GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES
by RAJIV JOSEPH
Directed by Tyler Christie
THE PLAYERS’ RING Feb. 18 - March 26 2025
CAST
Kari Buckley is the recipient of Boston’s 2024 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Featured Performance in a Play for her role as Harper in Angels in America, pts 1 & 2 with Bedlam/Central Square Theater. Originally from York, ME, Kari returned to the Seacoast in 2023 to play Mimi in the New England premiere of Is Edward Snowden Single? with Bardo Theatre Company/The Players’ Ring, one of her absolute favorite shows to date. Additional past roles include Callie in Stop Kiss, Nora in A Doll's House, and Mandy in Time Stands Still. She’s also in a Lifetime movie if you’re into that sort of thing! Kari is so unbelievably grateful to be back in Portsmouth, the place that encouraged her initial love of theater, to perform with her childhood friend in this beautiful play about growing up. A million thanks to Dylan, Tyler and Tim for being truly inspiring artistic collaborators and friends, her mom for the never-ending support, and of course the sweeties, for everything. Graduate of The Neighborhood Playhouse. IG: @misskaribuckley.
Kari Buckley (Kayleen)
Dylan is thrilled to be returning to The Players Ring for the first time in fifteen years! Broadway: Leopoldstadt, Betrayal. Off-Broadway: Love, Love, Love, Pope. Broadway National Tour: Tina, Beautiful. Regional: Windfall, Grease. TV/Film: We Crashed, A Spectacular Holiday, Mannies (Creator/Writer). Training: Carnegie Mellon University. Thank you to Tyler and Kari and the rest of the creative team here at The Players Ring! Love to my family, my wife Sarah, and our dogs Josh and Warren. @DSWallach
Dylan S. Wallach* (Doug)
CREATIVE TEAM
RAJIV JOSEPH (Playwright) Rajiv Joseph’s play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Drama and also awarded a grant for Outstanding New American Play by the National Endowment for the Arts. He has twice won the Obie Award for Best New American Play, first in 2016 with Guards at the Taj (also a 2016 Lortel Winner for Best Play) and then, this year, for Describe the Night. Other plays include Archduke, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Animals Out of Paper, The Lake Effect, The North Pool and Mr. Wolf. Joseph has been awarded artistic grants from the Whiting Foundation, United States Artists and the Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust. He is a board member of the Lark Play Development Center in New York City. He served for three years in the Peace Corps in Senegal and now lives in Brooklyn, NY.
TYLER CHRISTIE (Director) is a New Hampshire-grown/Brooklyn-based director of plays and musicals. NY: DECAY (EST/YoungBlood), Six Red Seeds, The Cult of Domina, Mommy and the Pirate (Theater Accident’s Hit & Run Reading Series), Up Strung Down (Fresh Binder@The Tank), Tamra Wasserman presents... (The PIT/Slingshot), SERIALS (The Flea), Father Demo Square (NYTF). Regional: Fully Committed (July 2025), Witch & Deadly Murder (Winni Playhouse, NH Premiere), Is Edward Snowden Single? (Bardo/Players' Ring, NE Premiere), Perfect Arrangement (Bay Area Premiere) & Little Shop of Horrors (Hillbarn Theatre), Rock of Ages (Firehouse Center), Ken Ludwig's Baskerville & In the Heights (SRT, NH premieres), Nine Lives (Chicago MT Fest.) Educational: CANS(Weathervane TYA), Violet (PAPA), Into the Woods, Boeing Boeing, dark play (CCC) and Almost, Maine. Tyler has developed new plays with New Dramatists, The Lark, Page 73, The New Group, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Working Theater, Theater Accident, The Tank, The PIT, Arts on Site and Victory Gardens. He is a Co-Founder of Slingshot Theater Co., an alum of the SDC Observership Class and is currently the Associate Director of the Playwrights’ Lab at New Dramatists, the country’s oldest playwright center. As a theater educator, He has been an artist-in-residence at Natick High School and a summer camp instructor for over 12 years, most recently with Upside Arts. BA in Theatre Direction from Columbia College Chicago.
*Member of Actors' Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States, appearing under a Special Appearance Contract.