Directed by
Simon Levy

Producing Underwriters
Sheila and Alan Lamson
Susan Stockel
Karen Kondazian
Laurie & Robert Silton

Produced by
Stephen Sachs, James Bennett

THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT was originally produced on Broadway by Jeffrey Richards, Norman & Deanna Twain, Will Trice, Barbara H. Freitag, Suzanne Grant, Gold/Ross Productions, Jamie deRoy, Jennifer Manocherian, Barbara Manocherian, ManGol Productions, Carl Moellenberg/Wendy Federman, Ken Greiner, Van Kaplan, Dominick LaRuffa Jr., Marc David Levine, WitzEnd Productions, Eric Falkenstein/Moreland Mott, Caiola Productions, Remmel T. Dickinson, & Jayne Baron Sherman

THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT is presented by special arrangement with Broadway Licensing, LLC, servicing the Dramatists Play Service collection. (www.dramatists.com)

CAST

* Member of Actors Equity Association
the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States

THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT is presented in 1 hours and 30 minutes with no intermission

TIME AND PLACE
Now. The United States.

Fountain Theatre Board of Directors

Dorothy Wolpert, Chair • Miles Benickes, Vice-Chair • Donald Zachary, Secretary

Rabbi Anne Brener • Diana Buckhantz • Carrie Chassin • Erin Aubrey Kaplan

Lois Fishman • Karen Kondazian • Theodore Perkins • Maggi Phillips • Jason Zelin

WHO’S WHO

RON BOTTITTA (John D’Agata) is delighted to be back at The Fountain Theatre, where he was last seen in Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children.  Before the lockdown he appeared in Earthquakes in London at Rogue Machine, and Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis at Son of Semele.  Other productions at Rogue, where he is a company member, include Oppenheimer, Honky (Ovation Nominee for Best Play), Penelope (*Ovation Nom - Best Play), The Sunset Limited (*LA Weekly Nomination for Best Play), Monkey Adored, and Razorback.  Since 2010 he’s been the monthly host of RMT’s spoken word Rant and Rave. At LATW: The Sisters Matsumoto, I Love Lucy..., and two tours of Judgment at Nuremberg.  Other LA credits include John Pollono’s Rules of Seconds at LATC, Superior Donuts and Yes, Prime Minister at The Geffen.  At The Odyssey: Victoria Station, A Kind of Alaska, Loot, Faith Healer (*Ovation Nom - Best Actor), Hir,  Arsenic and Old Lace, Rank and Theatre in the Dark (*Ovation Nom - Best Ensemble) among others. Recent TV: The Mandalorian, How to Get Away with Murder, Get Shorty, Elementary, Supergirl and Gray's Anatomy.  Recent Film: Quicksand, Fishmonger, Overboard, Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, The Mountain Between Us, and Mad Max: Fury Road, the not so recent Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and a pocket load of commercials. For the Gamers out there: he plays returning cult favorite Capt. Butcher in Call of Duty: WWII, Vanguard and Warzone” Training: B.A., U.C. Berkeley, M.F.A., N.Y.U. Life: Married to Actress Kathryn Kelley, dad to Dan and Sasha, Iron Butt BMW Motorcyclist, Aviator. Ron is currently developing a one-man show entitled Hero, about the notorious Cold War British double agent George Blake. 

JOHAN ROBINSON (Jim Fingal)  stepped through the doors of The Fountain Theater for the first time in 2011 and said to himself, “One day, I’ll be on that stage.” 12 years later, he is thrilled to be making his Fountain debut with this phenomenal cast and thoughtful & amazing team. In those 12 years Jonah ended up receiving a degree in musical theatre from the University of Miami (the Florida one) and started performing around the country at theaters such as the Utah Shakespeare Festival, Marin Shakespeare Company, Goodspeed Opera House, Alabama Shakespeare Company, and others. He took a bite out of the big apple just as the pandemic hit. Throughout the turmoils of 2020, in a pursuit to help however he could, he hosted virtual concerts from his rooftop in New York to fundraise for organizations in need, and created a parody series using musical theater songs to emphasize the social and political issues our nation was (and is still) facing. Jonah is now based in LA and can’t wait to keep creating onstage and on screen. Catch him in Daisy Jones and The Six on Amazon Prime this spring and let him know if you need anything fact checked, he has a whole system now. Huge thank you to Stephen, Simon, and the whole Fountain family. To Allegory Creative Talent. To Ari and the NPR clan. And to John D’Agata for writing this one important story.

