. DC credits include King Hedley II, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (starring Malcolm-Jamal Warner) and The Mountaintop at Arena Stage; The Totalitarians, Detroit, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, Mr. Burns, a Post- Electric Play, A Bright New Boise, Bootycandy, Clybourne Park, Full Circle, BOOM!, Maria/Stuart, Measure for Pleasure, and No Child... at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company; Knuffle Bunny at the Kennedy Center; And the Curtain Rises, Sunset Boulevard, Chess, and I Am My Own Wife at Signature Theatre; Is He Dead?, Bad Dates, and Of Mice and Men at Olney Theatre Center; and Twice Upon a Time at Imagination Stage. Off Broadway credits include Perfect Harmony. Regional credits include The Will Rogers Follies, starring Tom Wopat, at Merry Go Round Playhouse; The Mountaintop at Alley Theatre, and Wild with Happy (workshop) at The Public Theater.
(As of October 2015)