Being Valentine’s Day, treat yourself to being swept away by the love and healing powers of music and the written word in Numbered Days, the true-life love story of two passionate artists who used the power of their artistry to sustain them through their “numbered days” as a couple. Playwright Corey Madden has transformed her poetic memoir into a four-episode audio play produced by the Fountain theatre that launches today.
How can art, and the process of creating it, help us cope with hardship? Numbered Days turns Madden’s poems about the battle with cancer she shared with her beloved husband, composer Bruno Louchouarn, into an audio art piece meant to bring healing to others.
Two-time Emmy®, Peabody and SAG award-winning actor Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad) stars as playwright Corey Madden in an audio theater production of Madden’s moving memoir. Veteran actor Tony Amendola (Antaeus Theatre Company, Showtime’s Dexter, ABC’s Once Upon a Time) stars alongside Gunn as Bruno. Jeanne Sakataand Jack Stehlin take on multiple roles. Madden directs, and Jeff Gardener is audio producer, sound designer and Foley artist. Prominently featured throughout is Louchouarn’s glorious music.
“This is not just a play about living with cancer — it’s a play about joie de vivre, artistry, and how to get through the unimaginable. Art created healing for us, and that was nothing short of a miracle.”
Following her husband’s diagnosis, Madden began writing short, free-verse poems as a way to give voice to her anguish.
“I started writing on my iPhone as a way to cope with the stress and uncertainty, but what I discovered was that focusing only on Bruno’s illness and treatment was robbing us both of the very thing I wanted most to preserve — his life,” she explains. “The practice of writing about exactly what was happening in the moment helped me see the grace within daily life. It helped me re-focus on the joy of being alive today. Instead of living in fear, we were both able to experience joy through making art. This is not just a play about living with cancer — it’s a play about joie de vivre, artistry, and how to get through the unimaginable. Art created healing for us, and that was nothing short of a miracle.”
In addition to writing and directing Numbered Days, Madden’s original works include Rain After Ash and Sol Path, commissioned and produced at Pasadena’s AxS Festival; Day for Night, presented by Santa Monica’s GLOW and featured in Poland’s Transatlantyk Film and Music Festival; Surf Orpheus, produced by UC San Diego and at the Getty Villa, and Rock, Paper, Scissors which was co-written with Laural Meade, premiered at Childsplay and was subsequently produced at Speeltheatre in Holland. Madden is also the director of And So We Walked: An Artist Journey Along the Trail of Tears created and performed by Delanna Studi, which has been produced by Triad Stage and Portland Stage and represented the United States at the Carthage International Theatre Festival in Tunisia in 2019, and will be released by Audible in Spring 2022. Madden has directed plays, opera and music events, and multi-disciplinary works at the Mark Taper Forum, Public Theatre, Getty Museum, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Court Performing Arts, Trinity Repertory and Actors Theatre of Louisville, among many others. Madden trained at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She received her undergraduate degree in dramatic arts from UNC Chapel Hill and her graduate degrees in creative and cinematic writing from USC’s Professional Writing Program and USC Film. Madden is currently the executive director of the Monterey Museum of Art and was associate artistic director of Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum, where she developed and produced more than 300 new plays during her 22-year tenure.
Bruno Louchouarn (1959-2018) composed more than 600 original works including orchestral and chamber music, opera, dance, film, television and theater scores, as well as sound and media installations. His remarkable body of work reflects his wide-ranging interests in music, media and sound, informed by his academic research in cognitive science, artificial intelligence and ethnomusicology. Louchouarn’s musical catalogue reflects the spirit and rhythms of Paris, Mexico City, Los Angeles and Piedmont North Carolina, the places he called home over his six decades of life. During his lifetime, Louchouarn collaborated extensively with dance, theater and visual artists including Suzanne Lacy, Jacques Heim, Herbert Siguenza, Michael John Garces, Juan Felipe Herrera, and his wife, Corey Madden, to create performances in which his moving and layered scores play a leading role. Louchouarn’s collaborations with Susan Jaffe on Metallurgy and Carmina Terra were among his most rewarding creative experiences. Louchouarn’s compositions have been performed at leading arts institutions such as the Kennedy Center, Royce Hall at UCLA, Cal Arts’ REDCAT, the Getty Museum, Juilliard School of Music, University of Southern California, University of Akron, UNC School of the Arts, Chapman School of Music, Occidental College, San Diego Rep, Boston Court, Pasadena Playhouse, Cornerstone Theatre Company and at festivals including Santa Monica’s GLOW, Pasadena’s AxS Festival and Poland’s Transatlantyk Film and Music Festival.
