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Red Hills

World Premiere

“I wrote a book about Rwanda when I was in my twenties and a month ago I got a note saying what I wrote was a lie. It doesn’t matter. Or…Is it an opportunity? Are things like this note what propels humans to understanding?”

20 years after the genocide they witnessed first-hand as teenagers, two men a world apart reunite to face their memories, confront a ghost, and desperately seek forgiveness.

Sponsored by Uber Advanced Technologies Group

SHOWTIMES

August 18 – September 10, 2017
The Recycling Building on the corner of 32nd Street and Smallman Street.

This performance has passed.

Meet the Cast

Scott Parkinson

Scott Parkinson

David

Scott Parkinson is an award-winning New York-based actor, writer, acting teacher, and audition coach. Broadway: The Coast of Utopia (Lincoln Center); National Tour: 39 Steps; Off-Broadway: the Stage Manager in David Cromer’s Our TownOrson’s Shadow (Barrow Street Theatre), EST, CSC, and MCC. Regional: An IliadCock (Studio Theatre), Shakespeare Theatre, the Old Globe, Mark Taper Forum, Hartford Stage, and La Jolla Playhouse. Chicago credits include the title role in HamletArcadiaHedda GablerCrime and Punishment (also at 59e59, NYC), The Glass Menagerie, and Cassius in an adaptation of Julius Caesar which he also co-directed and adapted (Writers Theatre), sixteen productions at Chicago Shakespeare Theater (including Rose Rage, also at the Duke Theatre, NYC), the Court Theatre, Northlight, and the Goodman. Other roles include Angelo, Mercutio, Treplev, Richard II, Richard III, the Fool, Puck, Iago, and Prior Walter. Featured interview: North American Players of Shakespeare.

Patrick J. Ssenjovu

Patrick J. Ssenjovu

God's Blessing

Patrick J. Ssenjovu was born and raised in Uganda. He joined Impact International, a repertoire company, at the early age of seventeen and toured Europe and America.  Shortly after moving to the United States, he was asked by Ellen Stewart of La MaMa to join Great Jones Repetory Company–he is still a member of the East Village company.  He has worked with various artists including Alex Mukulu, Meredith Monk, Ping Chong, Carl Hancock-Rux, Adong Judith, Michael Greif, and Seth Barrish.  Patrick has performed at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Lincoln Center, The Ohio Theatre and St. Anne’s Warehouse, and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.  On film, he has worked with the late Sydney Pollack (The Interpreter) and Michael Hoffman (Game 6). He currently resides in New York City.

Ava Kepple

Ava Kepple

Mary

Ava Kepple (Mary) is thrilled to be a part of her first professional show with Quantum Theatre. Ava has been studying dance, acting and voice for 8 years.  Locally she studies at the Dance Company for the Performing Arts under the direction of Pat McKeown, where she has performed in The Nutcracker, Marguerite and the Firebird (Marguerite), Sleeping Beauty (Sleeping Beauty), Cinderella (Fairy), Peter and the Wolf, (Hunter).  She has also studied at the Pittsburgh Public Theater and has had the privilege to study at the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan and most recently at the University of North Carolina School of Performing Arts Summer Program under Kirtan Coan and Dale Girard.

Creative Team

Anne Hamburger

Anne Hamburger

Executive Producer, En Garde Arts

Anne Hamburger is the Founder of En Garde Arts, the company that pioneered the development of site-specific theatre in NY from 1985 through 1999, featuring nationally known artists including Anne Bogart, Chuck Mee and Tina Landau. She was Artistic Director of La Jolla Playhouse in 1999 before serving as Executive Vice President at Disney and leading the creative development and production of all the major stage shows for the parks worldwide featuring renowned artists including Diane Paulus and Bobby and Kristen Anderson-Lopez.  She re-launched En Garde in 2014 with Basetrack Live, a multimedia, documentary theatre piece about the impact of war on the military and their families.  Named Top Ten of 2014 by The NY Times, Basetrack Live premiered at the Next Wave Festival and traveled to 40 cities throughout the country.  En Garde’s most recent production Wilderness, about the struggle for connection between parents and their teenage children was a NY Times Critics Pick and is going on tour this spring and next fall.

