Free reading!

WHAT Lab

"The Rules" by Dipika Guha

FREE Reading of a New Play-in Progress

Sunday, Dec. 11. 7:00 pm, The Julie Harris Stage

Playwright Dipika Guha will work on a script titled *The Rules *during a week-long residency as part of the WHAT Lab play development program. She, director Jesse Jou, a cast of four actors, and WHAT Lab director Dan Lombardo will spend the week working with the playwright. The public is invited to a reading of *The Rules* on Sunday night at the Julie Harris Stage. The feedback from this reading is an important part of the development process -- so come and be part of the WHAT Lab!

The Play:

Ana, Mehr and Julia are childhood friends, their friendship held fast by their observance of several unspoken rules. That is, until a brooding stranger with a mysterious resemblance to Colin Firth and a strange addiction problem comes to town. THE RULES is a romantic comedy turned revenge tragedy.

The cast:

Irene Sofia Lucio (Ana)

Nicholas Carriere (Valmont)

Caitlin Clouthier (Mehr)

Valerie Stanford (Julia)

Dipika Guha: Playwright

Dipika Guha’s plays include The Betrothed (Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater), Passing (YaleCabaret and Yale School of Drama), The State of Affairs (Yale School of Drama)and The Rules (supported by Old Vic New Voices). Short plays include Habeas Corpus, A Brief History of America (Fairfield University commission), In the Red White and Blue (finalist, Heideman Award) and An American Dream (T.S Eliot Award). She graduated with a BA in English Literature from University College London, was a Frank Knox Fellow of Playwriting at Harvard University and is a recipient of the Cole Porter Prize in Playwriting at Yale University where she studied under the mentorship of Paula Vogel. She has reviewed fiction for The Times Literary Supplement and is a graduate of the Young Writer’s Program at the Royal Court Theatre. Dipika Guha has an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama.

The director: Jesse Jou

2011 Season at WHAT: The Betrothed; Neighborhood3: Requisition of Doom Jesse Jou graduated from Yale School of Drama, where his credits include La Ronde, 99 Ways to F*ck a Swan, and the things are against us [les choses sont contre nous]. Other credits include Take on Me: Adoption, Addiction, and a-ha (New York International Fringe Festival); My Mom Across America (The Kitchen Theatre Co., Ithaca, NY); Estrella Cruz [The Junkyard Queen], Mask Ritual: Electra, Flowers and Other Stories, Language of Angels, and Dipika Guha's Passing (Yale Cabaret). At Yale, he was the recipient of the Edgar and Louise Cullman Scholarship. He served as Artistic Director of the 2010 season of the Yale Summer Cabaret and as the Staff Repertory Director for the 2010-2011 tour of the Acting Company.