by Steve Rathje

Directed by Michael Mendelson**

Cast Members:  Chris Harder*, Crystal Ann Muñoz*, Sarah Overman*, Claire Rigsby, Joshua J. Weinstein*

Signs is a surrealistic comedy about love, purpose and the little things that seem to matter so much to us. April reads horoscopes. Lydia writes horoscopes. April reads them devoutly, using them to guide her life choices. Lydia just makes them up, using the money she makes from them to support herself while she completes her novel. When April comes in contact with Lydia, the all-too-familiar force who has been transcribing April’s fate through her horoscopes all along, the story turns upside down.

Signs is the winner of the $10,000 Oregon New Play Prize and is being developed and produced at Artists Repertory Theatre. Signs was also a finalist for the National Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference. Steve’s plays have been published by Samuel French, Inc. and Dramatics Magazine, and have been produced at Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, the International Thespian Conference, Stanford University, and more. Steve won first place in Stanford’s Bocock/Guerard Fiction Writing Prize for his new play The Placebo Addict, and has also been recognized by the International Thespian Playworks Competition and YoungArts. Steve studies Psychology, Symbolic Systems, and Creative Writing at Stanford University.

by Aleks Merilo

Directed by Josh Rippy

Cast Members:  John Corr, Chris Karczmar*, Claire Rigsby

In the walled Jewish Ghetto of Venice, a girl comes of age with only her money-lender father to guide her. When her father lashes back at men who have persecuted him, she is forced to choose between love, faith, and the debts we owe to family. A Maiden of Venice an adaptation of Shakespeare’s most controversial play, told from the point of view of the Shylock’s daughter, Jessica.

Aleks Merilo is an award winning and internationally produced playwright from Palo Alto, CA. His script, The Snowmaker, was winner of the Playwrights First Award, Winner of The Chameleon Theatre Circles New Play Contest, and Playhouse on The Square’s New Works @ The Works Festival, and was a finalist for the Oregon Play Prize. His play, The Widow of Tom’s Hill, played Off-Broadway at 59E59, where Broadway World called it “A truly distinctive piece of theater.” His play, Exit 27, was called “The best original play to be produced this season” by the Houston Chronicle, and was voted best new play by Broadway World, Houston. He has an MFA in playwriting from UCLA, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.  He is represented by the Robert A. Freedman Dramatic Agency. Aleksmeriloplaywright.com.

Coyote Play

by Susan Mach

Directed by Josh Rippy

Cast Members:  Bobby Bermea*, Lauren Hanover*, Steve Rathje, Samson Syharath,

Danielle Weathers*, Mamie Wilhelm

Coyote Play (working title) is a contemporary re-imagining of the French-Romanian playwright Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, an absurdist piece which examines the normalization of Fascism.