What happens in Naples, stays in Naples. It’s Carnival time in the Italian port town, and two sisters from Spain hit the streets: one hoping to marry her true love, and the other looking for a man (any man) and a way out of the nunnery. Enter a band of roving English cavaliers and let the games begin, in this Restoration comedy by Aphra Behn, the first female professional writer of the English language.

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Join us for a staged reading of The Rover -- a new adaptation-in-progress -- by Kathryn Walat, directed by Ryan Garbayo, and featuring performers from the UAlbany Theatre Program. A Q&A will follow, led by Richard Barney of UAlbany’s English Department.

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Kathryn Walat is an award-winning playwright and opera librettist whose work has been produced Off-Broadway and across the country. Her co-adaptation with playwright Jeffrey Hatcher of the Elizabethan thriller Arden of Faversham premiered with Red Bull Theater and was nominated for a 2022 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Adaptation. She is an associate professor and program director of the UAlbany Theatre Program.

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Ryan Garbayo is a Cuban American screen and stage actor, known for his role as Ruben Ortiz on Law and Order: SVU and for his work in classical theater. He has performed with Red Bull Theater Off-Broadway, and at regional theaters such as Denver Center Theater Company, The Shakespeare Theatre of DC, Westport Country Playhouse, and Pittsburgh Public Theater. He is visiting assistant professor of acting in the UAlbany Theatre Program, where he directed Mary Shelley Meets Frankenstein and The Taming of the Shrew.