The Chalk Boy is a deathly black comedy about measuring your own worth by comparing it to everyone else’s.  Beneath its boring façade a Northwest town hides a nasty secret, and the girls from the local high school’s Christian Athletes Club are here to tell you all about it.  Murder, the occult, Algebra… this is a deathly black comedy that punches as hard as your high school bully. 

The Chalk Boy was produced as a reading at the 14th St. Y in Spring 2007, work-shopped as part of collectiveP.A.S.T @ chashama in Summer 2007, and ran in this year’s Capital Fringe Festival in Washington DC.  This play will be The Management’s first full production as Resident Artists with Horse Trade.  This play will also open simultaneously in Los Angeles with Co-Artistic Director Courtney Sale at the helm.

THE MANAGEMENT was formed in 2004 as part of New York’s UnConvention Festival.  Its first production was the Brecht-inspired This Jungle of Cities penned by founding member Berrian Eno-Van Fleet.  The Management is known for stark, stylized, critical exposés on American culture.  In 2005 the company enjoyed an 8-month residency at Victory Hall in Jersey City where it produced the East Coast premiere of Naomi Izuka’s Aloha Say the Pretty Girls and Thornton Wilder’s The Long Christmas Dinner.  The Mgmt took part in the inaugural Capital Fringe Festival in Washington D.C. in ’06 with the grotesquely humorous, existential play Self-Obsession in Blue (and again in ’08 with The Chalk Boy) and is currently showcasing new playwrighting through their 2008 Salon Series in NYC.

The Cast

COURTNEY SALE* (Executive Producer) is also a director and actor. Directing credits include Bright Room Called Day (Strike Anywhere Productions, Seattle), Henry VI Part 1 (Babes with the Bard, Seattle), and Singer Stories (Seattle Children's Museum).  As an actor Courtney has worked with Crowded Fire (San Francisco), Expression Theatre Ensemble (San Francisco), ARTSWest (Seattle), Greenstage (Seattle), Elden St. Players (Washington D.C.), Jewish Theater of New York (NYC) among others.  In 2000 she assistant directed Pulitzer Prize finalist Dael Orlandersmith's Seattle premiere of Monster at A Contemporary Theater.  In 2001 she was selected as one of fourteen emerging directors to participate in a workshop conducted by Peter Brook in conjunction with his tour of Hamlet.  She holds a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts.

JENNIFER HARDER* (Actress/Producer) moved to NYC from her native Flint, MI, and received a BFA with honors in Drama at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.  She has since performed in over a hundred stage productions and films as well as voiceovers, videos, and stage management. Companies she’s worked with include: chashama (inaugural summer of 2000), 29th St. Rep (Bold Girls), Target Margin (Faust in Love), Les Freres Corbusier (The Franklin Thesis), the Professional Actors' Collective, the inaugural Capital Fringe Festival (with The Management’s Self-Obsession in Blue) the Dublin Fringe Festival (with her first company, The Enemy of Art), and was most recently seen as the lead in The Beggars Group’s premiere of Armor of Wills

MARGUERITE FRENCH* (Actress/Producer) has originated many roles to critical acclaim, including the title roles in Sugarbaby! and Lorelei Lee with DM Theatrics. Other notable roles include the titular characters in Antigone and Romeo and Juliet, Vivian in Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls and Lucia in Mad Forest (NYIT nomination). In her native California, she studied with alumni of the Ashland Shakespeare Festival and the American Conservatory Theater and continued her training in New York with Wynn Handman and William Esper. Marguerite is also a member of The Savannah Theatre Project, an initiative to promote peace through art, with whom she collaborated on a new work for the Witness Hilton Arts Festival in Hilton, South Africa.

KATE HUISENTRUIT (Actress) is also a producer, director, and writer.  Recently finishing the first season as Associate Producer on the Rachael Ray show, Kate has been working in TV since moving to NYC in 2002.  Originally from Seattle, her directing credits include: Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill, Daddy’s Dyin Who’s Got the Will by Del Shores, and Paparazzi: Don’t Let the Flashbulbs Blind You by R.C. Jennings.  She assistant directed Aloha Say the Pretty Girls for The Management in 2005 and has played Joan La Pucelle in Henry VI Part 1, Lucy in Suessology and Edward/Victoria in Cloud Nine.  She holds a B.F.A in Acting from Cornish College of the Arts and her most recent performance was that of “Otto Mattic” in the Like a Boi drag king competition in Brooklyn, NY. 

MARY CATHERINE DONNELLY (Actress) appeared in The Management’s Capital Fringe success Self-Obsession in Blue.  Recent projects include motion capture and voice over for Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto IV, a few print ads and two short play festivals.  Favorite roles include Diane in Class of ’70, Helen in Christopher Durang's Baby With The Bathwater, Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Kimberly Bergalis in Patient A.  Mary Catherine is a graduate of the Two Year Meisner Training Program under Suzanne Esper at The William Esper Studio, completed the Shakespeare Intensive at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and currently studies voice and speech with Shane-Ann Younts.