We are thrilled to be awarded a Production Design Award for the The Dry Years by Stage Raw!
THE DRY YEARS
The Dry Years begins—as stories so often do—with an arrival. It begins the day a pair of lawyers showed up and started buying “useless land” for more than it was worth. By the time folks realized why, it was too late. The lawyers had stolen their water at the point of a pen and built an aqueduct to bleed them dry. Ten years later, this rural California community stands on the edge of collapse. That is until a stranger drives out of the desert, offering a solution to all their problems: Rain.
Inspired by the strange-but-true story of Charles Mallory Hatfield—Southern California’s most famous (and infamous) practitioner of the pseudoscience of rainmaking—this is a story about stories. The ones that are true, the ones that aren’t, and the ones that are somewhere in between.
“During the dry years, the people forgot about the rich years, and when the wet years returned, they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.” – John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Conceived by Christine Breihan and John Guerra
Written by John Guerra
Directed by Christine Breihan
Developed in Workshop with the Ghost Road Company
Featuring
Richard Azurdia, Ronnie Clark, Liz Eldridge, Kelvin Morales, Katharine Noon, Melissa Paladino, Camila Rozo, and Brian Weir
Production Team
Scenic Design: Katrina Coulourides
Lighting Design: Brandon Baruch
Sound Design: Cricket Myers
Costume Design: Vicki Conrad
Movement Direction: Adam Dlugolecki
Prop Design: John Burton and Cate Chapman
Assistant Director: Jordan Villegas
Stage Manager: Cate Chapman
Producer for the Ghost Road Company: Mark Seldis
About the Creators
Christine Breihan (Director, she/her) is a Los Angeles-based theatre artist, movement specialist, and educator. She has worked with award-winning companies across the city including Center Theater Group, A Noise Within, Padua Playwrights, The Fountain, Theatricum Botanicum, Theatre Roscius, Theater of NOTE, Sacred Fools, Project Nongenue, Bocón Arts, Creative Playground, The Unusual Suspects, The Blank, and The Ghost Road Company. Internationally, she studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic arts, and has performed with Ghost Road at the Grotowski Laboratorium in Wroclaw, Poland. Movement/intimacy choreography includes: Trojan Women (Project Nongenue), Death of Medea, This Grief Will be of Use (Theatre Roscius), Noises Off (University of Maryland), Everybody, The Revolutionists, and These Shining Lives (Loyola Marymount University). TV Credits include TNT’s The Last Ship and Nickelodeon’s Bucket and Skinner’s Epic Adventures. Upcoming directing/choreography projects include a workshop presentation of Theatre Roscius’ The Death of Medea at the Getty Villa. She holds her BFA in Acting from Boston University, and her MFA from Loyola Marymount University, where she currently lectures in Movement and Acting. She is currently earning her CMA (Certified Movement Analyst) from the Laban/Barteneiff Institute of Movement Studies and is a proud member of Actor’s Equity and SAG-AFTRA.
John Guerra (Playwright) is a Latinx writer who left his home in Carpenteria, CA to make his fortune in the theatre. He never found his fortune, but he did become a 2019 Sundance Theatre fellow and a member of The Ghost Road Company. When he’s not creating with Ghost Road, he’s writing about class, California, and minotaurs. His work has appeared on stages across LA including: A Noise Within, The Blank Theatre, Coin & Ghost Theatre Company, The Fountain Theatre, Rogue Artists Ensemble, Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, the Vagrancy Theatre Company, and Pomona College. His work has also been developed and produced by the T. Schreiber Studio in New York City. He holds his BA in Theatre from UC Irvine and an MFA in Writing for Performance from CalArts. John is a proud member of the Dramatist’s Guild. Read more of John’s work on New Play Exchange.
Developed in workshop with Christine Briehan, Carly Bones, Zach Bones, Ronnie Clark, Alan Corvaia, Adam Dlugolecki, Liz Eldridge, Kim Glann, John Guerra, Jen Kays, Kelvin Morales, Katharine Noon, Mark Seldis, Jordan Villegas, Carly Weckstein, and Brian Weir.
Press Inquiries: Mark Seldis, mseldis@ghostroad.org
The Dry Years is generously supported in part by the City of LA Department of Cultural Affairs and the LA County Department of Arts and Culture
