A Standing Long Jump

Some people fall in love at first sight. Others fall in love like a slow, bloody surrender. A play about when to leap, when not to, and how the stranger at a coffee shop could be the person who knows you best.

	MAT SMART is a 2010-11 McKnight Advencement Grant recipient and a two-time recipient of the Jerome Fellowship from The Playwrights’ Center. This summer, Williamstown Theatre Festival will premiere his newest play, Samuel J. and K. Other plays include The Hopper Collection (Magic Theatre and Huntington Theatre Company), The 13th of Paris (City Theatre, Seattle Public Theatre, Horizon Theatre, The Public Theatre of Maine and The Warehouse Theatre) and The Bebop Heard in Okinawa (O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference). Mat has been commissioned to write new plays by South Coast Rep and Huntington. He is a co-founder of Slant Theatre Project in New York City and holds and MFA in playwriting from UCSD.
	JAMES CRAVEN is a long-time Penumbra Theatre company member. Select credits at Penumbra include Two Old Black Guys, Fences, The Piano Lesson, Penumbra's production of Gem of the Ocean presented at the Guthrie Theater, Get Ready, Zooman and the Sign, Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers and REDSHIRTS, co-produced with Round House Theatre. He also performed at Kansas City Repertory Theater and Arizona Theater Company in their joint production of Jitney. James is a 2005 recipient of the Spenser Cherashore Fund and was awarded a 2007 McKnight Fellowship.
	ALI ROSE DACHIS feels very lucky to be able to do what she loves to do! She has been privileged to work at many wonderful theater companies including: The Guthrie Theater, Youth Performance Co., The Children's Theater Co., Exposed Brick Theater, 20% Theater Co., Park Square Theater, The Directors Studios, The Strange Capers,The Ordway and others. Ali is a graduate of The U of M/Guthrie B.F.A Actor training Program. Thank you to her incredible family, friends, and teachers for their love and support.
	NAMIR SMALLWOOD has performed at Penumbra in Blue and On the Open Road. He is a Newark, NJ native and a 2006 graduate of the University of Minnesota/Guthrie B.F.A. Actor Training Program. He has performed with the Children's Theatre Company in Five Fingers of Funk!, Bud, Not Buddy, Lost Boys of Sudan, Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963, and Reeling, at Pillsbury House Theatre in Phoenix Fabrik, and at the Guthrie Theater in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
	BRIAN BALCOM grew up in Minneapolis and has assisted on several shows at The Guthrie, The Jungle, and The Old Globe Theaters, and has directed with Gremlin Theatre, Mu Performing Arts, New Theatre Group, Pillsbury House's Chicago Avenue Project, Illusion Theater's Lighthouse Group, Teatro del Pueblo, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. Brian has a BFA in directing from the Carnegie-Mellon School of Drama.