Press Releases

Seattle, WA (August 14, 2019) -- Seattle Rep today announced complete casting for its production of the Tony Award-winning play Indecent, a powerful drama from Pulitzer Prize-winning Jewish playwright Paula Vogel. This moving play charts the true story of a controversial 1906 play, Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance -- it is a love story about the power of art to provide solace and light through the darkness. Indecent is directed by Sheila Daniels (Dancing at Lughnasa, The Wolves) and runs September 20 - October 26 (opening night is September 25) on the Bagley Wright stage. Single tickets are on sale now (starting at $17) and are available through the Seattle Rep Box Office at 206.443.2222 or online at SeattleRep.org.

Following its 2017 success on Broadway, this critically acclaimed Tony Award-winning play with music comes to Seattle Rep featuring an ensemble of actors and musicians including: Andi Alhadeff (Chana), Julie Briskman (Vera), Cheyenne Casebier (Halina), Bradford Farwell (Lemml), Nathaniel Tenenbaum (Mendel), Antoine Yared (Avram), and Ron Orbach (Otto). The musicians include Alexander Sovronsky, Kate Olson, and Jamie Maschler.

In Indecent, an ensemble of 10 actors and musicians follow the trajectory of Sholem Asch’s controversial play God of Vengeance, the first play by a Jewish playwright to open on Broadway. As Indecent theatrically moves through time from Warsaw to Berlin, St. Petersburg to Constantinople, Bratislava to New York, brief scenes from God of Vengeance are performed and we learn the story of a Jewish brothel owner who uses his profits to arrange a marriage for his daughter; until she falls in love with one of his prostitutes.

God of Vengeance, which sketches the romance of these two young women, is a hit in Europe, but when it arrives on Broadway in 1923, the entire cast is arrested for obscenity. Writing from varied points of view and with profound humor, Paula Vogel relates the impact this revolutionary play had on all those touched by it.

Infused with klezmer music - a musical tradition of Ashkenazi Jews -- Indecent was praised by critics when it debuted Off-Broadway in 2016, Charles Isherwood of The New York Times called it “a powerful new play.” It would go on to Broadway where it was nominated for three Tony Awards, winning Best Direction and Best Lighting Design. 

Seattle Rep’s complete creative team includes Tanya Lockyer (Choreography), Alexander Sovronsky (Music Director), L.B. Morse (Set Designer and Projections), Beth Goldenberg (Costume Designer), Robert J. Aguilar (Lighting Designer), and Paul James Prendergast (Sound Designer). 

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

PAULA VOGEL is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose plays include Indecent (Tony Award for Best Play), How I Learned to Drive (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Lortel Prize, OBIE Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play), The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz, Hot’n’Throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, The Oldest Profession, and A Civil War Christmas. She is currently working on three new projects, including Cressida On Top (recently workshopped at CTG and the Goodman), and a new play commissioned by CTG and Second Stage. Honors include induction in the American Theatre Hall of Fame, the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, the Lily Award, the Thornton Wilder Prize, the Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the William Inge Award, the Elliott Norton Award, a Susan Smith Blackburn Award, the PEN/Laura Pels Award, a TCG Residency Award, a Guggenheim, a Pew Charitable Trust Award, and fellowships and residencies at Sundance Theatre Lab, Hedgebrook, The Rockefeller Center’s Bellagio Center, Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, and the Bunting. She is particularly proud of her Thirtini Award from 13P, and honored by three Awards in her name: the Paula Vogel Award for Playwrights given by the Vineyard Theatre, the Paula Vogel Award from the American College Theatre Festival, and the Paula Vogel mentorship program, curated by Quiara Hudes and Young Playwrights of Philadelphia. Paula was playwright in residence at The Signature Theatre (2004-05 season), and Theatre Communications Group publishes six volumes of her work. Paula continues her playwriting intensives with community organizations, students, theater companies, subscribers and writers across the globe. She is the 2019 inaugural UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Hearst Theater Lab Initiative Distinguished Playwright-in-Residence and has recently taught at Sewanee, Shanghai Theatre Academy and Nanjing University, University of Texas at Austin, and the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis. From 1984 to 2008, Paula Vogel founded and ran the playwriting program at Brown University; during that time she started a theatre workshop for women in Maximum Security at the Adults Correction Institute in Cranston, Rhode Island. It continues to this day, sponsored by the Pembroke Center for Women at Brown University. From 2008-2012, she was the O’Neill Chair at Yale School of Drama. PaulaVogelPlaywright.com

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

Sheila Daniels is a Seattle-based director, educator, choreographer, and actor. Her work at Seattle Rep includes Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa and multiple workshops of Elizabeth Heffron’s The Weathermen. Directing work elsewhere includes: The Wolves, The Ramayana (A Contemporary Theatre); A Streetcar Named Desire, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Crime and Punishment, The Children’s Hour, Lysistrata, Wild Horses (Intiman Theatre); Dancing at Lughnasa (TANTRUM Theatre); Jackie & Me (Seattle Children’s Theatre); According to Coyote (Seattle Children's Theatre, Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis); The Winter’s Tale, Much Ado About Nothing, Electra, Pericles, Macbeth (Seattle Shakespeare Company); Lydia, The Normal Heart, Breaking the Code, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Strawberry Theatre Workshop); This Wide Night (Seattle Public Theatre); Waiting for Lefty, God’s Country, Arcadia (CHAC); Rubble Women (UMO Ensemble); and Anaphylaxis (Throwing Bones/IRT, NYC). She is a proud faculty member of Cornish College of the Arts.

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