From: Christopher Johnson [mailto:corpuschristopher@hotmail.com]
Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 12:34 PM
Subject: ETCETERA announces its 2010-11 Season!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE...
ETCETERA, the late night series at Live Theatre Workshop, is proud to present our 2010-11 Season of theatrical productions. Our Mission: To provide intensely challenging and socially relevant theatre programming opportunities for young artists commited to presenting works that are fearless, exhilarating, uncensored and revelatory. Our hope is to cultivate, educate and inspire a new generation of young audiences and artists who will help to maintain and push forward the future of community-based theatre. For our eighth season we’ve assembled eight plays sure to challenge and inspire Tucson audiences, including two world-premieres comissioned in-house and a bevy of award-winning contemporary plays never before produced in Arizona...
MR. MARMALADE
By Noah Haidle
July 2-17, 2010
Fridays & Saturdays at 10:30 PM
Lucy, a four year old girl with an extremely overactive imagination, has produced her first imaginary friend - Mr. Marmalade. Unfortunately, Lucy’s hectic and abusive home life is reflected in her creation, resulting in an invisible companion with a cocaine addiction and a severe problem with leaf-blowers and pornography. With the help of her friend Larry (the youngest suicide attempt in the history of New Jersey) Lucy sets out to divorce Mr. Marmalade as her imagination becomes more and more violent, desperate and adult. A smart and funny black comedy about navigating childhood in these bizarre and difficult times.
"…slyly amusing, envelope-pushing…Haidle has the courage of his convictions, which he has demonstrated in a mature and accomplished play…extraordinary…"
-L. A. Times
Noah Haidle’s most recent play, What is the Cause of Thunder, opened at The Williamstown Theater Festival in July. His plays have been seen at Lincoln Center Theater, Roundabout Theatre Company, Goodman Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, Long Wharf Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, as well as others around the country and abroad. He has taught playwrighting at Princeton University, The Kennedy Center and in Kenya and Uganda as part of The Sundance Theatre Institute. He is a graduate of Princeton University and The Juilliard School, where he was a Lila Acheson Wallace playwright-in-residence. He is the recipient of three Lincoln Center Le Compte Du Nuoy Awards, the 2005 Helen Merrill Award for emerging Playwrights, the 2007 Claire Tow Award, and an NEA/TCG theatre residency grant. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
THE EATING DISORDER TALENT SHOW
By Christopher Johnson
August 6-21, 2010
Fridays & Saturdays at 10:30 PM
Written and performed by the author, THE EATING DISORDER TALENT SHOW is an autobiographical chronicle of his misadventures with bulimia, manic depression and binge eating disorder. A hysterically educational, horrifyingly raw and ultimately glorious account of growing up gay, bulimic and bi-polar in the American theatre. Featuring Christopher Johnson, Kristi Loera and Ashley Kane, as themselves.
Christopher Johnson is the Artistic Director of ETCETERA, the late night series at Live Theatre Workshop - where he has directed Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, The Importance Of Being Earnest, I Wrote This Play To Make You Love Me, The Penis Monologues, Savage In Limbo, Bug, Old Pueblo Playwrights: UNBOUND, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Titus Andronicus. Johnson is making his full-length playwrighting debut with THE EATING DISORDER TALENT SHOW, which was workshopped at Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre in 2007. Christopher’s shorter one-man plays, Mistaken Nakedness and Beforeskin, were featured in the ETCETERA production of The Penis Monologues (2008).
ROBOTS VS. FAKE ROBOTS
By David Largman Murray
September 10-25, 2010
Fridays & Saturdays at 10:30 PM
The year is 6,000. The place? The surface of the Earth. Deadly gases have killed nearly all organic life leaving only Robots who look like people and people with bizarre mutations that have rendered them somehow immune to the deadly gases. People immune to the deadly gases are called Peetles. This is the word people mixed with the word beetles. People because they are people and beetles because beetles often survive extinction better than any other organism. They did not survive the deadly gases however. Only Peetles and Robots. Robots rule the world. These Robots are incredibly sexy and attractive by anyone’s standards. Peetles long to be Robots. Robots are desirable, immortal, and can smell like anything they want to.
“ROBOTS VS. FAKE ROBOTS satisfies the need for play on all sorts of levels: It's ridiculously engaging, arch, sexy, and makes fun of itself before you can. It's also the rare show that you wish would go on for, say, another hour.”
-CityPages.com
David Largman Murray is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara and currently resides in Los Angeles. Robots Vs. Fake Robots has been workshopped at Clubbed Thumb in New York City and The Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, and was first produced with Push To Talk Theatre Company in Santa Monica and later produced at Walking Shadow in Minneapolis. His other plays include the musicals Tomorrowland, and Bermuda! (both collaborations with Bobby Halvorson), Manimals, Bad Memory Mallory, Get Up and Go, Erotic Fiction, and Regina and Ralph are in the Attic. He is the winner of the Young Playwrights Festival National Playwriting Competition, the Corwin Award for Full Length Plays and Musicals, The Dilling Yang Fellowship for Playwriting, and The James A. Michener Fellowship for Writers.
THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED
By Douglas Carter Beane
October 29-November 13, 2010
Fridays & Saturdays at 10:30 PM
THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED follows the drunken, debaucherous and hotel-hopping adventures of Mitchell Green, a movie star who could hit it big if his agent Diane could just keep him in the closet. Trying to navigate Hollywood’s choppy waters, the devlish Diane is doing all she can to keep Mitchell away from his latest rent boy as a deal hangs in the balance that could either set them all for life or potentially ruin a dozen careers.
“Theatregoers have cause to rejoice. Devastatingly funny, with dizzy, irresistible writing that brings down the house.”
