Theatre Three announces is 52nd Season

 

 

During Theatre Three's 52nd season, Theatre Three's artists will travel through time, exploring some of the most fascinating eras of history. Spoiled divas, murderous Americans, explosive celebrity family secrets, a rock star Marie Antoinette, World War II romance, arrogant authors, and an overlooked but determined star fill the seven show season on the Norma Young Arena Stage.. The 52st season on the Norma Young Arena Stage begins August 8, 2013 with So Help Me God! and the final show of the subscription season, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, begins June 19, 2014.

Two shows will be produced in Theatre Too during the 2013-2014 season. Additionally, Theatre Three may produce special artist projects in Theatre Too. Avenue Q will continue its run from the 2012-2013 season into the new season and the perennial favorite, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, will open January 9, 2014.

 

On the Norma Young Arena Stage:

So Help Me God!
A re-discovered 1929 comedy by Maurine Dallas Watkins
August 8 – September 1, 2013

This deliciously sour farce provides the same startled pleasure that comes from discovering a juicy, pre-code Hollywood film when immoralities used to go un-punished in the final reel. The playwright is now best remembered for Roxy Heart, her play adapted into the musical, Chicago. So Help Me God! gets its astonishing energy from that same white-hot cynicism that's as angry as it is amused. A backstage story of a back-stabbing diva, this strychnine-laced bonbon makes other theatre satires of the era look like fluffy marshmallows. Derailed from the road to Broadway by the stock market crash of 1929, the re-discovered farce portrays a Broadway where commercialism always trumps art, producers pander to an audience's lowest intelligence, and stars get away with absolutely everything – because they're famous, damn it!

 

 

Assassins
The masterpiece musical by Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman
September 26 – October 27, 2013

Theatre Three, the Southwest's leading producer of the Sondheim canon, premiered this work in 1991 as one of its first post-Broadway productions and will restage the masterpiece as part of Dallas' meditation on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination. Considered one of the most important of Sondheim's works, the astonishingly inventive score combined with the provocative book by John Weidman produces a gallery of U.S. history's most notorious players – the men and women who determined to kill American presidents. This striking work, both serious and satirical, asks what hunger drove these murderous malcontents to their actions dissecting the lives, loves and lunacy of nine, including John Wilkes Booth, John Hinckley, Lee Harvey Oswald and Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme. Is their drive for celebrity what makes them quintessentially American?

 

 

 

Other Desert Cities
A Southwest premiere drama by Jon Robin Baitz
November 21 – December 15, 2013

With biting wit and razor-sharp insight, Jon Robin Baitz skillfully dissects the conflicting sense of justice between generations that can rupture family bonds. When Brook Wyeth comes home (along with her brother and aunt) to her parents' glamorous Palm Springs home on Christmas Eve, she has a manuscript with her. How wonderful! Brook has recovered from a long depression that has kept her from following up on her young success. Her former screenwriter mother and her retired movie-leading-man father are so relieved. But this is a family of politicians, artists, and wise-cracking alcoholics, so imagine everyone's reaction on learning the new book is Brook's tell-all memoir that will expose an explosive family secret. As entertaining as it is insightful, this is – as all critics agreed – an exceptional piece of writing from one of the best playwrights of this generation.

 

 

 

On the Eve
A new rock musical by Seth Magill and Shawn Magill, book by Michael Federico
January 16 – February 9, 2014

Last December, Theatre Three's Associate Artist Jeffrey Schmidt directed and designed a workshop production of this super-inventive new work by Home by Hovercraft band members Seth Magill and Shawn Magill with book by actor-educator-author Michael Federico. He staged it, most appropriately, in the theatre space where Margo Jones premiered works by Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Lawrence and Lee and other mid-century American masters. The production, featuring time-traveling characters, wound up on every Dallas and Ft. Worth critic's best-2012 show list. The highly original Home by Hovercraft composers use innovative rock orchestrations (no guitars!) with percussion from Irish step dancers. And at Theatre Three, you see the world professional premiere.

 

 

 

Less Than Kind
The American premiere of a brilliant comedy by Terence Rattigan
March 6 – 30, 2014

Nobody expected a Rattigan world premiere 34 years after the playwright died. This scintillating play had languished in manuscript form since Rattigan abandoned it to rewrite the play (later called O Mistress Mine!) for Lunt and Fontanne. But the "dusted off" original became the big hit of Rattigan's centennial season (in 2011), and now, Theatre Three has obtained the right to stage the comedy's American premiere. It's London in 1944: The war is reaching its climax, but a senior minister has problems not just in supplying the front line with tanks, but also on the home front. He has been enjoying a passionate but illicit affair with a war widow, and now her son, evacuated for the duration, returns. Learning of the affair, the youth explodes, railing against the minister's 'immorality', and his industrial powers. This play brilliantly captures the flavor of WWII in England with a masterful mix of sparkling comedy and deep feelings.

 

 

 

Seminar
A Southwest premiere of a new Broadway comedy by Theresa Rebeck
April 24 – May 18, 2014

As Seminar opens, four young writers are gathered in an Upper West Side apartment waiting for Leonard, a fiction guru, for whose counsel they have each paid $5,000. They are a fractious lot even before Leonard arrives, swapping barbs about one another's pretensions. But that's nothing compared to the verbal flatulence that fills the air once Leonard arrives, trailing weary contempt and sexual charisma. Once a celebrated novelist, he's best known now as a teacher and grandstanding chronicler of life in danger zones in third-world countries. The verbal and sexual sparring yield what The New York Times called "Big laughs…an authentic rush of pleasure". It's tight, witty and consistently entertaining, acquiring more muscle as the layers are peeled back to reveal both the scarred humanity beneath Leonard's soured exterior.

 

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark
A comedy by Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage
June 19 – July 13, 2014

African American Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage (Ruined) pulls the curtain back on old Hollywood in her latest play, a sly satire hailed as "not to be missed" by critics in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. Here's a play that offers a glimpse into the life of Vera Stark, a headstrong African American actress, who begins a career in the 1930s, at a time when her only shot at success lay in stealing small scenes in big Hollywood blockbusters. Seventy years later, film buffs are left to reflect on the life and legacy of this controversial star, whose eventual fame and fortune came at the price of perpetuating dangerous stereotypes. Hilarious and poignant, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark paints a vivid picture of the cultural climate that shaped this screen queen—and wonders who, in another time, she might have been.

Show times: Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 pm.

Tickets: Single Tickets: $10 -- $50; Subscriptions: $85.00 -- $245.00
Tickets for all performances may be purchased by calling Theatre Three's box office at 214-871-3300.

 

 

In Theatre Too:

Avenue Q
A musical by Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx, and Jeff Whitty
Extended run

Theatre Three's smash hit production of this Tony Award-winning will continue into the 2013-2014 season. Avenue Q is a laugh-out-loud musical that tells the timeless story of a recent college grad named Princeton who moves into a shabby New York apartment all the way out on Avenue Q. There, he meets Kate (the girl next door), Rod (the Republican), Trekkie (the internet sexpert), Lucy the slut (need we say more?), and other colorful types who help Princeton finally discover his purpose in life!

 

 

I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change
A musical by Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Roberts
January 9 – February 16, 2014

It's a hugely entertaining show that Theatre Three revives every year around Valentine's Day -- and it sells out! It's the perfect revue of courtship and marriage that has earned its place as a signature piece by Theatre Three, and featuring gifted sketch comedy players who sing and dance their way through all the phases of romance and marriage.

Show times: Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m.

Tickets: Single Tickets: $30 -- $50. Tickets for all performances may be purchased by calling Theatre Three's box office at 214-871-3300.

About Theatre Three:

Theatre Three was founded in 1961 by Norma Young, Jac Alder , Esther Ragland, and Robert Dracup with a clear mission: Theatre Three seeks to illuminate the human experience with exemplary, intimate theatrical productions while nurturing authors, regional artists and audiences.

 

To Contact Theatre Three:

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by phone: 214-871-3300
by email: admin@theatre3dallas.com
by fax: 214-871-3139
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