Sean Christopher Lewis

Sean Christopher Lewis

Playwright

Sean Christopher Lewis is the co-creator and writer of the comic books Saints and The Few, both published by Image Comics, with Saints recently optioned for television by Grandview/Automatik. He can be heard as a commentator on NPR’S This American Life and he serves simultaneously as the Artistic Director of Working Group Theatre and Riverside Theatre.  His work as a playwright, solo performer, director, sound designer and actor have won the NEFA National Theatre Project Award, the Kennedy Center’s Rosa Parks Award, the National New Play Network’s Smith Prize, the NEA Voices in Community Award, and a Puffin Foundation Artists Award.His plays and solo pieces have been performed at theatres such as Baltimore Centerstage, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Cleveland Public Theatre, and the Institut Del Teatra in Barcelona, Spain and include: Dogs of Rwanda, Killadelphia, Just Kids, The Gone Chair, I Will Make You Orphans, Black and Blue,  Militant Language, The Aperture, The Homeschooling of Jonathan Anderson, and Manning UP. Recently, with Jennifer Fawcett, he developed the one man performance installation Ghost Story (Berkeley Repertory Theatre; Englert Theatre).

Katie Pearl

Katie Pearl

Director

Katie Pearl has a twenty-year history of creating and directing site-specific and interactive shows in collaboration with designers and artists from all disciplines. Her performance work has been commissioned by the American Repertory Theater, Trinity Repertory Theater, the Kitchen, PS 122, Arts > Brookfield Properties/WFC, and the Whitney Museum Performance on 42nd St series among others.  Katie is co-Artistic Director of PearlDamour, an interdisciplinary company she shares with playwright Lisa D’Amour.  PearlDamour’s work has been honored with an OBIE Award, a Creative Capital Award, four Multi-Arts Production Fund grants, and two NEA Our Town grants.  Off Broadway, regional and experimental theater notable projects include Why We Have a Body by Clare Chaffee (Magic Theater, San Francisco); Panic! Euphoria! Blackout!  by Ellen Maddow of the Talking Band (HERE Theater, NYC); The Wrestling Patient, developed with playwright Kirk Lynn – finalist for NEA Outstanding New American Play (Speakeasy Theater, Boston);  and Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Kristina Wong (National Tour).  Katie is the current Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University, where her work focuses on the concept of the Artist-Citizen.  She will hold the Quinn Martin Directing Chair at the University of California San Diego in the fall of 2017.

Deb O

Deb O

Scenic Design and Costume Design

Selected set and costume designs: Ready Set Go: Race (Falconworks, NY), Airness (Humana Fest, KY), Selkie (Z Space, CA), Thieves (El Portal Theater, LA), Sweeney Todd (Perseverance Theater, Alaska), Christmas Carol and Middletown (Trinity Rep, RI), Light: A Dark Comedy (New Victory, NY), Rite Of Spring (Kimmel Center, PA), The Seagull, Ivanov, Platonov, Uncle Vanya (Lake Lucille, NY), The Nature of Captivity (Mabou Mines, PS 122), Salsalandia (La Jolla Playhouse, CA), Savannah Disputation (The Old Globe, CA), The Lacy Project (Premiere Yale), Jihad the Musical (Edinburgh Festival), The Mistakes Madeline Made (Yale Rep). She received her MFA from Yale and teaches design at NYU/PHTS. See more of her work at http://www.debo.nyc

Joe Seamans

Joe Seamans

Projection Design

This is Joe’s eighth Quantum production serving as Projection Designer. Previous productions include Maria de Buenos AiresAinadamarMnemonicAll the NamesThe Winter’s Tale, Ciara, and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

C. Todd Brown

C. Todd Brown

Lighting Design

Todd Brown has designed the lighting for many Quantum Theatre productions, includingPeribañez, Ciara,The Winter’s Tale, Brahman/iTAMARA, Pantagleize, Mnemonic, The Golden DragonThe Electric BabyMaria de Buenos Aires, Indian Ink, Kafka’s Chimp, Dog Face, The Voluptuous Tango, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and The Task. His lighting has also been seen locally at The Pittsburgh Playhouse, City Theatre and West Virginia Public Theatre. Other design work includes productions at La Jolla Playhouse, Contemporary American Theatre Company, Lamb’s Players Theatre, and Virginia Ballet Theatre. Todd is an Associate Professor of Lighting in the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama.

