Southern Rep's 22nd Season
2008-2009 Mainstage Season
SPEECH & DEBATE
by Stephen Karam
directed by Aimée Hayes
September 3 – 28 . 2008
previews September 3 . 4 . 5
opening September 6
Regional Premiere
SRT starts the mainstage season with a bang September 3rd, when the “flat-out funny” (Associated Press) Off-Broadway smash SPEECH AND DEBATE by young playwright Stephen Karam hits the stage.
SPEECH AND DEBATE brings together Diwata, Howie and Solomon, three misfits who join forces to combat local corruption, sex scandals and bad casting in the high school play. They sign up for the newly formed Speech & Debate club to take their grievances public. Their exposé culminates in a time-traveling George Michael-inspired musical version of Miller’s The Crucible. Alternately zany, hilarious, and heartbreaking, Speech and Debate is unforgettable.
Playwright Stephen Karam has been making a name for himself with new work at major theatres such as The Roundabout in NYC, The Kennedy Center and Arena Stage. Aimée Hayes has directed more than thirty productions in New York, regionally and in NOLA, including Clean House at Southern Rep. Local audiences may remember The Red Light District Variety Show, which Hayes directed at Le Chat Noir. She’s sure to bring her special blend of visual magic and comic virtuosity to this play’s Southern premiere.
“…bristling with vitality, wicked humor, terrific dialogue and a direct pipeline into the zeitgeist…” — Variety
“…Hysterical notes of absurdity…” — Backstage
THE SEAFARER
by Conor McPherson
directed by Mark Routhier
November5 – December 7 . 2008
previews November 5 . 6 . 7
opening November 8
Regional Premiere
Next up in November, is the piece on many theatre critics’ Top-Ten Lists this year, THE SEAFARER, by Tony-award winning playwright Conor McPherson. Often billed as “chilling,” we love that Variety also said that the play “pushes through into laugh-out-loud comedy.”
It’s Christmas Eve in North Dublin. Sharkey Harkin and his blind brother Richard stock up on booze for some celebratory Christmas Eve poker. When old friends arrive with a dapper if darkly mystifying guest the stakes become deadly serious.
Director Mark Routhier tackles the fabulous yarn. As Director of Artistic Development at the much-lauded Magic Theatre in San Francisco, Routhier recently directed the world premiere of Kevin Fisher's Monkey Room. He often directs arresting new work in the S.F. area and is also a playwright himself, with an MFA in dramatic writing from NYU.
“McPherson is quite possibly the finest playwright of his generation.”
— New York Times
“Succinct, startling and eerie, and the funniest McPherson play to date.”
— London Observer
DYING CITY
by Christopher Shinn
directed by Julie Hamberg
January 14 – February 8 . 2009
previews January 14 . 15 . 16
opening January 17
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
Regional Premiere
DYING CITY, the enthralling new play Lincoln Center produced to wide acclaim, makes its regional premiere at Southern Rep in January 2009.
Young therapist Kelly, whose husband was killed in Iraq, is attempting to move on with her life when her husband’s twin brother arrives unannounced. The handsome twin, Peter, an actor, has just walked offstage during Long Day’s Journey Into Night. His probing questions about his brother’s death reveal a hidden fractured past. Through a series of flashbacks to Kelly’s marriage, the former in-laws are forced to confront the loss they share.
Called “achingly compassionate” by Variety, this Pulitzer-prize nominated piece explores, with humor and grace, how profoundly outside events can affect each of us.
The New York Times honors Christopher Shinn, author of this “transfixing tale,” as “among the most provocative and probing of American playwrights today.” Julie Hamberg will mount this two-hander. Hamberg was Associate Artistic Director at Vital Theatre in NYC where she’s known for her work on new plays, having directed over twenty premieres.
