MOROCCO

BY: Allan Havis
DIRECTED BY: Jeff Ginsberg

Opened May 2001

"Director Jeff Ginsberg brings out the humor and irony of the three-character play, and his actors handle their roles with subtlety and aplomb.."
-Joe Stead, SteadStyle

CAST: Bill Bannon, Rom Barkhordar, Susy Ibrahim, Maximino Arciniega Jr.
LIGHTING DESIGN: Richard Norwood
COSTUME DESIGN: Frances Maggio
SET DESIGN: Jacqueline Penrod
STAGE MANAGER: Jaime Jennings
GRAPHIC DESIGN: Alex Present
DIALECT COACH: Susan Philpot
VIDEO: David Moquay

MOROCCO ...
A Jewish American architect with clandestine overseas contracts finds himself interrogated by a Moroccan senior official in Fez’s Women’s House of Detention. The architect’s wife, an alluring international banker has been incarcerated for drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and prostitution.The play brings to the boiling point the mistrust and suspicion in a fraying marriage as well as the polarities between Arabs and Jews in an absorbing cat and mouse game.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT:

Allan Havis, whose works include Haut Gout, The Ladies of Fisher Cove, Lilith, The Road from Jerusalem, and A Special Agent, has seen his plays produced at South Coast Repertory, Hartford Stage, Virginia Stage, American Repertory Theatre, The Philadelphia Theatre Company, and in London. In New York, he has directed his plays Off-Broadway at WPA, West Bank Cafe, and BACA. In the last three years he has been assisted by major grants, including New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller, McKnight, and Guggenheim Foundations. His residencies include Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute, the Edward Albee Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, New York’s Public Theatre, and a 1988 Hawthornden Fellowship in Scotland. Mr. Havis serves on the Graduate Theatre Faculty at the University of California, San Diego and holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. Morocco received the 1985 FDG/CBS Award, the 1986 Playwrights USA Award from HBO, a 1987 Kennedy Center/American Express Grant, and was previously published in TCG’s Anthology New Plays USA 3.
***** *****

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:

Jeff Ginsberg is an actor, director, and educator. As Co-Artistic Director of the National Jewish Theatre for four years, he supervised, directed, or acted in over twenty classics, as well as Chicago and world premieres. He was also Co-Artistic Director of the Immediate Theatre and most recently acted in Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking (with Trap Door member and former student, Danny Belrose) at Bailiwick Repertory Theatre. He directed True West as the inaugural production of Accidental Theatre, The Pineapple Story for New Tuners Stages 2000, Caryl Churchill’s Ice Cream for the School at Steppenwolf and two new plays for the Pegasus Players Young Playwrights Festival. He has taught at Northwestern University’s Cherub Program, The Actor’s Center, Center Theatre’s training program and at Columbia College where he has been a faculty member for fifteen years. Jeff receieved a Presidential Scholar in the Arts Teaching Award and has twice been nominated for an Excellence in Teaching Award from Columbia College. He and colleague Susan Padveen recently opened their acting studio, The Green Room and produced Tom Donaghy’s Minutes from the Blue Route at the Athenaeum Theatre. He has just completed work on Robert Brustein’s adaptation of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck for the Getz Theatre at Columbia College. He is a graduate of Boston University’s School of the Arts and the Yale School of Drama. He’s delighted to be working with the artists of Morocco for Trap Door.