By The Waters of Babylon at The Repertory

Seattle, WA - Seattle Repertory Theatre embarks on a journey of love, gardening and redemption in Pulitzer Prize winner, Robert Schenkkan's By the Waters of Babylon, directed by Richard Seyd. By the Waters of Babylon plays in the Leo K. Theatre from January 31 through March 2, 2008. Previews begin January 31, with opening night set for February 6. Tickets are available through the Seattle Repertory Theatre box office seven days a week at (206) 443-2222, toll-free at (877) 900-9285, as well as online at www.seattlerep.org.

The Play: The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan has created a passionate, tender and bittersweet love story. Catherine is beautiful and outspoken-a recluse with a dark and mysterious past. Arturo, the gardener, was a poet in his native Cuba and has come to rescue her neglected garden. The hot Texas day turns hotter as these two exiles share a drink and a dance, and try to banish the ghosts that haunt them both.

The Playwright: Robert Schenkkan is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Kentucky Cycle, which had its world premiere in 1991 at Intiman Theatre. It also won both the PEN Centre West and the LA Drama Critics Circle Awards for Best Play, as well as nominations for Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle awards. His other plays include Lewis and Clark Reach the Euphrates, Heaven On Earth, Final Passages, The Devil and Daniel Webster and The Dream Thief. For television he wrote the miniseries Crazy Horse, Spartacus and The Andromeda Strain He has written films for Sidney Pollack, Oliver Stone, Denzel Washington, Ron Howard, and Kevin Costner among others. He is currently writing a film, The Rules, for Dreamworks, and is a writer/producer for Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks and HBO's epic miniseries, The Pacific. He is a New Dramatists alumnus and a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre and the National Theatre Conference. He lives in Seattle with his author wife and his two children.

The Director: From 1992-1995, Richard Seyd served as the associate artistic director of the American Conservatory Theater where he directed The Learned Ladies, Dario Fo's The Pope and The Witch, Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Oleanna, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Othello, The Matchmaker, and A Streetcar Named Desire. In the 1980s he served as associate producing director of the Eureka Theater. He has won Backstage West awards for his productions of Cloud 9, Noises Off (which he staged at Seattle Rep, 2004) A Streetcar Named Desire, and Collected Stories. Some favorite productions include Present Laughter and The Presentment for Pasadena Playhouse, The Lion in Winter for La Mirada Theater, Dinner With Friends for Berkeley Repertory, and Feast Of Fools with Geoff Hoyle at La Jolla Playhouse. He directed a highly successful production in London's West End of A Reckoning with Jonathon Pryce. Mr. Seyd directed the award-winning short film Brass Tacks. He founded Seydways Acting Studios in San Francisco and Los Angeles.