59E59 Theaters has announced its lineup for the 2017 winter season. The slate of shows includes a dark and comic puppet musical, a festival of new short plays, an immersive physical theatre piece, and an award-winning solo show from Boston.
Tickets are on sale for members November 29 and will be available to the general public December 6.
The winter season will kick off January 10, 2017, with Made in China, a puppet musical inspired by true events and billed as “darkly comic.” Written and directed by Kirjan Waage and Gwendolyn Warnock, with the Wakka Ensemble, the show explores human rights, consumerism, and morality. It will feature 30 puppets, seven puppeteers, music inspired by both American and Chinese traditions, and animated video. Performances will run through February 28.
Next up will be the LaBute New Theater Festival, featuring short plays by Neil LaBute, Cary Pepper, Gabe McKinley, and Adam Seidel; John Pierson, Kel Haney, and Michael Hogan direct. The cast will be made up of Clea Alsip, Justin Ivan Brown, Michael Hogan, Donna Weinsting, and Eric White. Performances will run January 13-February 7.
Also slated to begin in January is Matthew Spangler and Benjamin Evett’s award-winning solo piece Albatross, performed by Evett and directed by Rick Lombardo. Billed as a “supernatural sea yarn” that incorporates multimedia elements, the show won two of Boston’s Elliot Norton Awards. Performances will run January 12-February 12.
In March the Off-Broadway company will present White Guy on a Bus by Bruce Graham, direct from its staging at the Delaware Theatre Company. The play, about a wealthy white businessman and a struggling black single mother, unravels a tale of moral ambiguity, revenge, and racial bias. Performances will run March 9-April 1; Bud Martin directs, and Jessica Bedford, Danielle Lenee, Susan McKey, and Jonathan Silver make up the cast.
The season will conclude with Bated Breath Theatre Company’s Beneath the Gavel, written and directed by Mara Lieberman. The immersive, physical theatre piece explores the rise of branded art. Performances will run March 15-April 9.
The rest of the lineup features Sarah Levine Simon and Mihai Grunfeld’s The Dressmaker’s Secret, a play about a young man’s search for identity in post-WWII communist Romania directed by Roger Hendricks Simon (February 7-March 5); Jeffrey Sweet’s Kunstler, directed by Meagen Fay and featuring Jeff McCarthy and Nambi E. Kelley as a legendary civil rights movement lawyer and a young college student, respectively, in a story of clashing ideals (February 16-March 12); and Gino Dilorio’s Beckett-inspired story featuring the iconic Princess Bride sidekick, Sam & Dede, or My Dinner with Andre the Giant, directed by Leah S. Abrams and starring Brendan Averett and Dave Sikula (March 9-April 1).
For more information visit 59e59.org.
