Show Summary

SPEECH and DEBATE
March 25-April 11, 2010.
By Steven Karam.  Directed by Jason Southerland. 

Sex.  Secrets.  Performance-art blogs and blackmail.  A typical day when you're a teenager in Salem, Oregon.  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.  "…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…" —Variety.

Written by Karam when he was 25 (he’s 28 now), he took the transcript of an online chat between the former mayor of Spokane, Washington and a gay teenager as the basis for this fiercely funny and edgy new play.  The play received a GLAAD Media nomination upon its premiere.  Jason Southerland, now Artistic Director of Next Theatre in Chicago, co-directed the MOXIE/Diversionary musical play Pulp!

Creative Team

Stephen Karam

Stephen Karam is the author of Speech & Debate (GLAAD Media nomination) which recently finished an acclaimed, twice-extended run at Roundabout Theatre Company as the inaugural production of Roundabout Underground. He 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.

Jason Southerland

Jason Southerland (Artistic Director) is an award-winning director and producer who comes to Next Theatre from Boston, MA. There, he has served as the founding Artistic Director for Boston Theatre Works since 1998. During his tenure, the company produced the world premieres of a dozen plays and developed over sixty scripts through commissions, development agreements and BTW Unbound, an annual festival of new plays. 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. Regional credits include productions at Long Beach CLO, Albuquerque CLO, Diversionary Theatre and Moxie Theatre (both in San Diego), Foothills Theatre, Stoneham Theatre, University of Kent at Canterbury, Emory University, Cal Berkeley and several others.

Jason 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. He is a two-time winner of the Joe Hardy Directing Fellowship, received a Drama League Fellowship, was honored with an Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Direction for his 2008 production of Angels in America and was chosen by Boston magazine as #3 on their list of the "40 Bostonians to Watch."

Kevin Koppman-Gue	Markuz Rodriguez	Rachael VanWormer	Wendy Waddell

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