The Dark Wood by David Lefort Nugent
WORLD PREMIERE
Set in a remote region of Quebec, Dante’s Inferno informs the mystical and poetic world of this play as a prodigal son battles with his guilt-ridden father to escape the isolation of his family home. A gifted musician, the son yearns for life as a musician, a dream which is encouraged by his new lover – and dashed by his threatened father who mysteriously disappears. The son’s world falls apart – the house begins to decay…he no longer remembers his music...the line between reality and dream becomes a blur. Desperate and confused, he rejects his new girlfriend and descends into suicidal darkness. Will the appearance of his father’s ghost remove the veil of secrecy, expose truth and provide a path to reconciliation…and peace? The Dark Wood is performed by an extraordinary trio of actors, Dan Colman, Michael Cullen and Christianna Nelson.
The Company
DAN COLMAN (Charles Freeman, The Dark Wood). New York: Paris in Romeo and Juliet (Public Theater/NYSF), Secret Order (59E59), True West (Charlie Pineapple Theater), readings of The Dark Wood (Lark), Lucinda's Bed (Ensemble Studio Theater), Scarlet Letter (Culture Project), and And Then We Were This (BE Company). International: The Promise (Edinburgh Fringe). Regional: Metamorphoses (Weston Playhouse); Great River, North Carolina and Texas Shakespeare Festivals. T.V./Film: Ghost Whisperer, All My Children, The Ones You Love. Dan is a 2006 graduate of the Yale School of Drama.
MICHAEL CULLEN (James Freeman, The Dark Wood) Broadway: BUS STOP-Circle in the Square. Off Broadway: LEN, ASLEEP, IN VINYL - Second Stage, BUG - Barrow St. ( Obie Award ) , COBB - Lucille Lortel. ( Drama Desk - Best Ensemble ) DARK MATTERS , Rattlestick . THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN OF JENNY CHOW , Atlantic Theater. Film : DEAD MAN WALKING , MALCOLM X, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING. Television : All Three LAW AND ORDERS.
CHRISTIANNA NELSON is thrilled to be returning to the Woodstock Fringe, after performing in Tuesdays and Sundays with David Nugent. New York theater includes: Wickets (coming in January 2009 to 3 Legged Dog), Bloody Mary by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Overexposed by Michael John Garces, Harvest (La Mama), F***ing Ibsen Takes Time (Soho Playhouse), Lost in the Supermarket by Laura Eason (Vital Theatre), Fresh Play Festival (MCC), The Diviners (Lincoln Center Directors Lab), and the radio pilot "Conversations with Shakespeare," recorded live at Symphony Space. Regional theater includes: Yale Repertory Theatre, Long Wharf, Pioneer Theatre, Connecticut Rep, and multiple roles at Shakespeare & Company, including: Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lisa in Collected Stories, and Olivia in Twelfth Night. Favorite roles at Yale include Hedda in Hedda Gabler, Yelena in Uncle Vanya, and Anslem in Ugo's Last Dance by David Nugent. Television: All My Children, One Life To Live and As The World Turns. MFA, Yale Drama [winner of the Hershell Williams Prize], BA, Harvard University.
DAVID LEFORT NUGENT (Playwright and Composer, The Dark Wood) is a playwright, composer and the artistic director of God Machine, a New York City-based company dedicated to staging the unstagable. His plays have been presented and/or developed at Playwrights Horizons, Medicine Show Theatre and Joe's Pub at the Public Theater (NYC), the Stratford Festival of Canada (Stratford, ON), Theatre Network and Workshop West (Edmonton, AB), the Ottawa Fringe Festival, and the Yale Cabaret (New Haven, CT). His musical Ugo's Last Dance will be produced at Medicine Show Theatre (NYC) this September, and his new political musical Ghost Songs, commissioned by New Sounds Theatre and Beth Morrison Projects (NYC) and jointly developed with composers Lee Feldman, Carol Lipnik and Chris Moore, will be workshoped in the city later this fall. Other projects include Open the Dark Door, a new indie-rock musical commissioned by the Stratford Festival of Canada. David has composed music for productions that include The Rover, Light Shinning in Buckinghamshire, Borders of Paradise, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, and Scenes From American Life. David has taught playwriting to disable veterans at the National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped in Crosby , ME , and mentored New Haven youth in playwriting and composition under the auspices of the Dwight Edgewood Project. In 2006 he was the dramaturg and playwright advisor for the Sears Ontario Drama Festival's Through the Workshop Window Series at the Stratford Festival of Canada. He is the recipient of the John D. and Rose H. Jackson Research Fellowship from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Queen's Golden Jubilee Scholarship from the Government of Alberta, and has received artist grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. David holds an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama and a BFA in Acting from the University of Alberta.