Shut Up Martha

"A compelling retelling of the Watergate scandal from the point of view of one of its most colorful characters."
-- DC Theater Arts
Written by Jake Lipman
"If it hadn't been for Martha, there would've been no Watergate." -- former president Richard M. Nixon
3 Performances: July 12, 13, 15, 2023
Capital Fringe Festival, Washington, DC

Cast

MATT GIBSON* (Nixon, McCord, G. Gordon Liddy, and others)
Broadway: Gypsy.  Off-Broadway: On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Finian's Rainbow, The Underclassman, New Girl in Town. Regionally, Matt's played over 25 Equity principal roles, most recently Bob Cratchit in Goodspeed Musical's A Connecticut Christmas Carol and Willie Conklin in Barrington Stage's Ragtime. www.mrmattgibson.com 
@mrmattgibson
JAKE LIPMAN* (Martha Mitchell)
Off Broadway: Wearing Me Down (Prospect Theatre's Dark Nights), Sex and the Machine (Ma-Yi Theatre Lab reading). Off-Off Broadway (selected): The Inn at Lake Devine, Women Playing Hamlet, Buffalo Heights (Planet Connections 2017 Fest), How I Learned to Drive, Our Town, Books on Tape (FringeNYC). Film: The Clown, Endo, Solo, Gary from Accounting. MFA, Actors Studio Drama School; BA, Smith College. www.JakeLipman.com
JAYA TRIPATHI (Helen Thomas)
Jaya is a human rights advocate and studied at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. Recent credits include Tongue in Cheek Theater's world premiere of Relentlessly Pleasant, The Woolgather's adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez’s Eyes of a Blue Dog, Strindberg Repertory Theatre’s production of Abu Casem’s Slippers, and Bad Neighbor's adaptation of The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. www.jayatripathi.com
WILLIAM DOUGLAS TURNER (John Mitchell)
NY Theater: The Night of the Neutron Dance, Taming of the Shrew, and the title role in Macbeth. TV: Mysteries at the Museum, TruTV’s Late Night Snack, among others. Film: Lighthouse Unmanned, Me, Zombie Pizza. One half of the comedy duo Perfectly Adequate Films. www.williamdouglasturner.com
LORALEE TYSON (Pat Nixon, Marty Mitchell, others)
TV: “The Deuce” (recurring co-star S 2). Selected NYC Theater: The Threepenny Opera (nominated for Drama Desk Award - best revival), Ten Commandments (NYNW Festival), A Serious Person (MITF). Founder of Hysterical Female Productions and co-host of The Pussy Power Podcast. Controversially a cat and a dog person. www.loraleetyson.com
*Actors appear courtesy of Actors Equity Association

Production Team

JAKE LIPMAN (Director and Producing Artistic Director)
Since founding TIC in 2006, Jake has produced 41 thought-provoking comedies, including the 2018 world premiere of her play Relentlessly Pleansant and her 2015 adaptation of The Inn at Lake Devine, and 14 iterations of TIC's Plus 1 Solo Show Festival. Two-time Puffin Foundation Ltd grant winner for the creation of new work, appears onstage in many TIC shows, and occasionally directs, including Relentlessly Pleasant, Ruby (2018 Planet Connections Fest, Best Director and Outstanding Production nominee), the 2014 world premiere and 2017 revival of Buffalo Heights (Planet Connections Theatre Fest 2017, Outstanding Production of a Revival nominee), and well-known plays like Mauritius, Our Town, and How I Learned to Drive. MFA, Actors Studio Drama School; BA, Smith College. www.JakeLipman.com
OLIVIA RAGAN (Assistant Director)
Olivia is a New York-based director committed to sharing stories that challenge social constructs and expectations. She assistant directed TIC's world premiere of Relentlessly Pleasant, and spent 6 weeks last summer as a Core Company apprentice at the Orchard Project. Directing credits include: The Wise Women by Nelson Clark, assistant directing Company (Barrington Stage), Speech and Debate, and the Musical Theater Conservatory at Barrington Stage (summer 2017). BA, Theater Arts, Marymount Manhattan College.
JESSICA FORNEAR (Stage Manager)
holds an associates degree in Theater, Film, and Television. Recent credits: LIC One Act Festival, The Tempest (The Secret Theatre), All’s Well That Ends Well (Hedgepig Ensemble), The Marriage of Figaro (Hofstra Opera Theatre). Upcoming projects: Freedom (Ninja Ballet). @jg4near

PHILIP ROTHMAN (Sound Designer)
For TIC: Relentlessly Pleasant, The Inn at Lake Devine and Our Town. Orchestration credits: Our Kind of Traitor (StudioCanal), Ray Donovan (Showtime), Too Big to Fail, Taking Chance, Teddy in His Own Words, You Don’t Know Jack (HBO Films), Sin Nombre, Hollywoodland (Focus Features), The Nanny Diaries (Weinstein Company/MGM Films), Faces of America (PBS). New York Innovative Theatre Awards Nominee, Outstanding Sound Design for Proof (TIC). www.philiprothman.com

Special Thanks

A note from the Artistic Director:
This piece was a true collaboration between everyone on this premiered production. We had worked together previously right before the pandemic and had done a Zoom play reading in 2020 of another piece. When I was thinking about this piece, having these 5 collaborators along for the ride was invaluable -- while all of them are younger (and nicer-looking!) than the real people they portrayed, their adaptability and ingenuity made making theater together, largely on Zoom, a fun and flexible process. Getting to be back together on-stage, in real life, in 2023, was such a gift. The piece continues to be developed into a longer, more fulsome retelling of the Watergate scandal, but the foundation from this early iteration was foundational to its arc.