Smashing

October 4–26, 2003
USAWorld Premiere
Smashing is a razor-edged, contemporary comedy about writers and their prey.
Meet the Artists

Brooke Berman (Author) recently completed her feature debut as a writer/director, RAMONA AT MIDLIFE (www.ramonaatmidlife.com). Brooke has written films for Natalie Portman, The Mark Gordon Company, Vox Films, Fugitive and Red Crown. She adapted and directed the short UGGS FOR GAZA which premiered at the Aspen International ShortsFest where it won Audience Special Recognition. ALL SAINTS DAY, a short film Brooke wrote, directed by Will Frears, won Best Narrative Short at the Savannah Film Festival and screened at the Tribeca Film Festival. Brooke’s feature script POLLY FREED was chosen to be part of New York Stage and Film’s Screenwriters Lab where it was mentored by Kyra Sedgewick, Zach Helm and Billy Goldberg and selected as part the MOME finance lab for female filmmakers and NYWIFT From Script to Preproduction lab. PF has made it to “second round” for Sundance Screenwriting Labs two years in a row and won Best Screenplay at the Toronto Independent Film Festival. Brooke's plays include Hunting and Gathering (Primary Stages), Smashing (The Play Company, The O’Neill) and A Model City (Stacey Mindich Productions) and others; they have been produced across the US and internationally at theaters including Steppenwolf, 2nd Stage and Naked Angels. She recently developed the new play DEARLY BELOVED at Theaterworks Hartford. Brooke’s memoir No Place Like Home is now available on Audible.

Trip Cullman (Director) Most recent credits include: The Rose Tattoo (Broadway, 2019), Choir Boy (Broadway, 2019) and Lobby Hero (Broadway, 2018). He previously directed Adam Bock's The Drunken City and Sarah Schulman's Manic Flight Reaction at Playwrights Horizons. Other New York credits include Adam Bock's Swimming in the Shallows, Leslye Headland's Bachelorette and Terrence McNally's Some Men (Second Stage); Lloyd Suh's American Hwangap, Robert Farquhar's Bad Jazz, Roland Schimmelpfennig's Arabian Night and Brooke Berman's Smashing (The Play Company); Gina Gionfriddo's US Drag (stageFARM); Bert V. Royal's Dog Sees God (The Century Center); Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's Dark Matters (Rattlestick Theater); Jonathan Tolin's The Last Sunday in June (Century Center and Rattlestick Theater); Glen Berger's The Wooden Breeks (MCC Theater); Paul Weitz's Roulette (EST); Rinne Groff's Of a White Christmas (Clubbed Thumb); Gary Sunshine's Sweetness and Brooke Berman's Sam and Lucy (both at Summer Play Festival '04) and The Wau Wau Sisters (Ars Nova). Regional credits include the World Premiere of Lloyd Suh's American Hwangap (Magic Theatre), Six Degrees of Separation (Old Globe) the World Premiere of Richard Greenberg's The Injured Party at South Coast Rep, Keith Huff's A Steady Rain and The Petersons Project (both at New York Stage and Film), Lauren Weedman's Rash (The Empty Space, Seattle), John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation (The Old Globe, San Diego). Training: Yale School of Drama.

David Barlow (Actor) Off-Broadway: The Film Society (Keen Company); The Castle, Serious Money, Victory, Scenes From An Execution (PTPNYC); Horizon (New York Theater Workshop); Oroonoko, Andorra, Saved (Theater For A New Audience); Romola And Nijinski (Primary Stages); Perfect Harmony (Theater Row); Mycenaean (BAM); The Seagull (Roundtable Ensemble).

Regional: Pericles (Berkeley Rep); Venus In Fur (Portland Center Stage); Oleanna (Bristol Riverside Theater); The Tempest, The Crucible (Hartford Stage); The Hour Of Feeling (Actors Theater of Louisville); King Lear (Kansas City Rep); This Is Our Youth (Philadelphia Theater Co); On The Jump (Arena Stage). Internationally, David has performed at the Festival d'Avignon, BITEF in Belgrade, Theater Garonne in Toulouse, and in David Levine's Bauerntheater in Germany.

Television: Without A Trace, Third Watch.

Education: NYU Graduate Acting, MFA

David's original show LA PARTY, directed by Phil Soltanoff, has performed at the Public Theater's Under The Radar Festival, PS122, The Fusebox Festival in Austin, and the Hopkins Center and Flynn Center For Performing Arts. He will perform it next in January at Vancouver's PUSH Festival. Visit: davidbarlow.org

Lucas Papaelias (Actor) Theatre: Cellini at 2econd Stage, Dead End at the Huntington, Lobby Hero at Geva, and recently, WTC View in the NY Int'l Fringe Festival. Television: Law & Order, NYPD Blue, Queens Supreme, and Avenue Amy. Lucas appears in the current feature "The School of Rock" w/Jack Black. Other film credits include "What Alice Found" (special jury prize, 2003 Sundance Film Festival), "Brother To Brother", and "The Last Goodbye". Lucas sings & plays guitar with the NYC-based rock band COOL HAND: www.coolhandrocks.com. Many thanks to my family and friends, and to the cast & crew of Smashing :-)

Katherine Powell (Actor) Regional Theatre: The Three Sisters, directed by Carey Perloff (A.C.T); The Eugene O’Neil Playwrights Conference, New York Stage and Film. Education: NYU, M.F.A, Brown University, B.A.