-The New York Times
Douglas Carter Beane has written the screenplays for To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar; Advice From A Caterpillar (Best Film, Aspen Comedy Festival, Best Feature, Toyota Comedy Festival) and Skinner's Eddy. His plays include As Bees In Honey Drown (Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Playwriting Award, Drama Desk Best Play Nomination); The Country Club (LA Times Critics' Choice & Dramalogue Awards); Music From A Sparkling Planet; Advice From a Caterpillar (Outer Critics Circle Award Nomination); White Lies; Devil May Care and Old Money. His musical, The Big Time (with music and lyrics by Douglas J. Cohen) was produced by Drama Dept. The Little Dog Laughed - which transferred from Second Stage Theatre - marked his Broadway debut and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play.
MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE
Taken from the writings of Rachel Corrie
Edited by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner
January 14-29, 2011
Fridays & Saturdays at 10:30 PM
On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, a twenty-three-year-old American, was crushed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer in Gaza as she was trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home. MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE is a one-woman play composed from Rachel's own journals, letters and emails—creating a portrait of a messy, articulate, Salvador Dali–loving chain-smoker (with a passion for the music of Pat Benatar), who left her home and school in Olympia, Washington, to work as an activist in the heart of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the three sold-out London runs since its Royal Court premiere, the piece has been surrounded by both controversy and impassioned proponents, and has raised an unprecedented call to support political work and the difficult discourse it creates.
"The play shrewdly does not show Corrie dying; it shows her living, in all her funny, lively, melancholy, and manipulative immediacy...her words bear witness to the deracinating madness of war, a hysteria that infects not only those doing the fighting but also those ambitious to do the saving."
-The New Yorker
Katherine Viner is the features editor of The Guardian newspaper. She was previously editor of the Guardian Weekend magazine, where she was twice named newspaper magazine editor of the year, and has also worked for The Sunday Times. With Alan Rickman she edited the award-winning play My Name is Rachel Corrie, which has shown in London, New York, Athens, Lima, Gothenburg and many other cities. It opened in Israel in March 2008.
Alan Rickman is best known for his work as a theatre and film director and actor. Recently, Rickman directed The Winter Guest for the West Yorkshire Playhouse and Almeida Theatre in London. He also directed productions of My Name is Rachel Corrie in London for the Royal Court Theatre and at the Playhouse Theatre (Best New Play and Best Director, Theatre Goer Awards) and in New York at The Minetta Lane Theatre.
DYING CITY
By Christopher Shinn
February 4-19, 2011
Fridays & Saturdays at 10:30 PM
A year after her husband’s death in Iraq, Kelly, a young therapist, confronts his identical twin brother, who shows up at her apartment unannounced. A perilous and contemporary look into the bonds of brotherhood and marriage.
“On one level DYING CITY is as satisfyingly spooky, crisp and corny as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. But in answering the plot’s whodunit-type questions, it spawns a wriggling host of other, deeper questions that stay with you into the night. Unlike so many contemporary plays DYING CITY raises obvious, important issues in anything but obvious ways.”
-The New York Times
Christopher Shinn was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and lives in New York. His plays have been premiered by the Royal Court Theatre, Lincoln Center Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, the Vineyard Theatre, South Coast Rep, and Soho Theatre, and later seen regionally in the United States and around the world. He is the winner of an OBIE in Playwriting (2004-2005) and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting (2005), was a Pulitzer Prize finalist (2008), was shortlisted for the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play (2008), and has also been nominated for an Olivier Award for Most Promising Playwright (2003), a TMA Award for Best New Play (2006), a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play (2007), and a South Bank Show Award for Theatre (2009).
KIMBERLY AKIMBO
By David Lindsay-Abaire
March 4-19, 2011
Fridays & Saturdays at 10:30 PM
Set in the wilds of suburban New Jersey, KIMBERLY AKIMBO is a hysterical play about a teenage girl with a rare condition causing her body to age faster than it should. When she and her family flee Secaucus under dubious circumstances, Kimberly is forced to reevaluate her life while contending with a preganant hypochondriac mother, a rarely sober father, a homeless scam-artist aunt, her own imminent mortality and, most terrifying of all, the possibility of first love.
"A breezy, foulmouthed, fleet-footed, warmhearted comedy. There have been many dark comedies about dysfunctional families, but this is one of the funniest."
-LA Times
David Lindsay-Abaire was most recently awarded the 2008 Ed Kleban Award as America's most promising musical theatre lyricist. Prior to that, he received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Rabbit Hole, which premiered on Broadway at MTC's Biltmore Theatre. His newest show, Shrek the Musical (book and lyrics) premiered at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theater, and opened on Broadway. His other works include Fuddy Meers, Wonder of the World, High Fidelity, and A Devil Inside, among others. He is a proud New Dramatists alum, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Juilliard School, as well as a member of the WGA and the DGC.
STEAMPUNK ALICE or THE LOOKING-GLASS OPERA
A World-Premiere Rock Opera inspired by Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Book and Lyrics by Jodi Ajanovich
Music by Hamdija Ajanovich
May 13-28, 2011
Fridays & Saturdays at 10:30 PM
Set in the techno-Victorian SteamPunk era, this World Premiere Rock Opera follows a recently deflowered Alice through the Looking-Glass into a gothic and racous reimagining of Wonderland never before seen or heard. Featuring haunting and explosive new music and an intensely relevant new take on the story comissioned from the husband and wife team of musician Hamdija Ajanovich and playwright Jodi Ajanovich, everything you’ve ever known about Lewis Carrol’s classic story is about to change forever.
All shows run Friday and Saturday evenings at 10:30 PM
Live Theatre Workshop - 5317 E Speedway, Tucson, AZ 85712
For more information check us out online at www.etceteralatenight.com
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Tucson Theatre Announcements List
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