ART's new season promises fantasy, fame, farce
New works by emerging young female playwrights, as well as plays by award winners Anna Deavere Smith and David Mamet, highlight the American Repertory Theatre's 2008-09 season, announced today by acting artistic director Gideon Lester.
The Cambridge theater will present a pair of world premieres as part of a seven-play season in its two theaters. Along with the veteran Deavere Smith, the season showcases "a wonderful new generation of women in the American theater," Lester said. They include playwrights Anne Washburn and Christine Evans, whose new works will be premiered at the ART.
"Both write using a great deal of fantasy, poetry, and imagination," he said. "We wanted to highlight that."
While the search for a new artistic director has hit a snag at the ART, Lester said it did not affect his vision for the upcoming season, on which he collaborated with executive director Robert J. Orchard and others.
The season kicks off with Deavere Smith's solo show "Let Me Down Easy," at the Loeb Drama Center from Sept. 12 to Oct. 9. The playwright explores the "resilience, vulnerability and beauty" of the human body by morphing into two dozen people she interviewed, including a Harvard philosopher, a supermodel, a steroid-injecting athlete, and a mother in Africa whose child has died of AIDS.
Washburn's "The Communist Dracula Pageant" has its world premiere from Oct. 18 to Nov. 9 at the ART's second stage, the Zero Arrow Theatre. Directed by 2007 Obie award winner Anne Kauffman, the offbeat satire weaves in the mythology of Dracula as a backdrop to the story of the Romanian dictatorship of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu.
At the Loeb from Nov. 18 to Dec. 18 is "Aurélia's Oratorio," a 70-minute circus theater filled with illusion and magic. Performed by Aurélia Thierrée, known for her physical flexibility and strength, and directed by her mother Victoria Thierrée Chaplin (the daughter of Charlie Chaplin), the show is inspired by European circuses and features a swirl of music, dance, and puppetry.
Hungarian director János Szász, who generated buzz with his highly physical ART productions of "Desire Under the Elms" and "Marat/Sade," returns to helm Anton Chekhov's classic "The Seagull," from Jan. 10 through Feb. 1 at the Loeb.
Marcus Stern will direct veteran members of the theater's repertory company in Samuel Beckett's one-act, four character comedy "Endgame," an existential comedy about an old man confined to a wheelchair facing the prospect of continuing life. It runs from Feb. 14 through March 15 at the Loeb.
The world premiere of Christine Evans's "Trojan Barbie," March 28 through April 19 at Zero Arrow, is a re-imagining of Euripides' "Trojan Women" with a most unlikely heroine. Carmel O'Reilly, whose well-regarded Sugan Theatre Company stopped putting on shows a couple years back, will direct, the first time she's worked on a major ART production. Evans, an Australian native, is teaching playwriting and screenwriting this year at Harvard.
The season will end with Mamet's "Romance," a politically incorrect courtroom farce featuring a pill-popping judge and a prosecutor whose gay lover is ticked off over a burnt pot roast. Directed by Scott Zigler, it will run May 9 through May 31 at the Loeb.
"It's a great romp . . . and a wonderfully silly way to leave everybody smiling at the end of the season," said Lester.
For more information, visit amrep.org or call 617-547-8300. 