Touch(ed), With Hutchinson, Thompson, Parlato, Podulke, Will Get World Premiere at Pioneer

By Kenneth Jones
22 Dec 2009

Dennis Parlato and Kelly Hutchinson
Dennis Parlato and Kelly Hutchinson

A sibling relationship shadowed by mental illness is the focus of Pioneer Theatre Company's world premiere of Bess Wohl's Touch(ed), to play the resident theatre in Salt Lake City, UT, Jan. 8-23, 2010.

The play is the first production of the theatre's recently instituted New Plays Initiative.

According to PTC notes, "Smart, artistic, empathetic and funny, Emma is everything a younger sister would idolize. But she's also spent the last eight years in and out of psychiatric hospitals. Determined to get her sister back, Kay hopes that a week at a cabin in the woods will restore Emma to the beautiful and spirited woman she remembers and longs for."

The play contains strong language and mature themes.

The all-Equity cast includes Jennifer Joan Thompson as Kay, who is determined to help her sister live a more normal life; Kelly Hutchinson as Emma, the sister struggling with mental illness; Alex Podulke as Billy, Kay's fiancé and a novelist suffering from writer's block; and Dennis Parlato as the doctor treating Emma.

Wohl's other plays include In, Fake and Cats Talk Back (which won the award for Best Overall Production at the NY International Fringe Festival). She has developed her play In into a screenplay. She holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, as well as a degree in English Literature, magna cum laude, from Harvard, where she studied writing with both Seamus Heaney and Jamaica Kincaid.

PTC artistic director Charles Morey will direct. The production team includes Gary M. English (scenic designer), Pamela Scofield (costume designer), Phil Monat (lighting designer), Joe Payne (sound designer), Amanda French (hair and makeup designer).

PTC presents at Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre, 300 South 1400 East, Salt Lake City.

For more information, call (801) 581-6961 or visit pioneertheatre.org.