"…gives you plenty for your head and might break your heart” – Pioneer Press

“A serious drama that’s seriously funny!” – NY Daily News

Luke believes in God.
Adam believes in everything else.

When a Christian gives an atheist the Heimlich Maneuver, love sparks and lives change in this award-winning Broadway hit about two men in love, two parents in denial, and two friends on speed-dial. NEXT FALL takes a funny and provocative look at what it means to “believe”, and what it may cost us not to.

Run Time: 2:15

Meet The Artists
Meet the Playwright
Calendar
Watch and Listen

	Joel Sass (Director) is a Minneapolis-based designer and director whose credits at the Jungle include: The Mystery of Irma Vep; Blithe Spirit; The Seafarer, Shipwrecked! An Entertainment; Hitchcock Blonde; The Syringa Tree; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Shining City and I Am My Own Wife. Joel has been honored with the Alan Schneider Director Award, a 2006 McKnight Theater Artist Fellowship, a 2006 IVEY award for scenic design for The Last of the Boys, an IVEY award for his 2009 production of Mary's Wedding, and most recently was named a runner-up for Artist of the Year by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
	Garry Geiken (Adam) is delighted to return to the Jungle, having last appeared in 2003 as Orson Welles in Orson Welles Rehearses Moby Dick. Other recent credits include Theater Latte Da's Song of Extinction, Torch Theater's Glengarry Glen Ross, Pangea World Theatre's Curiosities and Park Square Theatre's Rock and Roll. In 2008 he was honored with an IVEY award along with the ensemble of Gremlin Theatre's Orson's Shadow. Garry can next be seen back at Park Square this June in the area premiere of Panic.
	Neal Skoy (Luke) is making his Twin Cities professional theater debut in this production of Next Fall. This past summer Neal wrote, directed, and acted in 5th Floor Mercy with the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Past shows include: The Miser (Harpagon); Noises Off! (Garry); Brighton Beach Memoirs (Eugene). Prior to this production he has performed as a clown with Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus, Circus World Museum, The International Clown Festival in Hangzhou, China, and an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
	Andrea Leap (Holly) is a versatile singer and actor who has performed locally at the Jungle Theater (The Rivals), Nautilus Music-Theater, Theater Mu, Troupe America, Duluth Festival Opera, Minnesota Bach Society, Theater Or, and the Schubert Club, and with regional companies in Oklahoma, North Carolina, Ohio and Michigan. She received a Jerome Emerging Artist grant in 2007 for her work creating cabaret concerts. Andrea also teaches singing at the MacPhail Center for Music.
	Sasha Andreev (Brandon) makes his Jungle debut in Next Fall. Theater credits include Guthrie Theater, Park Square Theatre, Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, Mixed Blood Theater, Hennepin Stages, MN Orchestra, MN Fringe, Thirst and Actors Theatre of Louisville, where he was part of the ’03-’04 Acting Apprentice Company. On television, Sasha has been seen as host of HGTV’s Curb Appeal, ShopNBC, and numerous commercials. Films include Phasma Ex Machina, See Jane Run, and How You Look To Me. Sasha is a graduate of Vassar College.
	Maggie Bearmon Pistner (Arlene) was most recently seen in Walking Shadow Theatre Company’s The Crowd You’re in With, and Theatre in the Round’s Ring Around the Moon. At St. Cloud’s Pioneer Place Theatre she has portrayed Amanda in The Glass Menagerie, and Kate in All My Sons. Work at other Minneapolis theatres includes The Gremlin, Starting Gate, The Southern, Theatre Pro Rata, and Theatre Unbound. She recently finished filming Ann Prim’s The Lucky One. Maggie is a voice-over and commercial talent and has studied with master teachers Alvina Krause, Stella Adler, and Jane Brody.
	Stephen Yoakam (Butch) has appeared many times at the Jungle, most recently as Gerorge in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and as Sharkey in The Seafarer. Stephen is a long time member of the Guthrie Theater acting company, where he appeared in dozens of productions over 25 years. Regional credits include roles at The Goodman Theater, A Contemporary Theater, Arizona Theater Company, Arena Stage, the Kennedy Center, and Carnegie Hall with the Minnesota Orchestra. Stephen is a founding member of Mixed Blood Theater, most recently appearing in The Clean House.

