Next Season... 2010/2011
Speech & Debate – by Stephen Karam
(September/October)
Directed by Craig Willis
Sex, secrets, performance-art blogs and blackmail. A typical day when you're a teenager in Salem, Oregon. Three teenage misfits discover they are linked by a sex scandal that’s rocked their town. When one of them sets out to expose the truth, secrets become currency, the stakes get higher, and the trio’s connection grows deeper in this searching, fiercely funny dark comedy with music.
Written by Karam when he was 25, he took the transcript of an online chat between the former mayor of Spokane, Washington and a gay teenager as the basis for this fiercely funny and edgy new play. Full of unbridled dark humor, Speech & Debate tackles issues of politics, sexuality, and self-expression in the digital age.
"...savvy comedy…bristling with vitality, wicked humor, terrific dialogue and a direct pipeline into the zeitgeist of contemporary youth…Karam has a keen ear for how teens talk, move and think, how they view each other and the adult world…and uses both the advantages and perils of cyberspace to make amusing, original points..."
—Variety
Hedda Gabler from the play by Henrik Ibsen
(November)
"In Douglas Sirk's world, romantic love doesn't play much of a part. His characters are boxed into ruts which are ever-deepening; they cannot understand themselves or their desperate predicaments, let alone successfully reach out to others. But they do reach out, attempting through an oft-professed love to stave off the lonely alternative implicit in Sirk's vision. An acute awareness of pain, failure, and death permeates Sirk's films, and in such a vision romantic love can only take its place as a delusionary refuge from the inevitability of being ultimately alone."
-Robert E. Smith, Bright Lights Film Journal
Adapted and directed by Craig Willis
Ibsen’s class melodrama is an exposé of rigid social and sexual codes of the late 19th century Europe. Lord Leebrick Artistic Director, Craig Willis relocates the play to 1950’s America. A time when the myth of the perfect wife and mother is broadcast daily into middle-class homes via TV shows such as Father Knows Best and Leave It To Beaver. Hedda Gabler refuses to succumb to the idleness of domestic tranquility.
The play begins with Hedda returning home with her new husband, George Tesman, after a European honeymoon. The couple quickly learns that an old friend, Eilert Lovborg, has re-emerged in the social scene after having been reformed of his younger, wilder ways. Already feeling trapped by her "safe" choice for a husband, Hedda attempts to lure Lovborg back to his more passionate lifestyle. Hedda's actions set off a tragic chain of events.
Circle, Mirror, Transformation by Annie Baker
(January)
Directed by TBA
When four lost New Englanders enrolled in Marty’s community center drama class experiment with harmless games, hearts are quietly torn apart and tiny wars of epic proportions are waged and won. Annie Baker’s new comedy is a beautifully crafted diorama, a petri dish in which we see, with hilarious detail and clarity, the antic sadness of a motley quintet.
"...the kind of unheralded gem that sends people into the streets babbling and bright-eyed with the desire to spread the word… for lovers of "real acting" — the moment by moment revelation of the essence of a human character through scripted (or suggested) movement and speech — Ms. Baker's play is an absolute feast. Under the delicate direction of Sam Gold, the actors portraying these fumbling, amiable amateurs participating in these aimless exercises are in fact giving a demonstration of stage acting at its most subtle and rewarding."
– Christopher Isherwood, The New York Times
My Name Is Rachel Corrie by Yasmina Reza
"Theatre can't change the world. But what it can do, when it's as good as this, is to send us out enriched by other people's passionate concern"
- The Guardian
(March/April)
Directed by Carol Horne Dennis
My Name is Rachel Corrie consists entirely of words written by Corrie as were recorded in her diary entries and emails from her early childhood until a few days before her death. Since its three sold-out runs at London's Royal Court Theatre, the play has been surrounded by both controversy and acclaim.
The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare
(May/June)
Directed by John Schmor
The Winter’s Tale is unique for its blend of the tragic, the comic, the romantic, and the spiritual. It focuses on King Leontes, a man who ignores the advice of all around him and wreaks havoc on both his family and his country – something that has particular resonance in our own day and age. Yet despite bleak beginnings, it offers an ending that is redemptive and full of second chances. That forgiveness can be rendered – even imperfectly – for Leontes’ mistakes is the miracle of the play. It reminds us, as we live in an extremely cynical world, that hope really is vital and not to be abandoned.
The Winter's Tale was the first Shakespeare play presented at 540 Charnelton in 1994. Join us as we end our residency in this shabby chic home, before we "exit stage left, pursued by a bear."