Tharp, who created the award-winning musical Movin' Out —featuring the songbook of Billy Joel — has set her sights on the work of crooner Frank Sinatra for the world premiere of Come Fly With Me, which launches the Alliance season Sept. 16-Oct. 11 on the Alliance main stage.
Created, directed and choreographed by Tharp, Come Fly With Me promises audiences will "remember that song… that dance… that special someone – that moment when you fell in love and fell in love again," with a big band playing such songs as “Pick Yourself Up,” “Witchcraft” and “My Way.”
David Mamet's A Life in the Theatre, starring Tony nominee André De Shields, will follow, playing Oct. 28-Nov. 15. Robert O'Hara will stage the "ode to the art form [that] delves into the lives of two actors: the veteran and the bright-eyed up-and-comer."
The final production of the main stage season will be Lookingglass Alice, running March 31-May 2, 2010. Directed by Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre artistic director David Catlin, the acrobatics-infused adaptation of the Lewis Carroll classic will be reconfigured for its Atlanta premiere.
Set for the Alliance's Hertz Stage are Chicago's Second City comedy troupe with The Second City: Peach Drop, Stop and Roll, skewering all things Atlanta Nov 6-Dec. 3. Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition winner Ismail Khalidi will see the world premiere of his play Tennis in Nablus, running Jan. 29-Feb. 21, 2010. "Tennis in Nablus looks at Palestine's embattled status through the eyes of a lifelong rebel, his wife (a writer of anti-colonial tracts) and his enterprising young nephew."
Acclaimed monologist Mike Daisey closes the Hertz season with his new work The Last Cargo Cult, which will be presented March 19-April 11, 2010. Jean-Michele Gregory directs the work that tells "the true-life unbelievable tale of a religion created by Pacific Islanders around abandoned American military bases. Daisey traveled to the South Pacific to meet and live with these islanders, and he weaves their stories of trust, belief and sympathetic magic against our own culture’s version of the cargo cult: the story of our current international financial crisis."
A final main stage production will be announced shortly as part of the Alliance season.
For season tickets and more information phone (404) 733-5000 or visit www.alliancetheatre.org.
The Alliance Theatre is located within the Woodruff Arts Center, at the corner of Peachtree Street and 15th Street, in Atlanta, GA.
