Past Theatre Seasons: 2018-2019
PLAY: As You Like It by William Shakespeare
Directed by Michael Connolly
February 27 – March 3, 2019
8 p.m. Wed.-Sat.; 2 p.m. Sat. & Sun.
Greer Garson Theatre – Owen Arts Center
$14 for adults, $11 for seniors, $8 for students, faculty & staff
This popular comedy by Shakespeare follows the fortunes of Rosalind and her cousin Celia. When Rosalind is banished by her uncle, the Duke, she masquerades as the boy Ganymede. Celia, also in masquerade, follows “Ganymede” to the forest in the company of Touchstone, a jester. A hilarious play about mistaken identity, redemption, repentance, shepherdesses and courtiers, As You Like Itfollows multiple couples through mistaken love knots and confused gender play to a happy-ever-after ending ... right? “All the world’s a stage,” as Shakespeare reminds us. For more information call 214.768.2787.
NEW VISIONS, NEW VOICES
Mar. 22-24, 29-31
8pm on Friday and Saturday, 2pm on Saturday and Sunday
Greer Garson Theatre – Owen Arts Center
Free
Staged readings of original plays written by students in the B.F.A. playwriting program. In its 24th year, NVNV annually brings its audiences fresh insights and students’ perspectives on current events and tough topics like race and diversity, addiction, gender and sexuality, death and grieving, family politics, political correctness and fake truth, redemption and social change. Students develop their plays over eight months with faculty, peers, directors, and actors. Each performance is followed by an audience talkback with the playwright, director, and cast. NVNV presents the future in American theatre, straight from the pens of the playwrights.
The Rep: Three Contemporary American Plays
April 25-May 5, 2019
8 p.m. Wed.-Sat.; 2 p.m. Sat. & Sun.; 7:30 p.m. Sun. (4/29 only)
Margo Jones Theatre – Owen Arts Center
The Rep includes three plays presented in rotating performance over a two-week period directed by students in the B.F.A. Directing program.
Smart People by Lydia R. Diamond
Directed by Mikaela Brooks
Thursday, April 25 at 8 p.m.; Sunday, April 28 at 2 & 7:30 p.m.; Friday, May 3 at 8 p.m.
It is the eve of Obama's first election. Four of Harvard University's brightest – a surgeon, an actress, a psychologist and a neuro-psychiatrist – are all interested in different aspects of the brain, particularly how it responds to race. But like all smart people, they are also searching for love, success and identity in their own lives. Lydia Diamond brings these characters together in a sharp, witty play about social and sexual politics.
We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, from the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1885-1915 by Jackie Sibblies Drury
Directed by Brandi Jaray McLeain
Friday, April 26 at 8 p.m.; Wednesday, May 1 at 8 p.m.; Saturday, May 4 at 2 & 8 p.m.
A group of actors – three black and three white – gather to recreate the little-known story of the original genocide of the 20th century, the extinction of the Herero tribe at the hands of their German colonizers. Along the way, the actors test the limits of empathy as their own assumptions and prejudices affect their theatrical process until eventually the full force of a horrific past crashes into the good intentions of the present. The Washington Post called it “A genuine thunderbolt … devastatingly funny … dangerous and primal and weird.”
How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel
Directed by Diego Martinez
Saturday, April 27 at 2 & 8 p.m.; Thursday, May 2 at 8 p.m.; Sunday, May 5 at 2 p.m.
Winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize, this is Li’l Bit's coming of age tale, a memory play about surviving family and high school and the complicated relationship with her gentle and seductive Uncle Peck. Ben Brantley of The New York Times: "One of the most discomfiting love stories to emerge from the American theater." "Paula Vogel’s powerful–and often very funny–Pulitzer Prize-winning play" -- Chicago OnStage "One of those plays you don’t forget in a hurry" -- Variety