NewsPlays by Rebeck, Solis and Schmiedl Will Get World Premieres at Denver Center in 2008The 2007-08 season of the Tony Award-honored Denver Center Theatre Company will boast three world premieres of DCTC-commissioned works staged together during the 2008 Colorado New Play Summit, the troupe announced March 13.
By
Kenneth Jones
March 13, 2007
Theresa Rebeck's Our House will premiere during the Denver Center Theatre Company's upcoming season.
Artistic director Kent Thompson's new season will also include a Jon Jory adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," plus John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, Wendy Wasserstein's Third, Wendy Kesselman's version of Goodrich and Hackett's The Diary of Anne Frank, Kaufman and Hart's You Can't Take It With You, Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor,Irving Berlin's White Christmas (in association with Denver Center Attractions, at the Buell Theatre) and Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder's Gee's Bend, a play about Alabama quilters. A musical for the end of the season will be announced.
The three world premieres are:
Lydia by Octavio Solis, Jan. 11-March 1, 2008, Ricketson Theatre. Opening Jan. 17, 2008. "A Mexican immigrant family is mired in grief, rage and guilt over a daughter tragically disabled on the eve of her quinceanera (15th birthday). When the undocumented Lydia arrives in El Paso from Mexico to work as a maid for the Flores family, her nearly miraculous bond with the brain-damaged girl elates, then angers and finally destroys the troubled family — and Lydia herself. Lyrical, dark, shocking and magical — this meditation on family and cultural identity in the 1970s is a brilliant new play from an award-winning writer."
Our House, conceived by Theresa Rebeck and Daniel Fish, written by Theresa Rebeck, Jan. 18-Feb. 23, 2008, Space Theatre. Opening Jan. 24, 2008. "A rising TV news anchor is tripped up by her own ambition when she covers a hostage crisis — perpetuated, she learns too late, by a man who despises her. Theresa Rebeck skewers the trend toward TV news as entertainment and TV anchors as ambitious media stars. Morphing swiftly from comic to catastrophic, Rebeck's biting wit and gift for social satire raises Our House to the lofty theatrical territory shared by her earlier plays The Water's Edge, Bad Dates and Spike Heels.
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Plainsong by Eric Schmiedl, based upon the novel written by Kent Haruf. Jan. 25-Feb. 23, 2008, Stage Theatre. Opening Jan. 31, 2008. "Set on the high plains of eastern Colorado, this adaptation of the New York Times best-selling novel unflinchingly portrays love and loss in a small ranching community. A school teacher is left alone to care for his vulnerable sons, while two gruff bachelor brothers — knowing little about life beyond the ranch — awkwardly offer a home to a pregnant teenage girl. As their lives intertwine, they survive harshness and cruelty to recreate family and community. Warm, stark, unsentimental, yet poetic — this story taps a deep well of human emotion." In response to its patrons' requests, the Denver Center Theatre Company curtains will go up earlier on three nights next season. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday performances are at 6:30 PM, Thursday performance time changes from 8 PM to 6:30 PM and Friday and Saturday evening performances change from 8 PM to 7:30 PM. Saturday matinees at 1:30 PM.
