ON NAKED SOIL
Imagining Anna Akhmatova
Written by Rebecca Schull -- Directed by Susan Einhorn

“All that I am hangs by a thread tonight.
As I wait for her whom no one can command.
Whatever I cherish most - youth, freedom, glory -
fade before her who bears the flute in her hand.

And look! She comes - she tosses back her veil,
Staring me down, serene and pitiless.
“Are you the one,” I ask, “whom Dante heard dictate
the lines of his “Inferno?” She answers: “Yes.”

ABOUT REBECCA SCHULL
Playwright - Actress

Rebecca Schull is one of the country's leading character actresses. Her stage career includes the Broadway productions of "45 Seconds from Broadway," "Golda", and "Herzl." She was in "I Can't Remember Anything" at Signature Theater, directed by Joseph Chaikin, and at the Dublin Theatre Fringe Festival. She was the original Fefu in "Fefu and Her Friends" by Maria Irene Fornes, and appeared in many other Off-Broadway productions. Regional theater work includes "The Matchmaker" at the La Jolla Playhouse, directed by Des McAnuff, for which she received the Los Angeles Dramalog Award. Her recent film work includes "United 93" directed by Paul Greengrass, "Little Children," with Kate Winslet, and "Flannel Pajamas," featured at Sundance. She is well-known to TV audiences as Fay in the long-running NBC series "Wings." She has guest-starred in numerous television series and movies of the week. Her early training was at the Stanislavski Studio in Dublin, and her first professional work at the Dublin Focus Theatre. She received the all-Ireland Hibernia Award for Best Actress for her work there in " A Delicate Balance." She is a member of The Actors Studio and The Actors Center.

Rebecca Schull as Eugenia Ginzburg in "Journey into the Whirlwind."

This is Rebecca Schull's second play. Her one-woman play, "Journey Into the Whirlwind," adapted from the memoirs of Eugenia Ginzburg, told the story of a woman caught in the Stalinist purges of the 1930's. The Irish Times wrote that it offered "something rare in theatrical, literary, and human terms: revelation." The play premiered in Dublin, and was subsequently produced in Los Angeles and New York. She continues to perform it at colleges and universities, and will appear March 27 and 28, 2008 at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

She was also the founder and artistic director of Open World Theater Co., whose mission was to present the works of playwrights censored in their own countries.