BY CORT BRINKERHOFF
In rehearsal, L to R: Jaten McGriff, Cort Brinkerhoff, Colleen Baum, Melanie Nelson, Anne Stewart Mark
Monday, October 6, 2014 @ 7pm
Chapel Theatre
About the Play
Orrin Porter Steed, a seventeen-year-old drifter from Colorado City, is arrested for setting fire to a Mormon church. His caseworker, Faith, delves into his past to figure out why and attempts to reunite the boy with his estranged mother. Meanwhile, as Faith's marriage crumbles, she begins to seek solace from Orrin and finds herself questioning everything she believes in.
THE VERMILLION HAND began as a ten-minute play titled UGLY TO THE BONE. The play was commissioned by Plan-B Theatre Company and premiered at SLAM '06. It was then developed into a full-length script, and workshopped in a script-in-hand production. THE VERMILLION HAND was then re-written as part of Vagrancy's Writers' Group in Los Angeles and received a staged reading at its annual new play festival.
SLAC is proud to welcome Cort Brinkerhoff back to Utah to continue fine-tuning THE VERMILLION HAND in the place where it was first conceived.
About the Playwright
Cort's plays include THE BLUE HOUR, BULLET, THE BOMB PLOT, and THE NIGHTMARE ROOM, a play about the last days of British mathematician, war hero, and convicted homosexual Alan Turing. His works have been produced or had staged readings at The Vagrancy (Los Angeles, CA), Alive Theatre (Long Beach, CA), The Last Frontier Theatre Conference (Valdez, AK), Plan-B Theatre Company (Salt Lake City, UT), Piano Fight Productions (San Francisco, CA), USC, and the University of Utah. His ten-minute play NEUROSIS was published in Canyon Voices Literary Magazine, Issue 8 (Fall 2013). He wrote the screenplay for the independent feature BEYOND THE RYE, which will premiere in Norway in 2015. A native Utahn, Cort began his writing career in the 2003 Playwrights Group at Salt Lake Acting Company led by Julie Jensen and JT Rogers. He holds an MFA in dramatic writing from USC, where he currently serves as an Assistant Instructor. He lives in Los Angeles.
DIRECTOR - Anne Stewart Mark
CAST
Orrin - Jaten Lee McGriff
Faith - Melanie Nelson
Emma - Colleen Baum
Reader - Shannon Musgrave
