2011 – 12 Season

The Guys

By Anne Nelson

Directed by Shawn Paonessa

Sep. 8 – 25, 2011

Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm

Tickets: $24.50

Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts

Creative Loafing Best of The Bay

Days after 9/11, Joan, a New York City editor, is asking the same question Americans are asking everywhere: “what can I possibly do?” Then, she meets Nick, an FDNY captain who lost most of his men in the attack. He needs someone with the tools to help him craft the eulogies. The afternoon meeting turns to evening, as Nick and Joan recall these ordinary guys: their humor, their faults, their passions. In the process, they discover the possibilities of friendship, their shared love for the unconquerable spirit of the city, and of course, the tango.

Quills

By Doug Wright

Directed by David M. Jenkins

Extended! Oct. 20 – Nov. 13, 2011

Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm

Tickets: $24.50

Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts

The head of Charenton Asylum, is visited by the wife of the asylum’s most notorious inmate, the notoriously irreverent Marquis de Sade. She offers the Doctor any amount of money, if only her husband can be kept from writing. After confiscating the Marquis’ quills and paper, the Abbe de Coulmier is surprised to find lascivious new stories circulating in public. As the Abbe’s religious devotion clashes with the Marquis’s dedication to freedom of expression, the audience is treated to a tale of wit and irony, blasphemy and philosophy. Doug Wright’s remarkable work forcefully challenges themes of censorship, power, and extreme measures of rehabilitation.

The 39 Steps

By Patrick Barlow, based on the 1935 film by Alfred Hitchcock

Directed by Katrina Stevenson

Extended! Jan. 12 – Feb. 5, 2012

Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm

Tickets: $24.50

Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts

Mix a Hitchcock masterpiece with a juicy spy novel, add a dash of Monty Python, and you have The 39 Steps, a fast-paced whodunit for anyone who loves the magic of theatre. The 39 Steps is packed with nonstop laughs, over 150 eccentric characters – played by a prodigiously talented cast of four – an on-stage plane crash, handcuffs, missing fingers and some good old-fashioned romance.

Hot Nights for the War Wives of Ithaka

By Christopher Buehlman

Co-directed by Christen Hailey and Chris Holcom

Mar. 8 – 25, 2012

Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm

Tickets: $24.50

Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts

Chaos ensues when Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Pan, goat-legged god of shagging everything, descend on the island of Ithaka to seek revenge for the fall of Troy. An ingenious mix of highbrow and lowbrow humor, who could have guessed in school that The Odyssey could be so funny?

Race

By David Mamet

Directed by David M. Jenkins

Extended! May 10 – Jun. 3, 2012

Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm

Tickets: $24.50

Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts

Jobsite tackles America’s most controversial topic in this provocative new tale of sex, guilt and bold accusations. Two lawyers find themselves defending a wealthy white executive charged with raping a black woman. When a new legal assistant gets involved in the case, opinions that boil beneath explode to the surface. When David Mamet turns the spotlight on what we think but can’t say, dangerous truths are revealed, and no punches are spared.

Closetland

By Radha Bharadwaj, based on her 1991 screenplay

Directed by Gavin Hawk

Jul. 12 – 29, 2012

Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm

Tickets: $24.50

Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts

Creative Loafing Best of the Bay

In an unnamed country, in unspecified times, a man purporting to be the government’s representative interrogates a female author of children’s fiction on the grounds that her harmless story of children and farm animals is politically subversive. This begins Radha Bharadwaj’s powerful and terrifying play that ultimately links political, state-sponsored violence with intimate, personal abuse, asserting that both forms of violence stem from the self-same root.