If I Forget

9/12/18 – 10/21/18

WRITTEN BY STEVEN LEVENSON
LOCATION METHENY THEATRE
DIRECTED BY MATT TORNEY

It’s July 2000—the Oslo Accords are falling apart, and in Tenleytown, a modern Jewish family is fracturing over what to do with their 14th Street real estate. Their mother has died, their father will need full-time care, and as their adult children debate what do to next, no topic is off limits: American Jews and their relationship to Israel, who’s already given enough to this family, a sibling’s parenting choices. A political and deeply personal play about history, responsibility, and what we’re willing to sacrifice for a new beginning, told with vicious humor and unflinching honesty by Bethesda native Steven Levenson.

Play Name

Show Information

Runtime: This performance will run approximately 2 hours and 45 minutes with one 15 minute intermission.

If I Forget is generously underwritten
by Dr. Mark Epstein and Amoretta Hoeber.

Multimedia

The Artists

Cast

Production Team

COSTUME DESIGNER

Helen Huang

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)

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Michael Giannitti

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)

PRODUCTION STAGE MANAGER

Allie Roy

Allie Roy returns to Studio after last stage managing If I Forget. Other Studio credits include Translations, Curve of Departure, Straight White Men, Murder BalladSilence! The Musical, and the world premiere of Animal for the Women’s Voices Theater Festival. Regional credits include West Side Story in concert with the NSO as well as Love, Factually at The Kennedy Center; the world premieres of Mrs. Miller Does Her Thing and Diner as well as The Scottsboro Boys, West Side Story, and Elmer Gantry at Signature Theatre; the world premiere of After the War as well as When January Feels Like Summer and Ulysses on Bottles at Mosaic Theater Company; and The Originalist at Arena Stage. Upcoming regional projects include Grand Hotel at Signature Theatre and Describe the Night at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.

(As of January 2019)

DRAMATURG

Lauren Halvorsen

Lauren Halvorsen is in her ninth season as Studio’s Associate Literary Director. Her dramaturgy credits here include Doubt, P.Y.G. or the Mis-Edumacation of Dorian Belle, Admissions, Kings, If I Forget, Vietgone, The Wolves, Skeleton Crew, The Father, Three Sisters, The Hard Problem, Hand to God, Moment, Between Riverside and Crazy, Chimerica, The Wolfe Twins, Belleville, Water by the Spoonful, Tribes, The Real Thing, The Motherfucker with the Hat, The Aliens, Bachelorette, The Big Meal, and Time Stands Still. Previously, Lauren spent three seasons as Literary Manager of The Alley Theatre. She was the Artistic Associate of the WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory for six years and has worked in various artistic capacities for The Kennedy Center, City Theatre Company, Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, First Person Arts Festival, and The Wilma Theater. Lauren is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College.

(As of December 2019)

SOUND DESIGNER AND COMPOSER

Nick Kourtides

Nick Kourtides designs for musical theatre and creates sound environments for devised ensemble works. He returns to Studio after previously designing The Object Lesson. His Off Broadway designs include The Lucky Ones at Ars Nova, The Object Lesson at New York Theatre Workshop and BAM, Carson McCullers Talks About Love at Rattlestick, Elephant Room at St. Ann’s Warehouse, and Jomama Jones: Radiate at Soho Repertory Theatre. Kourtides’s work with Pig Iron Theatre Company includes A Period of Animate Existence, Cankerblossom, Isabella, Chekhov Lizardbrain, and Mission to Mercury. Recently, he designed The Waves at New York Stage and Film, Lady Day… at Actors Theatre, and several projects at McCarter, the Wilma, and Center Theatre Group. Kourtides’s site-specific designs include This is Reading with Lynn Nottage and Kate Whoriskey, Lost in the Meadow with PearlDamour, and several installations for the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.

(As of August 2018)

SCENIC DESIGNER

Debra Booth

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)

Press

Steven Levenson has written a big old-fashioned family drama in If I Forget...it’s acted to the hilt
The Washington Post
A play full of Tony Award-caliber exchanges.
DC Theatre Scene
If I Forget may be one of the greatest Jewish plays of this century. And for that reason alone it must be seen.
DC Metro Theater Arts
The show is so well-acted and finely drawn that audiences will want to take a seat at the table.
DCist

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