In the Bubble

A coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of a nostalgic homage to 1976, with Jimmy Carter gunning for the White House, crocheted bikinis all the rage, and all those teenage kids getting it on without the fear of death, In the Bubble tells the tale of Todd Travolta, a fictional character suffering from the real disease of Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) which has kept him stuck behind a plastic wall, separated from human touch for the first seventeen years of his life. When Todd falls in love with the wealthy, high-spirited (aka slutty) Gina Jenner who lives next door, he is forced to choose between his safe existence in bubble-ed captivity and a chance at of the life he’s always wanted, but with the risk of imminent death.

"Growing up is a risk. Take it."

Production Dates: July 27 - August 10, 2007


About the In the Bubble Artists

Rinne Groff is a playwright and performer, born in New York, and raised in and around Tampa, Florida. Her work has been produced by the Public Theater, Trinity Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Women’s Project, PS122, Clubbed Thumb, Target Margin, and Andy’s Summer Playhouse, among others. Rinne is a recipient of an Obie Award grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and Whiting Writers Award, and a NYSCA Individual Artist grant. She was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, the Sundance Theatre Lab, the Australian National Playwrights Conference, the Perry Mansfield New Noises Festival, and The Chautauqua Theater Company. Affiliations: Elevator Repair Service (founding member), the Dramatists Guild, New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect, Clubbed Thumb, Target Margin, and NYU Tisch School of the Arts where she teaches in the Department of Dramatic Writing. Publications: Theater Magazine, BlackBook Magazine, The Complete Plays of the Humana Festival 2003 and 2004, and Playscripts, Inc. Yale B.A. ’91. NYU M.F.A. ’99. She is currently working on two musicals and an adaptation of a novel for the stage.

Michael Friedman -- Composer/lyricist for the Civilians’ [I Am] Nobody’s Lunch, Gone Missing and Canard, Canard, Goose? His music has also been heard at NYSF/Public, NYTW, Playwrights Horizons, Roundabout, Second Stage, Soho Rep, Theater for a New Audience, Signature, and The Acting Company, and regionally at The Kennedy Center, The Huntington, La Jolla Playhouse, Hartford Stage, Humana Festival, ART, Williamstown Theatre Festival, London’s Soho and Gate Theatres, and the Edinburgh Festival. Film work includes On Common Ground and Affair Game. He was the dramaturg for the recent Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Kenny Leon. He is an Artistic Associate at New York Theatre Workshop, was a MacDowell fellow, and is a founding Associate Artist of the Obie-Award-winning Civilians.

Michael Grief (Director) Most recent works include Grey Gardens on Broadway and at Playwrights Horizons, Courtney Baron’s A Very Common Procedure at MCC, Nilo Cruz’s Beauty of the Father at Manhattan Theatre Club, Noah Haidle's Mr. Marmalade at Roundabout Theatre Company, Neal Bell’s Spatter Pattern at Playwrights Horizons and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard at The Williamstown Theatre Festival. Broadway: Jonathan Larson’s Rent (Obie Award, Tony Nomination) and Never Gonna Dance. New York Shakespeare Festival credits include; Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters (Obie Award); Jose Rivera’s Marisol Pericles; Connie Congdon’s Casanova; Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day; and Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal (Obie Award). At New York Theatre Workshop (current artistic associate), he directed Cavedweller; Bright Lights, Big City and the original production of Rent. Other Off Broadway credits include Neil Labute’s The Distance From Here at Manhattan Class Company; Betty Rules at The Zipper Theater; A Few Stout Individuals by John Guare at Signature Theatre and Monster at Classic Stage Company. Regional credits include work at La Jolla (Artistic Director 1995-1999): Our Town; Sweet Bird Of Youth; Diana Son’s Boy; Randy Newman’s Faust (also at Goodman); Kushner’s Slavs (also at Mark Taper); Bell’s Therese Raquin. At Williamstown Theater Festival: Guare’s Landscape Of The Body; Once In A Lifetime; Street Scene; Tonight at 8:30 and The Seagull.

Joe Popp (music/lyrics)-- a punk rock guitarist and composer currently performing with his band The Hornrims. He has 4 nationally released albums, two with his eponymous band Joe Popp (Complex Machine, Bruiser), and two with dogs on ice (pushin' rope, salt wound). He has previously composed with Rinne Groff for the Clubbed Thumb production of What Then?. Musical adaptations include Macbeth (American Stage in the Park), JY2K (The Jobsite Theater), and two Mac Wellman plays, Why the Y? and Whirligig. Composition credits include productions of History of the Devil, Hughie, Independence, On the Verge, The Swan, Below the Belt, Suburbia, and Nirvanov. He has written the book and music for two original rock musicals (MAXWELL, Beelezevision). Current projects include a rock musical based on Biosphere II, a skateboard documentary, and music composition for The Jobsite Theater's production of Embedded.