Audio producer, sound designer and Foley artist Jeff Gardener has designed sound and performed as an actor across the country. His credits include the Geffen Playhouse, Kirk Douglas Theatre, Wallis Annenberg Center, A Noise Within, Antaeus Theatre Company, Boston Court Pasadena, Circle X Theatre Company, Echo Theater Company, Rogue Machine, Matrix Theatre, Skylight Theatre, IAMA Theatre Company, The Shakespeare Theatre (DC), Arena Stage, Kennedy Center, Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. Jeff can be seen at L.A. Theatre Works, where he regularly performs live sound effects.
All four episodes of Numbered Days are now available for $20 at www.FountainTheatre.com. Listen to it now, wherever you get your podcasts, with someone you love.
Bill Brochtrup (Daniel) appeared Off-Broadway in Secrets of the Trade at Primary Stages, Lost and Found at FringeNYC, and Snakebit at the Century Center. He’s acted with many LA theatre companies including South Coast Repertory (The Sisters Rosensweig, Shakespeare In Love, Noises Off), Antaeus Theatre Company (Cloud 9, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Peace In Our Time) Rogue Machine Theatre (Les Blancs), Fountain Theatre (The Normal Heart). His many TV appearances include five seasons as savvy police psychologist “Dr. Joe” on Major Crimes, Shameless, Kendra, Dexter, and In the Life. Bill was a series regular on Public Morals, Total Security, and ten years as cheerful administrative aide “John Irvin” on NYPD Blue. He is the Co-Artistic Director of Antaeus Theatre Company. 
Tim Cummings (Mitchell) recently earned his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Antioch University. He is the winner of Critical Read’s 2018 ‘Origins’ literary contest for his essay “You Have Changed Me Forever.” He is the recipient of three LA Drama Critics Circle Awards, for Dan O’Brien’s The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage (2018 PEN American Award for Drama) at Boston Court, Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart at The Fountain, and Enda Walsh’s The New Electric Ballroom at Rogue Machine. Selected LA: Cal in Camo with Red Dog Squadron at VS Theater; Need To Know at Rogue Machine, The Woodsman at Coeurage (StageSceneLA Award for Performance of the Year); Reunion and Eurydice at South Coast Rep, Hamlet and The Winter’s Tale at Theater 150, WAR and The Walworth Farce at Theater Banshee, Tartuffe at Boston Court, The Pursuit of Happiness at Laguna Playhouse. Bway & Off-Bway: The Guys directed by Jim Simpson, Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune directed by Joe Mantello. Film/TV: Can You Ever Forgive Me, Grimm, Rosewood, Kensho at the Bedfellow, Criminal Minds, My Two Fans, Presence, The Box, etc. He holds a BFA in Acting from NYU.
Jose Fernando (Trip) From the tropics of Costa Rica and the waters of Niagara Falls, Jose appeared in Breckenridge Theatre’s world premiere of The 10th . He was seen on Disney Channel’s Disney 365 and on ABC’s Black-ish and Once Upon A Time . He currently has commercials in the works with Google and other tech companies.
Ed Martin (Barry) has worked in theatres all over the country including Denver Center Theatre, The Arizona Theatre Company, Theatreworks, and the Laguna Playhouse. Favorite LA credits include work at the Boston Court, the Colony, the Davidson/Valentini, the Odyssey, the Hudson and Theatre 40. Ed is the recipient of the Ovation, Stage Raw, LA Weekly, Dramalogue and Robby Awards. TV and film credits include Angels and Demons, directed by Ron Howard, American Crime, Castle, Medium, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and many others.
Jenny O’Hara (Lydia) is best known to Fountain audiences as originating the role of Maude Gutman in the smash hit Bakersfield Mist. She co-starred on Broadway opposite Alec Guiness in Dylan. Other Broadway credits are The Fig Leaves are Falling, Promises, Promises, The Odd Couple (female version), and The Iceman Cometh. On TV, she’s been seen on Transparent, The Mindy Project, The King of Queens, and Big Love, and guest appearances in Mike and Molly, Hot in Cleveland, Rizzoli and Isles, The Closer, NCIS, CSI, House, Nip/Tuck, Six Feet Under and numerous others. Films include BFF, Sassy Pants, The Seven Psychopaths, Devil (M. Night Shyamalan), Mystic River (Clint Eastwood), Matchstick Men (Ridley Scott), Extract, Forty Shades of Blue, Two Weeks, How to Make Love to a Woman and Heartbeat. 
“We pick a character arc or text from a play we think a particular student population will respond to and then we perform that arc for them through scenes and soliloquies using professional classical actors,” he explains. “Then we invite the students into the plot with writing prompts, improv and other acting exercises based on what they just saw. The populations we work with tend to be highly polarized by gang affiliation and/or race, so we also spend a great deal of time on ensemble building exercises. We also do mask work and are staging a short story written by a guy on death row in San Quentin, Jarvis Jay Masters, from his book 