KATHRYN KELLEY (Emily Penrose) is delighted to appear at The Fountain Theatre for the first time. She understudied Hazel and Rose in Simon Levy’s 2021 production of The Children by Lucy Kirkwood.

Kathryn was a company member at Round House Theatre for 20 years where roles included Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard; Yelena in Uncle Vanya; Lady Utterword in Heartbreak House; Nurse Ratched in Cuckoo’s Nest; Vivian in Orson’s Shadow; Jill in Jack and Jill; Eva in Absurd Person Singular; Christine in Ingmar Bergman’s Nora; Barb Wiggins and Mitzi Lish in A Prayer for Owen Meany; Nanine in Camille; Dawn in All in the Timing;  and Valerie in The Weir.

She played  Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst directed by Jerry Whiddon at The Bay Theatre, (Helen Hayes Nomination). For Look Back in Anger at Studio Theatre, Absurd Person Singular and One Shoe Off at RHT, she received DC’s Mary Goldwater Award. Other credits: Beckett’s Footfalls at SCENA, Behan’s The Hostage and Arthur Miller’s Playing for Time at Studio, The Beaux’ Stratagem at Everyman, Mad Forest at New York Theatre Workshop, and The Glass Menagerie in a Source Theatre production directed by Bart Whiteman, which traveled to London and 13 cities in the former Yugoslavia.

For a self-designed crash course in film acting, she shot 7 short films in 2022, including Quicksand (with Ron Bottitta) written and directed by Clark Liu; Collision Theory by Vanessa LaVoie; Soma by Aliza Brugger; Révérence by Anna Moskowitz and Melina Psarros; and Miriam by Pyotr Matyja.

In the early 80’s she was a newspaper reporter, and an assistant editor at Smithsonian Magazine. Heartfelt thanks to Ron, to family and friends, to everyone at the Fountain Theatre, and to Inger Tudor, this production’s original Emily.

CREATIVE TEAM

GORDON FARRELL (Playwright) - Trained as a playwright at the Yale School of Drama, Gordon received an MFA in 1986 and went from there to work with major Hollywood studios, initially as a story analyst for Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures, and eventually as a screenwriter. He has written for hire and sold screenplays to Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers, MGM, and ITC. He has worked with Robert Simonds (producer of "The Wedding Singer," "Molly's Game," "Mile 22"); Neal Moritz (producer of "XXX," "I Know What You Did Last Summer," "Fast and Furious") and Bruce Berman (producer of "The Matrix," "Three Kings," "Mad Max: Fury Road"). Working in independent film, Gordon has written for and sold projects to NYC indie producer Norman Twain (producer, "Lean on Me," "Boycott," "My Dog Tulip"). Gordon's first independent screenplay, "Girls Who Smoke," premiered in 2011. It went on to be an official selection at over a dozen film festivals, ultimately winning the Audience Choice Award in Seattle at the Post Alley Film Festival. As a playwright, from 2009 to 2013, Gordon worked with dozens of women on New York's Lower East Side who wanted to tell their personal stories on stage. The series of monologue plays that grew out of it was called IN THE RED ROOM/EVERY WOMAN DANCES FOR SOMEONE. In May 2019 the fully dramatized version, GIRLS WHO WALKED ON GLASS, played to SRO houses and rave reviews in Buffalo and is scheduled to transfer to New York City in 2020. His other plays have been produced in San Francisco, at the Alleyway Theatre, at the Yale School of Drama, and at Primary Stages in New York. He is the author of "The Power of the Playwright's Vision," published by Heinemann Press in 2001. It has been translated internationally and become a standard playwriting text at colleges and universities in North America, Europe, and Asia.

