One of Atlanta's favorite playwrights, Janece Shaffer, will see her new play Bluish in Alliance's intimate 200-seat second theatre, the Hertz Stage, in the coming year. Billed as a tender, down-to-earth comedy, the play (to be directed by Booth), explores "what can happen when a woman discovers that her late mother was Jewish and her life takes on a new direction."
This original work was developed as part of the Southern Writers' Project of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.
Also at the Hertz, expect Rent creator Jonathan's Larson's musical character study tick, tick…BOOM!, directed by Kent Gash, and the to-be-announced winner of the Alliance Graduate Playwriting Competition.
The main 770-seat Alliance Stage will host Jon Jory's adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in a co-production with Arizona Theatre Company; Steve Martin's adaptation of The Underpants, Carl Sternheim's play about public shame, directed by Aaron Posner; Jelly's Last Jam, the musical portrait of Jelly Roll Morton, by George C. Wolfe, lyricist Susan Birkenhead and composer Luther Henderson, directed by Kent Gash; Lynn Nottage's celebrated Intimate Apparel, directed by Booth; David H. Bell's A Christmas Carol; and one more play to be announced.
The Alliance Children's Theatre will offer two fun family shows that appeal to audiences of all ages. A 12-year-old Albert Einstein "struggles with more than bad hair days as he tries to understand the innermost workings of space, time and the universe" in the world premiere of Einstein is a Dummy, "complete with original music, a dose of scientific imagination and a talking cat." The new work was penned by Karen Zacarias, with music by Deborah Wicks la Puma, and will be directed by Rosemary Newcott. The play was commissioned by the Alliance Theatre and presented at New Visions/New Voices, a biennial national forum for plays-in-progress written for young audiences at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Rosemary Newcott also directs The Stinky Cheese Man (and Other Fairly Stupid Tales) , a play taken from the enormously popular children's book, written by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith and adapted for the stage by John Glore.
"Age is no obstacle to these hilariously revamped fairy tales, taken from the world’s classic fairy tales then turned upside-down and sideways," according to the Alliance. "One look at these fractured fairy tales and you'll laugh happily ever after.
For subscription information, to the Alliance Theatre 2005-06, call (404) 733-4600 or visit www.alliancetheatre.org.
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Alliance Theatre is known for world premieres of Pearl Cleage's Blues for an Alabama Sky, Elton John and Tim Rice's Elaborate Lives: The Legend of Aida (in partnership with Disney Theatricals), Sandra Deer's So Long on Lonely Street and Alfred Uhry's The Last Night of Ballyhoo. Now in its fourth decade (the 38th season is 2005-06), the Alliance Theatre is led by artistic director Susan V. Booth and managing director Thomas Pechar. The 2004-2005 season saw the world premiere of the musical The Color Purple and new adaptation of Carson McCullers' The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
The Alliance Theatre is a division of the Woodruff Arts Center, which also includes the Atlanta College of Art, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, High Museum of Art, Young Audiences of Atlanta and the 14th Street Playhouse.