naufts

Geoffrey Nauffts is a NYC-based playwright, actor, director, screenwriter, and artistic director of Naked Angels, the scrappy New York City theater company which first presented Next Fall in a tiny 99 seat theatre. After several sold-out extensions, the show moved to Playwrights Horizons where it again grew in popularity. Then pop star Elton John stepped forward as producer to transfer the show to Broadway, where audiences have been laughing, crying and discussing the work's ideas.

Ben Brantley of The New York Times described Next Fall as “artful, thoughtful and very moving… an intellectual stealth bomb” and Adam Feldman of Time Out New York called it a, “funny, romantic, truthful and heartbreaking new drama.”

Next Fall went on to garner a 2010 Tony Award nomination for Best Play and Best Director and has won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New American Play. Each time the play moved to its new location, it grew a whole new audience as an ever widening range of people was moved by its story of a loving couple, their commitment severely tested.

In this interview by Kenneth Jones [writer for the on-line journal Playbill.com], Geoffrey Nauffts talks about Next Fall, and its depiction of faith, family, friendship and unconditional love.

Playbill.com: When I talk to friends about Next Fall, I can't easily define the experience. It's a romance, it's a comedy, it's a tragedy.... I'm curious: How do you define it, what do you most respond to?
Geoffrey Nauffts: I think that in the end Next Fall, ultimately, is about Adam and Luke, an atheist and a Christian who meet and fall in love and navigate their differences over a five-year period until a terrible accident happens and their two worlds completely collide. In my mind what I was setting out to do was an exploration of faith in this day and age. That said, I love the way that you phrase it: it's a comedy, a romance, a tragedy. I definitely think that it sneaks up on you, whatever “it” is. And that was sort of my intention.

Playbill.com: Did you know it would have comic elements?
GN: Yes, whenever I write, I'm a laugh whore. I love funny! ... But I love things that are funny and then surprise you. Keep 'em laughing, keep 'em laughing — and then go in for the sucker punch!

Playbill.com: Is the main relationship between Adam and Luke inspired by a real relationship? How did these characters come into your imagination?
GN: You know, I've always been fascinated by faith just in general. I didn't have any organized religion in my life growing up. I didn't have any kind of faith, yet I always had a certain fascination with it, I don't know why that is. I feel that I've suffered because of that. In many ways I'm grateful not to have had any of those constraints growing up. No one telling me, "You can't do this, you can't do that, because it's not 'right.'" No one except myself. But also by the same token I feel that there have definitely been times in my life when I've been envious of that comfort, that peace that I experience in people of faith who've been in my life throughout the years. I think that was the starting point for me, wanting to explore that. Also, because our world right now and our country in particular is so polarized, there is a lot going on in terms of politics and equal rights — with the religious right on one side and the liberal left on the other. I just wanted to — without being heavy-handed — take that situation and put it into human context. That really was my starting point.

Playbill.com: I appreciate that every one of the characters changes in some way, sometimes incredibly subtly, like Luke's messy mother. She becomes a supermom, organizing and rallying when other people fall apart.
GN: She finally becomes a mother, in a sense, when she hasn't been able to do that for most of her life, really.

Playbill.com: Adam is neurotic. A hypochondriac. Are you?
GN: I am a hypochondriac! That I do have in common with Adam, so I was able to write about that.

Playbill.com: In terms of feedback from audiences, what is the range of emotion expressed?
GN: You know, there is a wide range. The thing that I love the most in this whole experience is that people were so moved to talk and converse with each other and ask questions and take the long way home, and that is why I got into theater in the first place as an artist, as an actor — I wanted to make people think and affect change in some way. It wasn't going to be through politics or through science; it was through art, so I was really encouraged that that can happen.