Matthew Wrather » Matt on Stage

“Antwone Fisher: A Play” at UCLA

Matthew Wrather — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:40:33 +0000

I’m very excited to announce my last show at UCLA. Antwone Fisher, the subject (and writer) of Denzel Washington’s 2002 movie of that same name, is retelling the story of his life in theatrical form, using actors from UCLA’s grad program to portray the cast of hustlers, sailers, neighborhood kids, and family members that populate his incredible past.

I don’t mean to gush, but it’s been an honor to work with Antwone and to try to bring this material to life. It’s an incredible, terrifying, heartbreaking, inspiring story, and it’s a terrific way to bring my 3 years in grad school to a close.

I hope you can come. I have a feeling it’s going to be a hot ticket, so please make reservations early!

ANTWONE FISHER: A PLAY
written & directed by Antwone Fisher

Buy Tickets Online

Feb 29-March 3 & March 14-March 17 at 8pm
Matinees March 3 & March 17 at 2pm

UCLA’s MacGowan Hall, Room 1340

Directions: Enter UCLA on Hilgard Ave near Sunset. Park in Structure 3. MacGowan Hall faces the Murphy Sculpture Garden; the theater is in Room 1340 on the first floor.

Find Out More about Antwone

The Adding Machine at UCLA, Nov 4–12, 2011

Matthew Wrather — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:35:48 +0000

I’m very happy to announce my second-to-last show at UCLA—not because it’s the second-to-last, but because it’s a fascinating play and should be an interesting production, directed by a member of Anne Bogart’s SITI Company, J. Ed Araiza. We’re doing it with minimal production—just light and sound, really—and it will be very viewpointsy and artsy.

For those of you who don’t care about any of that and are coming just to see me: I don’t show up until the very end. But when I do, watch out. This is my third play at UCLA where I speak the very last line on stage (a tradition I started with my first professional show at Santa Monica Playhouse, Mezzanine). It’s a great scene by Elmer Rice, and I think it’s worth sticking around through intermission for.

The Adding Machine
By Elmer Rice
Directed by J. Ed Araiza

After 25 years on the job, Mr. Zero’s life changes when he is replaced by an adding machine.

Featuring: Anne Butler, Adrienne Hertler, William Hickman, Josephine Keefe, Evan Lipkin, Mary Beth Menna, Adam Mondschein, Jeremiah O’Brian, Marcus Oberheide, Philicia Saunders, Colin Simon, Bryan West, Matthew Wrather, Dash You

Nov 4–5 & 8–12 at 8pm
Nov 5 & 12 at 2pm

Buy Tickets Online

The Freud Playhouse at UCLA

Directions
Park in Structure 3, make your way to the Sculpture Garden, turn around, and the theatre will be in front of you (it’s the big theater next to the Little Theater). Here’s a map:

view larger

The Versailles: A Reading of a New Comedy

Matthew Wrather — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:02:58 +0000

What’s funny about the great recession?
It’s 2008, and the residents of “The Versailles,” a huge luxury condo complex plopped down in the middle of inner-city Philly, band together when their landlord goes AWOL, their neighbors start defecting, and the power goes off. Both a hilarious satire and a fascinating study of what happens to civilization when its comforts are stripped away—urban camping, righteous theft, yuppies with food stamps—this new comedy caputres the feeling of desperation at the height of the Great Recession and mercilessly skewers the hypocrisy and wishful thinking that got us there.

I’m reading this play with a talented group of actors at the storied Theatricum Botanicum this Sunday. Here are the details:

The Versailles by Erica Jones
Directed by William Dennis Hunt

Sunday, June 12 at 11am

Theatricum Botannicum
1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd.
FREE!
(Donations welcome.)

The Cherry Orchard at UCLA

Matthew Wrather — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:49:22 +0000

I’m glad to announce that we’re doing The Cherry Orchard at UCLA, directed by Mel Shapiro, the head of graduate acting at the school of Theater, Film and Television. It’s a fantastic show and I hope you can see it!

UCLA School of Theater Film and Television presents
Chekhov’s THE CHERRY ORCHARD
directed by Mel Shapiro

March 4 at 8pm
March 5 at 2pm
March 5 at 8pm
March 9 at 8pm
March 10 at 8pm
March 11 at 8pm
March 12 at 2pm
March 12 at 8pm

The Little Theatre, MacGowan Hall, UCLA

To buy tickets, call (310) 825‑2101
or visit the UCLA Central Ticket Office online.

Directions
Park in Structure 3, make your way to the Sculpture Garden, turn around, and the theatre will be in front of you. Here’s a map:

view larger

Is There Life After High School?: My First Show at UCLA

Matthew Wrather — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:57:21 +0000

Everybody has been telling me to let them know when I’m in a show at UCLA. Well, here it is! And what’s more, it’s a musical (the first one the graduate actors at UCLA have ever done.

I’m glad to announce that next month, you can come see me sing, tap-dance, play piano, and—oh yes—act a little bit in Is There Life after High School, with music and lyrics by Craig Carnelia. It’s a good show, it’s fun, and, most importantly, it’s short. (Less than 2 hours! You’ll be home in time for The Daily Show.)

Is There Life after High School?
Book by Jeffrey Kindley, Music and Lyrics by Craig Carnelia
Directed by Professor Gary Gardner

November 9, 10, 13, 18 & 19, 2010 at 7:30 p.m.
November 13, 2010 at 2 p.m.