Steve Shapiro

Steve Shapiro

Sound Design

Steve Shapiro has spent 30 years as a professional sound designer around the country and the world. He is pleased to be returning to Quantum after a successful run last year with The River. He has spent the last eight years as Resident Sound Designer for The Pittsburgh Playhouse, where he has designed everything from Pinkalicious to The Scottsboro Boys. Steve spent 20 years in South Florida, where he won 4 Carbonell Awards for Best Sound Design, and spent 16 years as Resident Sound Designer of Miami’s famous Coconut Grove Playhouse.  He continues to design for theaters around the country and the world.

Felipe Garcia-Huidobro

Felipe Garcia-Huidobro

Media Design Assistant

Felipe Garcia-Huidobro is a Chilean artist and architect. As an interdisciplinary artist, Huidobro works to create a personal view of our surroundings, questioning the everyday world, focused on the tension between natural and artificial states. Working in different medias, he tries to understand how we perceive and remember through the senses. Huidobro has won awards by the Chilean Government Institution FONDART several times and holds an MA in Art and Ephemeral Space at Universidad Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. He received his BA in Architecture from Universidad Finis Terrae in Santiago, Chile.

Cory F. Goddard

Cory F. Goddard

Stage Manager

Cory F. Goddard is happy to be back at Quantum Theatre this summer. A graduate of Baldwin Wallace College in Cleveland, he’s been working in Pittsburgh theatre for 13 years playing with Bricolage, The REP, Texture Contemporary Ballet, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Kinetic Theatre, and PICT Classic Theatre.

Connor Griffin

Connor Griffin

Sound Engineer/ASM

Connor Griffin is a Sound Engineer, Stage Worker and Musician based out of Pittsburgh, PA. He served as the Sound Engineer and Designer for West Virginia Public Theatre’s 2015 Summer Season. Since then, Connor has received his BS in Commercial Music Technology from California University of Pennsylvania in 2016. He also served as Technical Director at Little Lake Theatre for their 2016 production of Fancy Nancy. He is now a Production Assistant and Electrician at Lincoln Park, a Stage Worker for IATSE Local #3, as well as occasionally working as a contract Sound Engineer at The Kelly-Strayhorn Theatre. Additionally, he has been on stage a multitude of times, having been in the Choir for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (2017)  at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center, Billy Boy Bill/Ensemble in Urinetown (2015) at California University of Pennsylvania, and Mark in Rent (2012) at CCAC South Campus. Connor is s trained Vocalist and self-taught Guitarist and Bassist.

Red Hills in the news

Recent Posts / View All Posts

actors talking while sitting on a car

Quantum Goes for Big Theme, Big Effects with ‘Red Hills’

| 2017-2018 Season, Red Hills | No Comments
Entertainment Central Pittsburgh - Quantum Theatre is a company that goes for the knockout punch every time. You won’t find any “safe” plays on the Quantum schedule, no tried-and-true crowd…
Actor smiling

These are the cries of the children – a review of “Red Hills”

| 2017-2018 Season, Red Hills | No Comments
'Burgh Vivant - High in the Mirama Hills between Uganda and Rwanda, a young American, David (Scott Parkinson) encounters God’s Blessing (Patrick J. Ssenjovu) and their lives are forever changed…
actors on set

The Red Hills of America

| 2017-2018 Season, Red Hills | No Comments
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Rarely do you find a work of art speak so precisely to its time as Quantum Theatre's new production. If you knew me, you would not have…
actors on set

Red Hills at Quantum Theatre

| 2017-2018 Season, Red Hills | No Comments
Pittsburgh City Paper - This production comes off as forced and overly grand. Big meals are not always filling, especially when they’re pumped full of empty calories. I came away…
Actors on a dirt stage

Stage preview: Climbing ‘Red Hills’ – Quantum, NYC theater dish the dirt on Pittsburgh world premiere

| 2017-2018 Season, Red Hills, Watch | No Comments
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - It took a few conversations, the right play and 23 tons of dirt to cement a collaboration between Karla Boos and Anne Hamburger, kindred spirits in the…
Actors on car

Quantum Theatre and En Garde Arts team up for world premiere

| 2017-2018 Season, Red Hills | No Comments
NEXTpittsburgh - Any project undertaken by Quantum Theatre delves into bold and innovative territory. Its latest production marks several firsts for the company, which is celebrating 27 seasons taking theatre off…