Diversionary Theatre will stage Stephen Karam's Speech and Debate as the fifth show of their 2009-2010 season. Speech and Debate is about sex, secrets, performance-art blogs and blackmail - just a typical day when you're a teenager in Salem Oregon. Theatre Communications Group reported that the play is one of the top ten most-performed plays in the United States during the 2009-2010 season. Diversionary's production will be directed by Jason Southerland, and feature Kevin Koppman-Gue, Markuz Rodriguez, Rachael VanWormer and Wendy Waddell. The show will run for three weeks from March 25-April 11.
The premiere of the play was described by Variety as a "...savvy comedy...bristling with vitality, wicked humor, terrific dialogue and a direct pipeline into the zeitgeist of contemporary youth...Karam has a keen ear for how teens talk, move and think, how they view each other and the adult world...and uses both the advantages and perils of cyberspace to make amusing, original points..." Three teenage misfits discover they are linked by a sex scandal that's rocked their town. When one of them sets out to expose the truth, secrets become currency, the stakes get higher, and the trio's connection grows deeper in this searching, fiercely funny dark comedy with music.
Diversionary's creative team for Speech and Debate includes Beth Gallagher (Assistant Director and Projections), Ted Crittenden (Scenic Design), Kate Stallons (Costume Design), Karin Filijan (Lighting Design), Nhan P. Pham (Sound Design), David Medina (Properties) and Gwendolyn Fish (Stage Manager).
Written by Karam when he was 25, he took the transcript of an online chat between the former mayor of Spokane, Washington and a gay teenager as the basis for this edgy new play. The play received a GLAAD Media nomination upon its premiere. Stephen Karam is the co-author of columbinus (2006 Helen Hayes nomination), which ran off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop following a co-production by Round House/Perseverance Theatres. His last two plays, Speech & Debate and Girl on Girl, debuted as workshop productions at Playwrights Rep. He is currently working on a new play commission for Roundabout Theatre Company and a screenplay adaptation of Speech & Debate for Overture Films. Karam's writing has also appeared in The Advocate and online at McSweeney's. He is a graduate oF Brown University.
The production will be directed by Jason Southerland, now Artistic Director of Next Theatre in Chicago. Jason co-directed the MOXIE/Diversionary musical play Pulp! in May 2006. Prior to Next Theatre, Jason served as the founding Artistic Director for Boston Theatre Works. As a director, Jason has staged several award-winning productions including the New England premieres of Homebody/Kabul, Not About Nightingales, Angels in America: Parts I & II and The Laramie Project. Other notable regional premieres include Pulp, The Sweetest Swing in Baseball by Rebecca Gilman, Four Baboons Adoring the Sun and I Am My Own Wife. Jason spent five years in New York City, where his affiliations included BACA Downtown, Circle Rep Laboratory, Lehman/Engel BMI Workshop, Alice's Fourth Floor and the Sanford Meisner Theatre. He studied directing at The American Repertory Theatre/Harvard University Institute for Advanced Theatre Training, working with Ron Daniels, Bob Scanlan, and Robert Brustein. He holds a B.A. cum laude in political science from the University of California at Berkeley.
Speech and Debate premiered at the Roundabout Underground in New York. The New York Times stated "Mr. Karam's observations are shrewd... A plot description doesn't hint at how funny and cliché-free this brilliantly performed little show is... The play's real accomplishment is its picture of the borderland between late adolescence and adulthood, where grown-up ideas and ambition coexist with childish will and bravado... The triumph of this production is that we never feel we're being educated, just immensely entertained. Its first time out, the Roundabout Underground has done exactly what it was created to do." Time Out New York wrote "Karam has a sharp eye for detail and a keen ear for the geeky, gawky dialogue of adolescent outsiders."