“Dying City is…satisfyingly spooky, crisp and corny as an episode of ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents.’ But in answering the plot’s whodunit-type questions, it spawns a wriggling host of other, deeper questions that stay with you into the night. — New York Times
“Like a leaner, more droll Tennessee Williams” — Variety
SICK
by Zayd Dohrn
directed by Aimée Hayes
March 11 – April 5 . 2009
previews March 11 . 12 . 13
opening March 14
National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere
Artistic Director Hayes returns to direct the National New Play Network “rolling” world premiere of Zayd Dohrn’s wickedly wise SICK in March 2009.
SICK is an uproarious look at a family of germ-o-phobes who have severe allergies to everything from Cheez-Whiz and cleaning supplies to city air. As prisoners inside their vacuum-sealed home and garbed in non-allergic clothing they live each day in terror that a stray mold spore or chemical will sneak in. When Dad brings home one of his graduate students, the family’s fear crescendos -- with chaotic, comedic consequences.
Zayd Dohrn is definitely a hot young playwright to catch now. He is a Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Fellow at Juilliard and has garnered playwriting residencies at Alchemy Theatre and the venerable Royal Court Theatre in London. His plays have been produced at Classic Stage, Alchemy, Boston Actor's Workshop, and Boston Playwrights Theatre. He won the IRNE Award for Best New Play, The Rita & Burton Goldberg Prize, and recently, won the Marin Theatre Co.’s Sky Cooper New American Play Prize for his Magic Forest Farm.
The National New Play Network (NNPN) selected SICK to participate in the CONTINUED LIFE OF NEW PLAYS FUND. Featured during NNPN's 2007 NATIONAL SHOWCASE OF NEW PLAYS, the play will have three successive “rolling” openings; Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas and then New Jersey Rep, culminating with Southern Rep’s production.
SHOTGUN
by John Biguenet
Director TBA
May 6 – 31 . 2009
previews May 6 . 7 . 8
opening May 9
World Premiere
For many, the most anticipated play of the season will be John Biguenet’s SHOTGUN, the second play in his Rising Water cycle, scheduled to make its world premiere in early May 2009 at Southern Rep.
Set four months after the flood, a white man and his teenage son made homeless by Katrina rent half of a shotgun double from an African-American woman, whose own father has lost his house in the Lower Ninth Ward and moved in with her. These four New Orleanians, white and black living under one roof, try to rebuild their lives in a city still in shambles. Seething racial tensions, however -- stoked by local politicians -- bubble to the surface when love blossoms.
Biguenet was honored with the inaugural Theatre Person of the Year at the 2007 Big Easy Awards. Southern Rep’s production of Biguenet’s Rising Water also caught the Best Original Play Award and was SRT’s best selling play, ever. Though a native son, his work is enjoyed nationally: the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “Biguenet possesses a rare lyric gift.”
“[Rising Water] grabbed the audience in its first tense moments and never let go. Biguenet has created characters of such opposite dimensions that they generate innate humor, which continues deeper into the play than one would have thought possible. It is natural and needed; otherwise the situation would be unbearable.” — Times-Picayune
2008-2009 CITY SERIES Production
The CITY SERIES, a Southern Rep Outreach Program,
supports local independent theatre companies
PRIVATE EYES
by Steven Dietz
produced by Golden Eagle Theatre Company
directed by Andrew Elliott
July 10 – 27 . 2008
preview July 10
opening July 11
PRIVATE EYES brings together an obsessive suspicious actor, his unfaithful wife, a playboy director and a mysterious stranger in this hilarious tale of affairs, deception and betrayal that could’ve been pulled from today’s headlines.
Armed with an MFA from U of Mississippi and a few tricks up his sleeve, Andrew Elliott directs this group of independent artists.
“Dietz’s . . . breathless pacing provides enough of an oxygen rush to revive any moribund audience member!” – The Village Voice
Golden Eagle’s mission is to contribute to the artistic rebuilding of New Orleans by producing thought-provoking, entertaining works by contemporary playwrights as well as American classics.
