Playwright
Beth Henley

Director
Jonathan Demme

Cast
Quincy Tyler Bernstine (Rickey)
Kathleen Chalfant (Lena)
Rosemarie DeWitt (Claire)
Sami Gayle (Kay)

BETH HENLEY (Playwright) was born in Jackson, Mississippi. Her plays have been produced internationally and translated into over ten languages. Crimes of the Heart (The Golden Theatre) and The Wake of Jamey Foster (Eugene O'Neill Theatre) were performed on Broadway.  Off-Broadway productions include: The Miss Firecracker Contest, Am I Blue, The Lucky Spot, The Debutante Ball, Abundance, Impossible Marriage, and Family Week. Her play Ridiculous Fraud was recently produced at McCarter Theatre as well as South Coast Repertory Theatre. Ms. Henley’s newest work The Jacksonian will have a staged reading this summer at New York Stage and Film.  Ms. Henley was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play for Crimes of the Heart. Other awards include: American Theatre Wing 1998 Award for Distinguished Achievement in Playwrighting; Susan Smith Blackburn Finalist for Crimes of the Heart and Ridiculous Fraud; New York Stage and Film Honoree, 2007.  Ms. Henley wrote the screenplay for the acclaimed film version of Crimes of the Heart for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.  The film was directed by Bruce Beresford and starred Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek and Sam Shepard.  She also wrote the screenplay for Miss Firecracker starring Holly Hunter and Tim Robbins.  She wrote the screenplay for Nobody's Fool that starred Rosanna Arquette and Eric Roberts, and co-wrote David Byrne's True Stories. Her television credits include Surviving Love a film for CBS starring Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen as well as a teleplay for the PBS series, Trying Times, directed by Jonathan Demme.  Ms. Henley has the honor of serving as Theatre Arts Presidential Professor at LMU, Los Angeles. She is a board member of The Fellowship of Southern Writers and serves on Pen/Faulkner’s Writer’s Advisory Council.

JONATHAN DEMME (Director) began his film career in the early 1970s working with producer Roger Corman. Throughout that decade he is credited as a co-writer and producer on several of Corman’s productions and as director of three films (Caged Heat, Crazy Mama, and Fighting Mad).  In 1980, Demme directed Melvin and Howard, for which he received widespread critical acclaim. The rest of that decade proved his talent for directing feature films that garner both critical and commercial success, including Something Wild and Married to the Mob. During that same period he also directed the groundbreaking performance films The Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense and Spaulding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia.  In 1991 Demme won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Silence of the Lambs, which swept the Oscars that year, taking all the major categories: Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, and Best Actor. Two years later he released Philadelphia, which won star Tom Hanks the Best Actor Oscar.  Demme’s feature films also include the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, and Rachel Getting Married (2008).  Jonathan Demme has also established himself as a master in the distinct genres of documentary and performance film. His creative vision in illuminating the talents and commitment of others combine to bring us an outstanding body of work that includes – along with Stop Making Sense and Swimming to Cambodia – Haiti: Dreams of Democracy, The Agronomist, Neil Young: Heart of Gold, and Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains. Demme’s most recent full-length collaboration with Young, Neil Young Trunk Show, opens this month.  Currently, Demme is developing Zeitoun, the Movie, an animated feature based on Dave Eggers’ best-selling book. Also in development is an HBO series based on Walter Moselys latest novel, The Long Fall, featuring NYC private eye Leonid McGill. Family Week is Demme’s stage directing debut.

QUINCY TYLER BERNSTINE (Rickey) NY Theater: In the Next Room or the vibrator play (LCT at the Lyceum); Ruined (MTC - Obie, Clarence Derwent, Audelco Awards); The Misanthrope  (New York Theatre Workshop); Chicken (Studio Dante); A Small, Melodramatic Story (The Public Theater/LAByrinth); ‘nami (Partial Comfort Productions); (I am) Nobody’s Lunch, The Ladies, Paris Commune, Gone Missing (all with The Civilians); Matt & Ben (P.S. 122 and National Tour); The Trail of Her Inner Thigh (LAByrinth); The Train Play (Clubbed Thumb), among others.  Regional Theater: Goodman, Woolly Mammoth, The O’Neill, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Sundance Theatre Institute, Cape Cod Theater Project, Berkeley Rep, The Alliance, Long Wharf, La Jolla Playhouse, Chautauqua Theater Company, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Nashville Shakespeare Festival, Baltimore Center Stage, Mark Taper Forum, Virginia Stage Company, and others.  Television/Film: Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, dir.), HBO Voyeur Project; Chappelle’s Show; Law & Order: SVU; Law & Order: Criminal Intent; All My Children; numerous voiceovers for television, radio, and audio books.  Training: Brown University (BA), UC San Diego (MFA). Member: The Civilians, LAByrinth Theater Company and a NYTW Usual Suspect.

KATHLEEN CHALFANT (Lena) Broadway: Angels in America (Tony and Drama Desk nominations), Racing Demon, Dance With Me. Off-Broadway: Wit ( Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama League Award, Connecticut Critics Circle Award, as well as her second Obie Award), Dead Man's Cell Phone, Bloomer Girl (City Center Encores!), Nine Armenians (Drama Desk nomination), Twelve Dreams (directed by James Lapine), Henry V (directed by Doug Hughes, Callaway Award). Other New York credits: The Vagina Monologues (West Side Arts Theatre), True History and Real Adventures (Vineyard), Phaedra in Delirium (CSC), Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Endgame (directed by David Esbjornson), The Party (from three stories by Virginia Woolf), Three Poets (by Romulus Linney), Sister Mary Ignatius..., Just Say No (by Larry Kramer), The Investigation of the Murder in El Salvador (NYTW). London & Los Angeles: Wit (LA Ovation Award). Regional Theatre: Guthrie Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, Hartford Stage Company, Mark Taper Forum, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Sundance Playwrights Lab, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Paper Mill Playhouse, American Masterpiece Theatre and others. Film: Duplicity, Perfect Stranger, Dark Water, Kinsey, The Laramie Project, Random Hearts (a Sydney Pollock film starring Harrison Ford), Murder and Murder (directed by Yvonne Rainer), Bob Roberts, Five Corners, Jumpin' at the Boneyard, Dream Work (with Eric Bogosian),  A Price Below Rubies (directed by Boaz Yakin), The Last Days of Disco, The Pornographer, and Side Streets. Television: Recurring on Rescue Me and The Guardian; also Mercy, Voices from the White House (PBS), A Death in the Family (American Masterpiece Theatre/PBS), Storm of the Century (Stephen King miniseries for ABC); Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Prince Street, Spin City, LA Law, One Life to Live. Awards: 1996 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance.

ROSEMARIE DEWITT (Claire) Film career includes playing the role of “Rachel” in Rachel Getting Married (dir. Jonathan Demme), as well as roles in How I Got Lost, Cinderella Man (dir. Ron Howard), The Great New Wonderful, Blackbird, and the upcoming Kenneth Lonergan film Margaret. Her television credits include The United States of Tara, Mad Men, Standoff, Love Monkey, and Rescue Me. Recent Off-Broadway credits include John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea at Second Stage and Craig Lucas’ Small Tragedy at Playwrights Horizons.

SAMI GAYLE (Kay) is thrilled to be working under the direction of Jonathan Demme at MCC. Broadway credits include Gypsy starring Patti LuPone (Baby June) and Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical (Annie Who). Off-Broadway credits include the Atlantic Theater Company's production of Oohrah! (Lacey), the City Center Encores production of Gypsy starring Patti LuPone (Baby June) and a reading of Cuzi Cram's Dusty and the Big Bad World. Sami has also appeared on the CBS soap opera, As the World Turns. Sami is featured as Baby June on the cast recording of Gypsy which was nominated for a 2009 Grammy. She would like to thank her family, friends and the amazing production staff at MCC.