Sam Gold, who staged the acclaimed and extended world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in 2009, again directs. South Coast Rep produces the rueful comedy-drama on SCR's Julianne Argyros Stage to Jan. 30. Previews began Jan. 9 in Costa Mesa, CA. 

Circle Mirror Transformation won the Obie Award for Best New American Play earlier this year; Gold won an Obie for Best Director. The title is now popping up in theatres throughout the country.

The play takes its name from a popular theatre game that involves a group of actors standing in a circle and mirroring — and then transforming — each others' movements. According to SCR notes, "Baker uses this and other theatre games to reveal the personal dramas of each character: Marty (Linda Gehringer), the free-spirited director of the community center and excited leader of the center's first creative drama class for adults; James (Brian Kerwin, of Broadway's August: Osage County), Marty's husband, an aging hippie with an estranged daughter who's taking the class because…well, really, what choice does he have?; Theresa (Marin Hinkle), a former actress who has recently fled the competitiveness and claustrophobia of the Big Apple for acupressure school in Vermont; Schultz (Arye Gross), a carpenter who hopes to meet new people and forget about his recent divorce, primed to fall in love with the first woman who bats an eye at him; Lauren (Lily Holleman), 16 and sullen, with problems at home and dreams of playing Maria in her high school's production of West Side Story."

Circle Mirror Transformation's creative team includes three designers from the Off-Broadway production — David Zinn (set design), Mark Barton (lighting design) and Leah Gelpe (sound design) — along with Angela Balogh Calin (costume design) and Jennifer Ellen Butler (stage manager).

For information, visit www.scr.org or call (714) 708-5555 or visit the box office at 655 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa.