2014/2015 Inaugural Season

BUYER & CELLAR starring Michael Urie – September 3-6, 2014
THE SECOND CITY–55TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR – November 13-15, 2014
THE GREAT TRAGEDIES – MIKE DAISEY – February 26-28, 2015
STOP HITTING YOURSELF – RUDE MECHS – May 28-30, 2015
LOVE, LOSS, AND WHAT I WORE – June 25-27, 2015

The AT&T Performing Arts Center announced today a new theatrical subscription series: Off Broadway On Flora. The concept will feature adventurous and challenging touring productions, many of which have enjoyed sold-out success off Broadway and elsewhere.  

“This fills a unique niche in Dallas by showcasing acclaimed performances that originated off Broadway or perhaps somewhere else,” said Doug Curtis, the Center’s president and CEO. “These aren’t big Broadway productions, but instead smaller shows that may be a little edgier or have a more offbeat appeal. We’re very excited with the programs we have in our first season.”

The inaugural 2014/2015 season begins September 3-6, 2014 with Buyer & Cellar starring Ugly Betty star and Plano native Michael Urie, the winner of the 2014 Lucille Lortel Award for Best Solo Show. The season continues in November with the 55th Anniversary Tour of the legendary comedic talent of The Second City. In February 2015 the season continues with The Great Tragedies, four unique monologues created and performed by Mike Daisey, one of the most engaging and controversial solo performers and monologists of his time. In May, we’ll present the clever satire of Stop Hitting Yourselfcreated by Austin’s Rude Mechs. The season culminates June 25-27 with Love, Loss, and What I Wore, the intimate collection of stories by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron.

“The Dallas theatre scene has never been more vibrant with local companies producing works recognized far and wide for their artistic excellence,” said Mr. Curtis. “For theatre lovers, this series, presented in smaller performance spaces, makes a great addition to the mix.”

Each production will be staged in one of several venues that straddle Flora Street, which runs through the heart of the Dallas Arts District. Venues for the inaugural season include Hamon Hall in the Winspear Opera House, Potter Rose Performance Hall in the Wyly Theatre and Dallas City Performance Hall.

Five-show subscription packages range from $240 to $170 and may be purchased online at www.attpac.org, by telephone at 214-880-0202 or in person at the AT&T Performing Arts Center Information Center at 2353 Flora Street (Monday 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.; Tuesday thru Saturday 10 a.m. – 9 p.m.; Sunday 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.).

Seating in the Center Circle Orchestra section is available to Center Circle members at any level.  Call Membership Services at 214-978-2888 for information.

Subscribers to the five-show series receive discounted ticket price, right to renew their same seats for future seasons and a discounted parking option. 

Note: Photos and logos for media use are available at: www.attpac.org/media
Please use the provided photo credits when publishing photos.

OFF BROADWAY ON FLORA – 2014/2015 SEASON

BUYER & CELLAR – Dallas City Performance Hall
Wednesday, September 3 – Friday, September 5 - 8 p.m.
Saturday, September 6 – 2 p.m. & 8 p.m.

"A triumph! I tell you to GO. The most talked about new comedy of the season. It goes down as easily and tastily as lemon sorbet, and the only pain in your stomach it creates is the kind that comes from laughing too hard.”
- Ben Brantley, The New York Times

“Hilarious! Beyond brilliant! This show will go down like butta.”
- Entertainment Weekly

“The funniest show of the year!”
- New York Observer

THE SECOND CITY – Dallas City Performance Hall
Thursday, November 13 – Friday, November 14 - 8 p.m.
Saturday, November 15 – 2 p.m. & 8 p.m.
*May contain adult content and language.

“…one funny, high-stakes show…” – Chicago Tribune

Legendary comedy theatre with resident stages in Chicago, Toronto, and Touring Ensembles entertaining over 1,000,000 guests each year.

Training ground for a host of famous alumni including John Belushi, Mike Myers, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, and over 500 more.

Winner of over 30 Joseph Jefferson Award nominations in Chicago and over 35 Dora Award nominations in Toronto honoring excellence in professional theatre.

The Second City continues to produce the premiere comic talent in the industry. From Amy Poehler to Jane Lynch, Jason Sudeikis to Julia-Louis Dreyfus – The Second City imprint is felt across every entertainment medium.

Drawing from the vast archives of material, the Touring Company produces a two-act review of The Second City’s celebrated brand of topical sketch comedy, hilarious songs, and on the spot improvisation that changes with every performance. An evening with The Second City provides audiences with the chance to see comedy stars in the making, a night of cutting edge comedy, and an unforgettable experience.

THE GREAT TRAGEDIES – MIKE DAISEY - Hamon Hall
Thursday, February 26 – Friday, February 27, 2015 - 8 p.m.
Saturday, February 28 – 2 p.m. & 8 p.m.
*May contain adult language.

"...one of the most engaging solo performers of his generation. A worthy successor to Spalding Gray… Mr. Daisey has a remarkable ability to grab and hold an audience. His facility for impromptu asides and entertaining digressions is formidably effective. The aplomb with which he could weave his way back from a seeming dead end almost felt like a magic trick." - New York Times

"Searingly intelligent and funny—Daisey ties everything together in a graceful, epic sweep that leaves you pondering whether the impulse to annihilate is bred in the bone - and whether vulnerability is a liability or simply the essence of what it means to be human." -Washington Times

Monologist Mike Daisey presents a dazzling new work:  Over four nights Daisey explores the nature of our theatrical genetics and wrestles with the genius that penned ROMEO & JULIET, HAMLET, MACBETH, and KING LEAR and reveals how the heights and depths of his gifts have much to teach us about ourselves. From the sublime to the ridiculous, he’ll delve into what Shakespeare can mean to us today, and how this cultural religion changes and shapes our theatres. Each evening is unique and can be viewed independently, but all four together form an epic oral accounting of triumph and folly told with Daisey's dark and hilarious intensity.

MIKE DAISEY has been called “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by The New York Times for his groundbreaking monologues which weave together autobiography, gonzo journalism, and unscripted performance to tell hilarious and heartbreaking stories that cut to the bone, exposing secret histories and unexpected connections. His controversial work, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, was recognized as one of the year’s best theater pieces by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, San Jose Mercury News, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Since his first monologue in 1997, Daisey has created over fifteen, including the critically-acclaimed The Last Cargo Cult, the controversial How Theater Failed America, the twenty-four-hour feat All the Hours in the Day, the unrepeatable series All Stories Are Fiction, the four-part epic Great Men of Genius, and the international sensation 21 Dog Years. Other titles include If You See Something Say Something, Barring the Unforeseen, Invincible Summer, Monopoly!, Tongues Will Wag, I Miss the Cold War, and Teching in India.

He has performed in venues on five continents, ranging from Off-Broadway at the Public Theater to remote islands in the South Pacific, from the Sydney Opera House to an abandoned theater in post-Communist Tajikistan. He’s been a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher, The Late Show with David Letterman, a longtime host and storyteller for The Moth, as well as a commentator and contributor to The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, The Daily Beast, WIRED, Vanity Fair, Slate, Salon, NPR and the BBC. He has been nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award, two Drama League Awards, and is the recipient of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, five Seattle Times Footlight Awards, the Sloan Foundation’s Galileo Prize, and a MacDowell Fellowship. He recently performed a critically acclaimed 29-night live theatrical novel at the Public Theater, and is writing his second book, Here at the End of Empire, to be published by Simon and Schuster in 2015.

STOP HITTING YOURSELF – RUDE MECHS - Potter Rose Hall
Thursday, May 28 – Friday, May 29 - 8 p.m.
Saturday, May 30 – 2 p.m. & 8 p.m.
*Contains adult content, nudity and language.

"This fiendishly clever satire feels incredibly fresh. An ingenious piece of devised theater that has appeared like a golden unicorn in the Claire Tow Theater." - Time Out New York

"A playful and engrossing exploration of wealth, charity, poverty and human nature. You'll be thinking about this one for a long time." -Theatremania

"But what makes this show exceptional is the way it brings together a medley of styles, ideas, and theater magic to both delight and deliberately unsettle its audiences." – austin360.com

 Stop Hitting Yourself is a commission of LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater.

With Stop Hitting Yourself, Rude Mechs is embracing the fundamental beliefs underlying late-stage capitalism and indulging in our version of 1930s Hollywood glamour. Part Pygmalion, part Busby Berkley, part self-help lexicon -- all while dancing around a queso fountain. Rude Mechs borrows from the plots of 1930s musicals to dig into the contemporary conservative dilemma: how to honor steely individualism without disavowing the virtue of charity. Tap dancing, fine dining, and the missionary position will be employed in order to help all Americans to stop hitting yourself.

 "Improvement. Queso. Charity. Belief."" – Wildman

Once a year at the Charity Ball a single worthy cause is selected to benefit from the Queen's annual good deed. Families of note compete to find the citizens most deserving of assistance. This year, a socialite has discovered a wildman in the forest and brings him home to improve him. The wildman's desire to save the natural world and to bring about an era of love and harmony is a sure winner. Now she must teach him how to eat and dance, how to bow and flatter, how to behave in society so that his cause can be victorious.

Company: Rude Mechs is an ensemble-based theatre company that operates with a full company of 28 members. We create original plays that we produce in Austin, TX, and tour nationally and internationally. Our touring productions include The Method Gun, Get Your War On, How Late It Was, How Late, Cherrywood, and Lipstick Traces. Our Off-Broadway productions include Get Your War On and Lipstick Traces. Our production The Method Gun was selected for the 34th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. Rude Mechs has received over 180 local and national awards and nominations for our work. We’ve enjoyed two Off-Broadway premieres and toured to top national venues such as The Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis, MN), The Wexner Center (Columbus, OH), and Woolly Mammoth (Washington D.C.). Our emergence was marked by a feature in The New York Times that identified Rude Mechs as one of three companies in the country “making theatre that matters.” We are deeply proud to represent Texas as a home for cutting-edge theatrical practice.

LOVE, LOSS, and WHAT I WORE – Potter Rose Hall
Thursday, June 25 – Friday, June 26 - 8 p.m.
Saturday, June 27 – 2 p.m. & 8 p.m.
*May contain some adult themes.

“Funny, powerful, sweet and saucy! Goes directly to the heart, soul and vanity of every woman, young and old.” – Variety

"Breezy and perfectly enjoyable for the stray men in the room, it’s like a big bowl of buttered popcorn (but calorie-free!) for the women who can share deeply in the particulars of experience dissected and discussed." – The New York Times

Winner: 2010 Drama Desk Award - Unique Theatrical Experience

Winner: 2010 Broadway.com Audience Award - Favorite New Off-Broadway Play

Proving that a great show is always in fashion, Love, Loss, and What I Wore, with its starry rotating cast and compulsively entertaining subject matter, has become an international hit. This intimate collection of stories by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron and directed by Karen Carpenter, has entered its second smash year at New York’s Westside Theatre. Produced by Daryl Roth, Love, Loss, and What I Wore is based on the best-seller by Ilene Beckerman, as well as on the recollections of the Ephrons’ friends. Like the popular book, the show uses clothing and accessories and the memories they trigger to tell funny and often poignant stories that all women can relate to, creating one of the most enduring theatergoing experiences in New York and now across the country.

NORA EPHRON (Playwright) is a journalist, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and director. Her credits include Heartburn, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail and Imaginary Friends. Books include Crazy Salad, Scribble Scribble, I Feel Bad About My Neck and her latest, I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections. Her most recent film, Julie & Julia, stars Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.

DELIA EPHRON (Playwright) is an author, playwright and screenwriter. Her new novel, The Lion Is In, was published in July 2012 by Penguin. She has written fiction, nonfiction, humor (for adults, teens, and children), including the novels Hanging Up and Big City Eyes. Her best-selling book How to Eat Like a Child was adapted as a musical for television and subsequently became a theatrical musical for children. Screenwriting credits include The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, You’ve Got Mail, Michael, This Is My Life and Hanging Up.