Kathleen Chalfant Set for A Hard Heart and Dead Man’s Cell Phone

Award-winning actress Kathleen Chalfant will star in two Off-Broadway shows this season. First up will be Epic Theatre Ensemble’s production of Howard Barker’s A Hard Heart, to play Theatre Row’s Clurman Theatre October 30- December 2. The show, which will open officially on November 11, will be directed by Will Pomerantz.

The play is about a country facing invasion. ‘Praxis’ the Queen enlists the Genius ‘Riddler’ (Chalfant) to devise a strategy to protect their threatened culture, but is the sacrifice too much? Barker is the author of such works as Scenes from an Execution, The Europeans, and The Bite of the Night.

In February, she will co-star in the Playwrights Horizons’ production of Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man Cell’s Phone, to be directed by Anne Bogart. The play concerns a woman who answers a ringing cell phone that belongs to a dead man and then gets involved with his family and friends. Chalfant will play the man’s mother. Ruhl is the author of The Clean House and Eurydice.

Chalfant was nominated for a Tony Award for Angels in America, and received Drama Desk, Obie, Lucille Lortel, and Outer Critics awards for her work in Wit. She is also the recipient of a 1996 Obie for Sustained Excellence of Performance and Drama League and Sidney Kingsley awards for body of work. Her other Off-Broadway credits include Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell, Great Expectations, and Talking Heads, for which she won an Obie.