The upcoming subscription season will kick off Aug. 24 with the aforementioned Eclipsed and will also feature Charles L. Mee's Full Circle, Daisey's The Last Cargo Cult, Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park and a fifth production to be announced. Special performances include Second City's Barack Stars and the Neo-Futurists' Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind.

About the new season, which was announced on the company's official website, artistic director Howard Shalwitz asks, "In times of great challenge and change, what's the task of the individual? Of the artist? In our 30th anniversary season, we're focusing on the next thirty years: explosive engagement between artists and citizens in our nation's capital. We're traveling from Africa to the South Pacific and back to see how the motion of our democracy reverberates at home and throughout the world. We're joining fresh faces with Woolly favorites to pose the most provocative questions, tell the most fearless jokes, and gather the most compelling personalities in Washington to ask: where do we go from here?"

Season details follow:

Subscription Series:

Eclipsed
By Danai Gurira
Directed by Liesl Tommy
Featuring company members Jessica Frances Dukes and Dawn Ursula
Aug. 24-Sept. 20
"The captive wives of a Liberian rebel officer form a hardscrabble sorority, their lives set on a nightmarish detour by civil war. With wit and compassion, they sift through the meager spoils of war and stumble on the biography of a certain recent US President. The book opens up the absurd America of their dreams: beyond the borders of their bloody compound, could a different destiny emerge?" Full Circle
By Charles L. Mee
Directed by Michael Rohd
Featuring company Members Sarah Marshall, Kate Eastwood Norris, Nancy Robinette, Michael Russotto, Howard Shalwitz and Michael Willis
Oct. 26-Nov. 22
"The ancient Chinese myth of the chalk circle re-emerges at the fall of the Berlin Wall: as the crotchety East German Chancellor watches a play, students suddenly riot and the profiteers swoop in. In the chaos, two women launch a madcap romp to save an orphaned baby and find a third way between socialism and capitalism. Leading the audience on a journey through Woolly's entire building, they come full circle to the stage—but can a disgraced artistic director restore a nation's moral bearings?"

The Last Cargo Cult
Created and performed by Mike Daisey
Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory
Jan. 11-Feb. 7, 2010
"A master storyteller recounts his true adventures on a South Pacific island where locals worship cargo left by WWII G.I.'s. The 'Jon Frum cult' builds meticulous bamboo replicas of Western engineering and seeks to summon American power through sympathetic magic. What does our economic crisis mean to them, and what can they teach us about wealth and wishful thinking?"

Clybourne Park
By Bruce Norris
March 15-April 11, 2010
"A white community in 1950's Chicago frets about the African-American family about to move in. Fast-forward to our present day, and the same house represents very different demographics. Irreverently climbing through the looking-glass of Lorraine Hansberry's classic A Raisin in the Sun, these contemporary characters explode into caustic comedy to reveal how far our ideas of race and gentrification have evolved—or have they?"

Fifth Production to Be Announced
May 17-June 13, 2010
"What we can tell you is that it's a bruised and bludgeoned romance so literally cutting-edge, we can't name it yet. (We know what it is, but we're letting a colleague theatre across the country announce this awesome title first.)"

Special Performances:

Barack Stars
By The Second City, Chicago's comedy theatre
July 14-Aug. 2, 2009
"In Second City's Barack Stars, Chicago's favorite son, President Barack Obama, is given his satiric due as are a host of the capital city's newest residents – from a terrifyingly tiny Rahm Emanuel to the bleeping golden recipient of the latest senate seat (if he's still there in the summer)."

Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind
(30 plays in 60 minutes)
Created by Greg Allen
Written, directed & performed by The Neo-Futurists
Dec. 7, 2009-Jan. 2, 2010
"The Neo-Futurists return to Woolly with a brand new set of 30 mini plays performed in a dizzying 60-minute race against the clock."

Woolly Mammoth is located at 641 D Street, NW (7th & D). For more information visit www.woollymammoth.net.