(PHILADELPHIA, PA) -- Lantern Theater Company continues its 2022/23 season with the Philadelphia premiere of The Lifespan of a Fact by writers Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell. Award-winning director and actor Matt Pfeiffer returns to the Lantern, directing a cast that includes Ian Merrill Peakes, Trevor William Fayle, and Joanna Liao. The Lifespan of a Fact runs Thursday, February 2 through Sunday, March 5, 2023, at St. Stephen’s Theater, the Lantern’s resident venue.
Hailed as “terrifically engaging,” “ingenious,” and “invigorating and unsettling,” by The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, and Vulture, respectively, The Lifespan of a Fact pits a famous writer, a magazine editor, and a lowly fact-checker against one another in an epic battle over the meaning of words, truth, and art. Based on the 2012 book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal – the real-life writer and fact-checker – this comedy explores meaningful questions about art versus truth and when art is more ‘truthful’ than facts.
The Lifespan of a Fact is a play, based on a book, based on an essay. In 2003, Harper’s Magazine commissioned John D’Agata to write an essay on the suicide of Las Vegas teen Levi Presley. The final product, titled “What Happens There,” was based on D’Agata’s experience researching the event and creatively explored the culture of tourism and suicide in Las Vegas. Harper’s pulled the essay from publication due to factual inaccuracies; after seven years of fact-checking by Jim Fingal, it was published in The Believer on January 1, 2010. D’Agata and Fingal collaborated to write The Lifespan of a Fact – the book – which was published by W.W. Norton & Company in 2012. The book combines the essay itself with Fingal’s extensive and meticulous fact-checking notes in a fascinating debate on fact versus fiction and which is more valuable in the search for truth.
The Lifespan of a Fact – the play adapted by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell – opened on Broadway in 2018 starring Bobby Cannavale as D’Agata, Daniel Radcliffe as Fingal, and Cherry Jones as Emily Penrose, the fictional magazine editor caught between them. The Hollywood Reporter wrote of the play, “Ingenious... stinging relevance to so much of what’s been happening for years now in American social, cultural, and political discourse.”
“I love this play,” said Matt Pfeiffer, who directs the Lantern’s production. “It’s a fantastic debate about what is the essential nature of truth. At this moment in time, we have an incredibly fraught relationship with facts. The play grapples and wrestles with how we perceive facts within a narrative. And since all of theater is essentially a fictional trick of artistry, I can think of no better place to tell the story. The Lantern has a great history of producing ethically complex plays that provoke and entertain in equal measure. I think this play fits perfectly in that cannon and the production will be a terrifically entertaining evening of theater.”
Lantern Theater Company will delve deeper into the themes raised by The Lifespan of a Fact on its Lantern Searchlight blog, available online at lanterntheater.org/searchlight. Articles will be published throughout the production’s run, exploring the role of fact-checkers, the state of modern-day media, and a study of truth vs. facts, as well as behind the scenes interviews with the artists.
Tickets for The Lifespan of a Fact are $25 – $42 and are available online at www.lanterntheater.org or by calling the Lantern Box Office at (215) 829-0395. Discounts are available for students, seniors 65 and up, U.S. military personnel, and groups of 10 or more. Performances of The Lifespan of a Fact will take place at St. Stephen’s Theater, located at 923 Ludlow Street in Center City Philadelphia. During the 2022/23 season, the Lantern will announce updated health and safety guidelines 30 days prior to the start of each production.
For The Lifespan of a Fact, everyone other than the actors on stage must wear properly fitted masks at all times in all parts of the Lantern venue, including the performance space, lobby, restrooms, and stairwells. More information is available at lanterntheater.org/health-and-safety.
Philadelphia-based actor and director Matt Pfeiffer returns to the Lantern to direct The Lifespan of a Fact. His previous Lantern directing credits include The Hound of the Baskervilles (2015), the Philadelphia premiere of Athol Fugard’s The Train Driver (2014), and the world premiere of Anthony Lawton’s The Foocy (2006). He has also directed productions at theaters across the region, including Arden Theatre Company, People’s Light, Walnut Street Theatre, 1812 Productions, Delaware Theatre Company, Bristol Riverside Theatre, InterAct Theatre Company, and the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, among others. He is a twelve-time Barrymore Award nominee, winning twice for directing The Whale and The Invisible Hand at Theatre Exile, where he is a resident artist. He is the 2008 recipient of the F. Otto Haas Award and a graduate of DeSales University.
Ian Merrill Peakes takes on the role of writer John D’Agata. He previously appeared as Frank in the Lantern’s spring 2020 digital production of Molly Sweeney and as Dutch military captain Joseph Pillel in the Lantern’s critically acclaimed 2017 world premiere of The Craftsman by Bruce Graham. A Barrymore and Helen Hayes award-winning actor, Peakes’ stage credits also include productions with Walnut Street Theatre, Arden Theatre Company, Theatre Exile, Philadelphia Theatre Company, The Wilma Theater, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, American Conservatory Theater, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Folger Theatre, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and many others.
Joining Peakes will be Trevor William Fayle as fact-checker Jim Fingal (sixth Lantern production, including Othello, Hapgood, Photograph 51, Arcadia, and Emma) and Joanna Liao as editor Emily Penrose (sixth Lantern production, including The Last Match, The Taming of the Shrew, 36 Views, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The School for Wives).
The creative team includes scenic designer Dirk Durossette (Lantern credits include Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine; Measure for Measure; and many others), costume designer Kelly Myers (A Man for All Seasons, The Last Match), lighting designer Amanda Jensen (The Last Match, The Heir Apparent), sound designer Chris Sannino (Lantern debut), projection designer Michael Long (Coriolanus), stage manager Rebecca Smith, and assistant director Patrick Reilly.
Founded in 1994 and continuing its 29th season with The Lifespan of a Fact by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell, the mission of the Lantern Theater Company is to produce plays that investigate and illuminate what is essential in the human spirit and the spirit of the times. The Lantern serves the Greater Philadelphia region with award-winning productions and education programming, notably partnering with middle schools and high schools in the Philadelphia School District to provide in-classroom residencies in support of curricular learning. The Lantern became a national leader in streaming theater during the Covid-19 health crisis, producing ten fully designed plays that were created and filmed in the company’s resident home at St. Stephen’s Theater, garnering coverage in national media including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and reaching more than 30,000 patrons in 15 countries and all 50 states.
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