The California company announced its 2007-08 lineup, which will include six world-premiere productions.
The new season (subject to change) follows:
Created and directed by Bill Pullman (actor in The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?), the new "theatrical docu-drama explores the political and personal life-and death crisis of two American astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut stranded on the [titular] International Space Station after the Columbia Shuttle disaster of 2003 during the build-up to the Invasion of Iraq." The work, presented in association with Chabot Space & Science Center, employs a company of "eight actors and five low-flying trapezes."
Rebecca Gilman pens the new work in which "a backyard barbeque is the perfect place to tackle the big questions: Is the chicken done? Does the band need a new tune? Is it the right time to have a baby?"
Gilman's plays include The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, Blue Surge, Spinning Into Butter, Boy Gets Girl, The American in Me and the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Glory of Living.
Betty Shamieh's new "historic thriller [is] set during the Crusades, [in which] a French knight captures the sharp tongued sister of Arab ruler Saladdin. A ruthless chess game of power and love ensues as two cultures collide." Shamieh has penned the plays The Black Eyed, Roar and Chocolate in Heat.
Adapted for the stage from Edna O'Brien's novel "The Country Girls," this new play with music tells the coming-of-age story of "two girls who make their way from rural Ireland to Dublin." O'Brien's work includes the novels "Night," "Down By the River" and "In the Forest" as well as the plays Family Butchers, Triptych, A Pagan Place, Virginia, Our Father and Iphigenia.
A presentation of the Magic Theatre and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Initiative, Kevin Fisher writes this drama, which finds "five chimps in an HIV-research lab [who] prove immune despite repeated injections of the live virus – but why? Ava, the new head of the lab, must solve the mystery before her funding is cut to find a breakthrough vaccine." Fisher's plays have been performed at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Naked Angels, Adobe Theatre and Westbeth Theatre in New York. He also wrote the screenplay "Under My Skin."
Wendy MacLeod's new play is described thusly: "Janice's dinner party takes an unexpected turn when her husband Malcolm gets a lucrative offer from a mysterious organization. This new play spins an Orwellian web of politics and deceit. MacLeod's plays include Schoolgirl Figure, Sin, The Water Children, The House of Yes and Juvenilia.
Subscriptions to the new season at the Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center (Building D) in San Francisco, CA, are available by calling (415) 441-8822. For more information, visit the Magic Theatre website at www.magictheatre.org.