WSR’s LAB series proudly closes its 2015/2016 inaugural season with Obie Award-winning playwright Gina Gionfriddo’s “Becky Shaw.” When a couple of newlyweds set up their abrasive and confident friend with a sexy and strange new co-worker, it’s the blind date from hell.  Crisis and comedy crackle throughout this wickedly funny dark comedy which sheds light on the unpredictable and dangerous world of modern dating.

The reading features Chicago-area talents of Michele Vazquez as Suzanna, Paul Baird Brutscher as Suzanna’s ipso facto adopted brother Max, Sylvie Sadarnac as Suzanna’s no-nonsense mother Susan, Joel Bennett as Suzanna’s devoted husband Andrew, and Emma Brayndick as the titular Becky Shaw.

WSR’s LAB Series is dedicated to showcasing new scripts, giving the audience an artist’s perspective of the play on-the-page. Our goal is to offer a public forum, bringing audiences & theater artists together to share & discuss a wide range of exciting new work. Admission is FREE! Come for the reading and stay for our discussion afterward…tell us what you think! The LAB reading of today may become the MainStage production of tomorrow!

cast: Joel Bennett, Emma Brayndick, Paul Baird Brutscher, Sylivie Sardarnac, & Michele Vazquez

Gina Gionfriddo is an award-winning playwright and accomplished television writer. Her play Rapture, Blister, Burn was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.Becky Shaw was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama enjoyed a long off-Broadway run at Second Stage (Outer Critics Circle Award) and in London at the Almeida Theatre, where it received two Evening Standard Award nominations. Ms. Gionfriddo received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting, as well as the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights and an American Theatre Critics Association/Steinberg Citation. She has worked as a writer and producer for Law & Order and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and as a writer for Cold Case. Her other TV work includes Borgia and House of Cards. Ms. Gionfriddo is a graduate of Barnard College and Brown University’s MFA playwriting program. She has taught at Brown University and Providence College.