The Little Theatre, MacGowan Hall, UCLA

To buy tickets, call (310) 825‑2101
or visit the UCLA Central Ticket Office online.

Directions
Park in Structure 3, make your way to the Sculpture Garden, turn around, and the theatre will be in front of you. Here’s a map:

view larger

Dead Man’s Cell Phone at UCLA

Matthew Wrather — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:15:35 +0000

I’m very excited to be working on my first full-length project with my classmates at UCLA. If you live out here, I hope you will consider coming out to see some very talented actors. And also me.

DEAD MAN’S CELL PHONE
by Sarah Ruhl

directed by Alex Levy

featuring Lauren Dunagan, Josephine Keefe, Nina Law, Catherine Leong, Colin Fairchild, and Matthew Wrather

An incessantly ringing cell phone in a quiet caf. A stranger at the next table who has had enough. And a dead man — with a lot of loose ends. So begins Dead Man’s Cell Phone, a wildly imaginative new comedy by playwright Sarah Ruhl, recipient of a MacArthur ”Genius” Grant and Pulitzer Prize finalist for her play The Clean House. A work about how we memorialize the dead — and how that remembering changes us—it is the odyssey of a woman forced to confront her own assumptions about morality, redemption, and the need to connect in a technologically obsessed world.

Thursday, May 6 at 7:30pm
Friday, May 7 at 4:30pm
Saturday, May 8 at 7:30pm

1330 MacGowan Hall,
UCLA School of Theater Film and Television
(Enter on Hilgard near Sunset; park in Structure 3.)

Tickets are free; open seating; first come, first served.

Appearing at La MaMa ETC in “It Matters Where You’re Buried”

Matthew Wrather — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:57:44 +0000

I’m pleased to announce that I’m appearing (and playing a little piano!) in a reading of It Matters Where You’re Buried, a new cabaret pray about chanteuse and nightclub hostess-to-the-stars Brick Top, at La MaMa ETC in the east village, as a part of their reading series Shadow. Here are the details:

IT MATTERS WHERE YOU’RE BURIED
by Beth Campbell

Directed by George Ferencz
Featuring Sheila Dabney as Brick Top
Lee Beebout as Jim Comstock
and Matthew Wrather as Itchy

Brick Top, cabaret chanteuse and saloon keeper to the stars of the Lost Generation in Paris, gives an interview to Jim Comstock, editor of the West Virginia Hillbilly newspaper, in her bar in Heaven.

Where ever I am, that’s Brick Top’s. As a gin joint it ain’t bad.
—Brick Top

February 14, 2009 at 7:30pm
La MaMa Annex, 74A East 4th Street, NYC [map]
Free Admission /No Reservations

KNB Review at NYTheatre.com

Matthew Wrather — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 01:12:39 +0000

I am delighted that the NYTheatre.com review of KNB the Musical was a rave, happier still that the reviewer seems to have gotten the writer/director’s aims exactly, and astonished that the following sentence appeared in it:

The cast is led by Glenn Seven Allen as Batteaux, who sings, dances, and acts with grand finesse.… Standouts include…Matthew Wrather, who, in addition to dancing, is a featured pianist in a couple of numbers.

Only two more chances to see me in the show–check out the main post for details.

Fall Out at the, um, Binge Festival

Matthew Wrather — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:22:43 +0000

Apparently, when it rains it pours. In addition to rocking Christopher Carter Sanderson’s KNB: The Musical (four more performances as of this writing!), I’m going to be appearing in Fall Out in the Binge Festival, a Working Man’s Clothes joint.

Our play, Fall Out is a 10 minute comic bromance about the apocalypse. I’ve been rehearsing with the director and other actor, and it will be a good time. I especially like the format of the evening: It runs from 11pm–3am (we’re second on the bill, so if you’re just coming for me, you’ll be out around midnight), there’s a band and full bar, and tickets are only $5. I hope to see you there!

Fall Out

written by Larry Pontius
directed by Nelson T. Eusebio III
with Jason Robinson and Matthew Wrather

Friday and Saturday, August 15 and 16
The show runs 11pm–3am. We’re second on the bill.

Wings Theater (154 Christopher Street) [map]
Between Greenwich and Washington in the West Village

$5 admission

KNB: The Musical

Matthew Wrather — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:52:14 +0000

I’m so excited to announce my first NYC show, an new work called KNB: The Musical, written, composed, and directed fellow Yalie Christopher Carter Sanderson. I’m in the chorus (another first!), and it’s been a great way to start off working in a new city and meet incredible, talented new people.

If you’re in the area, I hope you can check it out. Tickets are cheap ($15!), and the schedule is a little weird. I’ve heard that the prime-time shows sell quickly, so reserve online now!

Gorilla Repertory presents
the New York Int’l Fringe Fest. production of

KNB

The Romatical, Comical, Nautical Musical

written and directed by Christopher Carter Sanderson
musical director: Allison Tartalia / choreographer: Erin Porvaznika

All’s Fair in Love and the Global War on Terror? A sailor wonders what is making his life truly miserable as his Navy Reserve Boat Unit sings and dances its way toward impending deployment.

The Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts, Pace Univ. [map]

Sunday 8/10, 6:45pm
Thursday 8/14, 3:00pm
Sunday 8/17, 1:45pm
Thursday 8/21, 7:30pm
Saturday 8/23, 9:45 (pm, i hope)

tickets ($15! Cheap!) are available on the Fringe Website