JEREMY KAREKEN (Playwright) - is a playwright living in New York and Baltimore. His short plays HOT ROD, BIG TRAIN, and 80 CARDS have been performed around the country and internationally. He served as a speech writer and policy analyst for two presidential campaigns. His awards include the Sewanee Conference’s Dakin Fellowship for FARBLONDJET, and Guthrie/Playwrights Center’s Two-Headed Challenge for THE SWEET SWEET MOTHERHOOD. The Hamptons Film Festival Screenwriters Conference selected Kareken and David Murrell for their horror-comedy script about haunted breast implants —“THESE! Conquered the Earth!” In 2018, PlayPenn shortlisted Jeremy’s new political satire about an illiterate king, THE RED WOOL. Born and raised in Rochester, New York, and a graduate of the University of Chicago, he has taught at NYU, NYIT, the Actors Studio Drama School, and currently teaches at the Acting Studio—New York. A lifetime member of The Actors Studio, Jeremy occasionally acts and for 18 years served as the researcher for Bravo TV’s “Inside the Actors Studio.”

DAVID MURRELL (Playwright) - was born and raised in New York City. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School and the University of Chicago, currently lives in Queens, and has written a sea chest's worth of TV and film treatments and spec scripts. Access Theater (NYC) and the Cleveland Public Theatre each produced his play DUCTWORK and the Hamptons Film Festival Screenwriters Conference selected his and Jeremy Kareken’s feature screenplay about haunted breast implants, “THESE! Conquered the Earth.” In 2019, the Outer Critics Circle co-awarded David its John Gassner Playwriting Award for THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT.

*Playwright bios shamefully cribbed from the Vermont Stage’s 2022 production. Many thanks! If you see this and want them pulled, I will! Let me know!

SIMON LEVY (Director) has been Producing Director of the Fountain Theatre since 1993. The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle honored him with the Milton Katselas Award for Lifetime Achievement in Directing. Recent shows he’s directed at the Fountain include: The Children, Daniel's Husband and The Chosen. His stage adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (Finalist for the PEN Literary Award in Drama) is produced widely throughout the world. It is the only stage adaptation authorized by the Fitzgerald Estate, and is published by Dramatists Play Service, along with his adaptations of Tender is the Night (winner of the PEN Literary Award in Drama) and The Last Tycoon. He has produced dozens of shows at the Fountain over the past 30 years. Prior to coming to Los Angeles, he lived in San Francisco where he was the General Manager of Beach Blanket Babylon, Artistic Director of The One Act Theatre Company, and Executive Director of Theatre Bay Area. He belongs to many theatre, human rights, and political advocacy groups. www.simonlevy.com

GINA DELUCA (Production Stage Manager) was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. She received her Bachelor’s at California State University Northridge, a certificate of completion in Technical Theater at Los Angeles City College, and a Master's in Stage Management at California Institute of the Arts while stage managed productions like The Servant of Two Masters, Top Girls, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Waiting for Lefty. She recently worked on a production at Pepperdine University, Dead Man’s Cellphone by Sarah Ruhl, along stage managing a production that was written and produced by combat veterans, Enlisted and worked on the Opera, Cosi Fan Tutte, with the CSUN music department. She stage managed The Children by Lucy Kirkwood at the Fountain Theatre in November 2021-January 2022 along subbing as an assistant stage manager in Roe and If I Forget. Excited to be back at the Fountain and be part of the team. 

