COMING SOON

CRY IT OUT

by Molly Smith Metzler

Directed by Judith Moreland

Sacramento Premiere

May 1 – June 2, 2024

Four months ago, Jessie was a corporate lawyer with a glamorous Manhattan life. Today, she is in dirty yoga pants, covered in breast milk, trying to comfort a screaming newborn. Isolated in a sleepy Long Island suburb while her commuter husband works long hours, Jessie is desperate to talk to anyone besides Food Network. When she spies a fellow new mom and neighbor, Lina, at the local Stop & Shop, she vaults over the cantaloupe to introduce herself. A comedy with dark edges that takes an honest look at the absurdities of being home with a baby, the power of female friendship, the dilemma of going back to work, and the effect class has on parenthood in America.

“A funny story that weaves together very different but highly meaningful stories from three new mothers.” -USA TODAY

PERFORMANCE LENGTH: 90 Minutes, No Intermission

FEATURING: Carissa Meagher, Luisa Frasconi*, Rinabeth Apostol*, Jason Kuykendall* | *Member Actors' Equity Association



SPONSORED BY TED COBB

Molly Smith Metzler is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter from Kingston, N.Y. She is the creator and showrunner of the limited series Maid, which debuted on Netflix in October 2021 and spent 13 weeks on the top-10 list, viewed by more than 67 million households. In March 2022, Maid won the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for Outstanding Writing of a Limited Series–Adapted Long Form, and was named a “TV Program of the Year” by the AFI (American Film Institute). It also received award nominations from The Golden Globes, SAG, the Critics’ Choice Awards, NAACP, and more. Metzler’s TV credits include several seasons of Shameless (Showtime), Casual (Hulu) and Orange Is the New Black (Netflix). In film, she’s written features for Universal, Disney and Fox 2000. As a playwright, Metzler’s plays, including Cry it Out, Elemeno Pea, The May Queen, Carve, Close Up Space and Training Wisteria, have been produced at Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC), Humana Festival/Actors Theatre of Louisville, South Coast Repertory, Northlight Theatre, Studio Theatre (DC), Detroit Public Theatre, City Theatre (Pittsburg), Geva Theatre Center, Chautauqua Theater Company and many more. Her play Cry it Out won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Playwriting (2018) and the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award Citation (2018). Her other awards include the Harold and Mimi Steinberg National Student Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center, the David Mark Cohen Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), and the Mark Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting. Metzler is a proud alumna of SUNY Geneseo, Boston University, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Juilliard School, where she was a two-time recipient of the Lecomte du Nouy Prize from Lincoln Center.

THE DIRECTOR

Judith Moreland is proud to be a native Californian, and a native Angeleno. She grew up in the San Fernando Valley, then left for Northern California when she graduated with a BA in Human Biology from Stanford University and an MFA in Acting from the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco. Judith has performed both on and Off-Broadway and has worked with many regional theater companies including the New York Shakespeare Festival, Playwrights Horizons (NY), Ensemble Studio Theater Los Angeles, Meadow Brook Theater (Detroit) and Shakespeare Festival/LA. She was also a company member of San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater for many years. Ms. Moreland won a Los Angeles Ovation Award for her performance in the Fountain Theatre’s production of Miss Julie and a Bay Area Theater Critics Award for her performance in American Conservatory Theater’s production of Miss Evers’ Boys. Film and television credits include Dark Skies, Eagle Eye, Blackish, Animal Kingdom, How to Get Away with Murder, Grey’s Anatomy, Parks and Recreation, General Hospital, The Big Bang Theory and CSI Cyber. She directed Three Sisters and The Kentucky Cycle at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television where she currently teaches acting, voice, speech and dialects. She is also the Co-Creator of UCLA’s Acting for the Camera Professional Program. She has taught at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA) in Los Angeles, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA) in New York, and the British American Drama Academy (BADA) in Oxford, England.