THE OUTGOING TIDE Opens At Philadelphia Theatre Company 3/23-4/22

Philadelphia Theatre Company will present the second production and East Coast premiere of Barrymore Award-winning playwright Bruce Graham's newest play The Outgoing Tide, running March 23-April 22 at PTC's home at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre (Broad and Lombard Streets). Directed by longtime PTC and Bruce Graham collaborator James J. Christy, the three-person cast features Philadelphian Anthony Lawton as well as veteran actors Robin Moseley and Richard Poe.

Previews begin Friday, March 23 with opening night on Wednesday, March 28. Performances run Tuesday through Sunday until April 22. Tickets starting at $25 are available by calling the PTC Box Office at 215-985-0420 or visiting PhiladelphiaTheatreCompany.org. Philadelphia Theatre Company's Suzanne Roberts Theatre is located at Broad and Lombard Streets.

In a summer cottage on the Chesapeake Bay, Gunner has hatched an unorthodox plan to secure his family's future but meets with resistance from his wife and grown son, who have plans of their own. As winter approaches, the three must quickly find some common ground and come to an understanding-before the tide goes out. The Outgoing Tide hums with dark humor and profound emotion.

The Outgoing Tide is PTC's second collaboration with Bruce Graham, having produced the world premiere of According to Goldman in 2004. The Outgoing Tide premiered this past season at Chicago's Northlight Theatre where it won the Jefferson Award for Best New Play. The Outgoing Tide represents Graham's twelfth collaboration with James J. Christy.

Bruce Graham (Playwright) is the recipient of two Drama Desk Awards and The Rosenthal Prize for Coyote on a Fence. Something Intangible and Any Given Monday won consecutive Barrymore Awards in 2009 and 2010 for Best New Play. In the early 1980s, he spent eight years as Playwright-in-Residence at the Philadelphia Festival Theater for New Plays and has seen his work produced locally at Theatre Exile, Arden Theatre Company, and People's Light & Theatre Company and regionally at George Street Playhouse, the WPA, Urban Stages, the Hudson Guild, Capital Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse, and Long Wharf. His film credits include Dunston Checks In, Anastasia, the Abbie Hoffman bio-pic Steal This Movie and Ring of Endless Light which was the Humanitas Award Winner for Best Children's Screenplay. Graham has received grants from the Pew Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Princess Grace Foundation (Statuette Award Winner) and the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative. He is a two-time winner of an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award. The author of The Collaborative Playwright with PTC's former dramaturg Michele Volansky, Graham teaches film and theatre courses at Philadelphia's Drexel University.

James J. Christy (Director) returns to PTC where he directed five productions: Take Me Out and The Laramie Project, both of which won Barrymore Awards for Best Production and an additional Award for Best Director for The Laramie Project; Sideman and Gross Indecencies: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, which earned him Barrymore nominations for both Best Production and Best Director; and Orson's Shadow. His work has garnered a cumulative 33 Barrymore nominations, with 10 wins, and he was further honored four years ago with the Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also received the Boston's Eliot Norton Award for Best Production by a Small Theater for The Faith Healer, and his production of King Lear at the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre Company was selected among the Best Ten Productions by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Locally, his work has also been seen at People's Light & Theatre Company, Arden Theatre Company and Villanova University, where he is Professor Emeritus, having taught theatre there for 39 years.

Anthony Lawton (Jack) has appeared locally in Of Mice & Men and Cyrano de Bergerac at Walnut Street Theatre, Playland and Threepenny Opera at The Wilma Theater, The Lonesome West and Othello at Lantern Theatre, and Sweeney Todd, Loot, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and James Joyce's The Dead, all at Arden Theatre Company. He has been a frequent guest at Pennsylvania Shakespeare, starring in The Winter's Tale, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Tempest. Off- Broadway he has appeared at Pearl Theatre Company in Othello and The Good Natur'd Man.

Robin Moseley (Peg) appeared on Broadway in The Sisters Rosenzweig, Present Laughter, Pygmalion, and A Small Family Business. Off-Broadway she was featured in Aristocrats and The Memory of Water, both at Manhattan Theatre Club, King John at New York Shakespeare Festival, and The Glass Cage at Mint Theatre. Her regional credits include a recent production of Death of a Salesman at Old Globe Theatre where she played Linda Loman, Picnic and The Beauty Queen of Leenane at Denver Center, The Little Foxes and Another Part of the Forest at Cleveland Playhouse, and productions at Arena Stage, Cincinnati Playhouse and the Huntington Theatre.

Richard Poe (Gunner)'s Broadway credits include Present Laughter, Cry Baby, Journey's End, The Pajama Game and 1776. Last season he appeared in Christopher Durang's Why Torture Is Wrong And The Women Who Love Them at New York's Public Theatre. Off-Broadway he has appeared at The Duke Theatre, City Center, and Minetta Lane. He has been featured regionally at American Conservatory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Goodman Theatre, and Hartford Stage. Poe has had recurring roles in both Star Trek and Frasier as well as guest appearance on Army Wives and Law and Order.

The Outgoing Tide brings together a creative team of PTC favorites: set designer David Gordon (Gross Indecency and Dinner with Friends); lighting designer R. Lee Kennedy (Barrymore Award for A Light in the Piazza); costume designer Pamela Scofield (Take Me Out); sound designer Bart Fassbender (Ruined and Humor Abuse); and original music by Rob Maggio (M. Butterfly and Third).
Up next at PTC is PTC@Play, a two-week festival of new work on February 29-11 featuring staged readings of four new plays from around the country, a new musical in development with music and lyrics by a collection of Broadway giants including Alan Menken, Marvin Hamlisch, and Scott Frankel & Michael Korie, and an evening of short plays by eight local playwrights.

Founded in 1974, Philadelphia Theatre Company is a leading regional theater company whose mission is to produce, develop and present entertaining and imaginative contemporary theater focused on the American experience that both ignites the intellect and touches the soul. By developing new work through commissions, readings and workshops PTC generates projects that have a national impact and reach broad regional audiences. Under the leadership of PTC's Producing Artistic Director Sara Garonzik since 1982 and Managing Director Shira Beckerman, who joined PTC in August, 2011, PTC supports the work of a growing body of diverse dramatists and takes pride in being a home to many nationally recognized artists who have participated in more than 140 world and Philadelphia premieres. PTC has received 46 Barrymore Awards and 155 nominations. In October 2007, PTC opened the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, their new home on Philadelphia's Avenue of the Arts, which has helped contribute to the revitalization of Center City Philadelphia's thriving arts district.

For further information, please call 215-735-7356.