JOEL DAAVID (Scenic Design) is a native of Texas and moved to Los Angeles in 1993 to attend the prestigious American Film Institute to study cinematography. While there he received the Blum-Kovler scholarship and was nominated for the Kodak scholarship in cinematography. Joel went on to shoot feature films, short films and commercials on a freelance basis. He is now an award-winning theater director/designer. He has been awarded with the Ovation, NAACP Theater Award, the LA Weekly Theater Award and the LADCC Theatre Awards. He was recently awarded an LADCC Career Achievement Award. His most recent accolade was an outstanding achievement award for directing and lighting design for The Miracle Worker and Set Design of the Year for Just 45 Minutes From Broadway from StageScene LA.

NICHOLAS SANTIAGO (Video Design) has worked for numerous universities and theatre companies around Los Angeles including the Pasadena Playhouse (Ham), Skylight Theatre (Forever House, Church & State, Obama Ology), Rogue Machine (A Permanent Image, Oppenheimer, Honky), USC (Trojan Women, On the Town), Theatre Planners (PEMDAS, The Red Dress L.O.V.E.R.), the Chance Theatre (Tribes, Middletown, Big Fish), The Road Theatre (Nowhere on the Border, A Delicate Ship), LA LGBT Center (The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life Revisited), and the Fountain Theatre (Arrival & Departure, The Cost of Living). He recently designed Cesar Millan's new one man show Unleashed that opened at the David Copperfield Theatre at the MGM in Las Vegas. He has received numerous award nominations including an Ovation nomination and a LA Drama Critic’s Circle award for his work on Rogue Machine’s A Permanent image and an ovation win for his work on The Fountain Theatre's production of The Cost of Living. www.nsantiagodesign.com

MICHAEL MULLEN (Costume Design) is a costume designer, actor, and writer. Among his theatrical design credits are Dreamgirls, The Boy From Oz, Siamese Sex Show, Fugue, When Jazz Had The Blues, Burners, Cabaret, Year Of The Rooster, Fixed, Sweeney Todd, American Idiot, The Legend Of Georgia McBride, A Little Night Music, The Wild Party, Guess Who‘s Coming To Dinner, and L.A. Now And Then. He has received several awards and nominations for his work both onstage and off from such organizations as Ovation, L.A. Drama Critics Circle, L.A. Weekly, N.A.A.C.P., Scenie, Stage Raw, Robby, Broadway World, Ticket Holder, Eddon, and Desert Theatre League. Michael wants to thank everyone involved with Lifespan Of A Fact for their dedication and hard work and he hopes you all enjoy the show! 

JOYCE HUTTER (Prop Design) is delighted to join the Fountain Theatre's creative team as Property Designer on Lifespan of a Fact. Joyce has worked in Los Angeles theatre for many years as an artist, designer, and puppeteer, she is a recipient of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle for distinguished achievement in puppet & mask design. She also serves as Artistic Director of Strings & Things Puppet Theatre, a non-traditional, socially responsible puppet theater, and as a producer of Nite at the Puppet Asylum, an offbeat puppetry slam for adult audiences as part of the Puppet Slam Network.  Her recent theatre work includes: Eurydice (Set Design/Little Fish Theatre); The Braille Legacy (Scenic & Video Design/Theatre by the Blind); Housewife '52 (Puppet Design/Hollywood Fringe); On the Way to Oregon (Scenic Design/Arts Up! LA); Calagari's Cabinet of Curiosities (Costume Prosthetics Design/Grand Arts HS Concert Hall); Watson (Online) (Shadow Puppet Video/Sacred Fools Theatre); Waiting for Waiting for Godot (Property Design/Sacred Fools Theatre; Mr. Punch the Comical Tragedy (Puppet Design/Rogue Artist Ensemble); The Story of Frog Belly Rat Bone (Puppet Design/Rogue Artist Ensemble); H.K. Gruber's Frankenstein!! (Puppet Design/Rogue Artist Ensemble). https://stringsnthingspuppettheatre.wordpress.com/artistic-director/