Matawan

By Dan Caffrey
Directed by Alice Stanley 

In the summer of 1916, a series of fatal shark attacks terrorized the New Jersey Shore. Further inland, a polio epidemic plagued Philadelphia, while the cloud of World War I loomed over the Nation. As the forces of nature, disease and war close in, characters who struggle to change must face a creature whose evolution has led to millions of years of survival. Spanning several cities, the infinite depths of the ocean and the point of view of the shark herself, Matawan examines how our internal anxieties are often just as terrifying as our national catastrophes. 

Matawan was a finalist for the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference (2013) and premiered at Chicago's Athenaeum  Theatre (2015). 

The running time for Matawan is approximately 90 minutes with no intermission. 

View the playbill for Matawan.

Performances 

Preview: October 10 at 7:30 p.m. 
Opening: October 11 at 7:30 p.m. 
Additional Performances: October 12, 16-20 at 7:30 p.m. and October 14, 20-21 at 2:00 p.m. 

Community Engagement Events 

There will be a post-performance discussion with members of the Community Engagement team immediately following performances on October 11 and 18 in the Oscar G. Brockett Theatre. 

Inside Look 

• Meet the Cast: "Matawan" - OFF BOOK: A Theatre and Dance Blog
• Playing with the Past: History and "Matawan" - OFF BOOK: A Theatre and Dance Blog
• Shark tale ‘Matawan’ shows beauty and fury of nature - austin360

Dan Caffrey is a M.F.A. in Playwriting candidate at The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to moving to Austin, Caffrey was in Chicago where his work was produced by various companies, including The Ruckus, the side project and Tympanic Theatre where he served as the artistic director from 2007 to 2015. He has also written for several publications as a pop-culture critic, including The A.V. Club, Pitchfork, Vox and Consequence of Sound, where he co-hosts The Losers' Club: A Stephen King Podcast. 

Alice Stanley is a playwright, director and the founder of Cohesion Theatre Company in Baltimore, MD. Stanley has won Best Director from Baltimore City Paper's "Best of Baltimore" (2016), The Bad Oracle and DC Metro Theatre Arts and received the Mayor's Individual Artist Award. Stanley has been featured in The New York Times and USA Today for their work on a grunge-era, gender-bending production of Hamlet. Their full-length play, Sally McCoy was produced by Cohesion Theatre Company and will be produced by The Barter Theatre in Abingdon, VA, where it won the Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights. alicestanley.com