Broadway: Conversations With My Father, The Boys From Syracuse. Off-Broadway: Gemini and Dark Rapture (Second Stage), Mad Forest and Up Against the Wind (NYTW) My Night With Reg (The New Group) The Root (Atlantic Theater Co.) Dream of a Common Language (Women’s Project) Lusting After Pipino’s Wife (Primary Stages.) Regional: Three Sisters (Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey) Antony & Cleopatra (Berkeley Rep) The Sweet Life (Yale Rep) Savages (Seattle Rep) Steel (A.R.T.) Sweeney Todd, Othello and A View From the Bridge (Hangar Theatre.) Television: recurring roles on Hack and The Sopranos, guest star on Third Watch, Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, New York Undercover, Feds, Swift Justice, New York News, The Cosby Show and
Queens Supreme. Film: Carlito’s Way, Walking & Talkng, 101 Ways, Labor Pains, Let It Snow, A Day in Black & White, Night Falls on Manhattan, Porn n’ Chicken, Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, Wise Girls and Maid in Manhattan. For Allegra.

Katherine Waterston (Actor) Theatre: The Marriage of Bette and Boo,The Burden of Sunflowers, and Big Love (all at Williamstown Theatre Festival); This Is Our Youth (Abingdon Theater); No Exit (1,9 Theater); The Merry Wives of Windsor (RADA); Cloud 9, Before, Tom and Wife (all at NYU). Film/TV: Sunday (dir. Duncan Skiles); Deadline (recurring).

Merritt Wever (Actor) Off-Broadway: Cavedweller, dir. Michael Greif (NYTW); First Course (HB Playwrights Foundation); Cape Cod Souvenirs, dir. Eva Saks (Altered Stages). Regional: Paul Weitz’s Roulette, dir. Jace Alexander (NYS&F). Film: Signs (dir. M. Night Shyamalan), Series 7: The Contenders, All I Wanna Do (dir. Sarah Kernochan), The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, Arresting Gena and the upcoming A Hole in One, Season of Youth and Bringing Rain (official selection of the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival). Television: The Wire,
Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Blue River (Hallmark). Ms. Wever is a graduate of Fiorello H. LaGuardia H.S. for Music, Art and the Performing Arts and a former student of Ann Ratray. She is the recipient of the 1995 First Run Film Festival’s Best Actor Award for the short film, Tough, written and directed by Aiyana Elliott.

Erik Flatmo (Set Designer) New York: Iphigenia and Other Daughters, by Ellen McLaughlin, directed by Rebecca Guy (Barnard College); Saint Scarlet,, directed by Chris Messina (W.E.T.); Blood Wedding (Columbia School of the Arts); Paris Commune (The Civilians); Spring Awakening (Prospect Theatre Company); After the Show (Drama League New Directors/New Works). Regional: L'Enfant et Les Sortileges (Music Academy of the West); Betty's Summer Vacation, directed by Douglas Hughes (Yale Repertory Theatre); Our Town (Yale School of Drama). Education: BA, Columbia University; MFA, Yale School of Drama. Mr. Flatmo teaches set design at Barnard College.

Paul Whitaker (Lighting Designer) New York Credits: Manic Flight Reaction, BFE (Playwright’s Horizons), Tight Embrace. Kissing Fidel (Intar), Swimming in the Shallows (Second Stage Theater), Guinea Pig Solo (The Public Theater/ Labyrinth Theater Co.), Assisted Loving (MCC), Get What You Need (The Atlantic),  The Last Sunday in June (Off-Broadway-Century Center, Rattlestick Productions), The Penetration Play (13P), Sam and Lucy, Kid Simple, Sweetness, Colorado (Summer Play Festival NYC), Of a White Christmas, Madame Killer (Clubbed Thumb), Smashing (The Play Co).  Regional: Hartford Stage, The Long Wharf Theater, Yale Repertory Theater, Southern Rep, and others. B.A., Macalester College,  MFA, Yale School of Drama.

Michael Krass (Costume Designer)

Scott Myers (Actor) Broadway: Morning’s at Seven, The Crucible, An Almost Holy Picture, The Blue Room, Amy’s View, Racing Demon. Off-Broadway: Recent Tragic Events, The Night Heron, Writer’s Block, Dublin Carol, Blue/Orange, This Thing of Darkness, Speaking in Tongues, Psych, Further Than the Furthest Thing, Credeaux Canvas, Madame Melville. In London for the RNT, RSC, and West End: Amy’s View, Invention of Love, Racing Demon, The Trilogy, Richard III, John Gabriel Borkman, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Voysey Inheritance; Arcadia; Peter Pan; Women of Troy; Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; Madness of King George III; Madame Melville; The Henry IVs; Side Man; Lady
in the Van and many others.

21 year-old Abby, globetrotting daughter of a New York literary lion, discovers she is the undisguised subject of the sexy and scathing best-seller written by her first lover. Seeking revenge, she and her Madonna-worshipping best friend, Clea, embark on a pilgrimage to London that prompts unexpected consequences.

“Trip Cullman’s stylish direction gives Smashing the attractive sensibility of better indie films, like Sofia Coppola’s ‘Lost in Translation.'”
The New York Sun

“Berman’s tale, which wriggles between past, present and the sub-Nabokovian world of the book, is excellently handled by an appealing cast and directed with panache by Trip Cullman.”
Time Out

Written by

Brooke Berman

Directed by

Trip Cullman

Featuring

David Barlow Lucas Papaelias Katharine Powell Joseph Siravo Katherine Waterston Merritt Wever

Set Design

Erik Flatmo

Costume Design

Michael Krass

Lighting Design

Paul Whitaker

Sound Design

Scott Myers

Venue

Intar 53 Theater 508 West 53rd Street New York, NY