PARDON MY INVASION
Photo credit: Kyle Ober
A World Premiere
Written by Joy Cutler
Directed by Cara Blouin
November 3-19, 2011
Plays & Players Skinner Studio
Starring: Julian Cloud, Emily Gibson, Theresa Leahy, Joe O’Brien, Angela Smith, and Jennifer Summerfield
Photo credit: Kyle Cassidy
When Private Malcolm Jack goes AWOL from serving in Iraq, he discovers there are a lot safer places to hide than in the body of a 13-year-old girl. Her novelist mother enlists the biggest bombshell in her pulp fiction arsenal to seduce him out, but it will take more imagination than that to end the occupation in this dark and twisted farce spearing sex, gender, and invasion from Philadelphia’s own Joy Cutler.
“So here’s a real surprise: On the third floor of Plays and Players Theatre, there’s a world premiere by an under-the-radar local playwright — Joy Cutler — filled with amateur actors, directed by a relative newcomer. All outward signs indicate a hot mess; instead, it’s a blast. With Cutler’s pen, Blouin’s eye, the all-out cast of pros (amateur or not) and Lance Kniskern, whose red-walled, askew-angled set prepares us for Cutler’s off-kilter tone while hiding a few secrets of its own, this production runs like a well-oiled military machine. In a fall season loaded with heavy themes and full-frontal realism, Plays and Players’ left-field entry is a welcome respite, and a sneaky contender.”
-Philadelphia Inquirer
JOE TURNER’S COME AND GONE
Photo credit: Drew Hood, Throwing Light Photography
Written by August Wilson
Directed by Daniel Student
January 19 – February 4 2012
Plays & Players Mainstage
Starring: Mle Chester, Jamal Douglas, Kash Goins, Brett Gray, Cherie Jazmyn, Lauryn Simone-Jones, Erin Stewart, Candace Thomas, James Tolbert, Damien Wallace, and Bob Weick
Photo credit: Drew Hood, Throwing Light Photography
As emancipated slaves flood north in search of employment and a chance to start over, Seth and Bertha Holly’s boarding house in Pittsburgh, offers a new place to call home in this drama by the multiple Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars and Fences. When an angry and lost man arrives looking for his wife, forcibly removed from him years ago when he was captured and put in a chain gang by a man named Joe Turner, these once strangers are forced to confront their own demons and to come together to help him find his way. This is the first of two plays at P&P that looked back at life 100 years ago in celebration of their 100th Anniversary Season. August Wilson is heralded as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century to explore black consciousness and culture.
“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is a big, strong, juicy play, and Plays & Players’ production is just as big, strong, and juicy… while the building may be old, the company is new; it’s led by Daniel Student, who is rapidly proving himself a young director of range and vision.”
-Philadelphia Inquirer
“Plays & Players production of the second part of that cycle, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, skillfully captures the tone and tension in the playwright’s work… Director Daniel Student creates the requisite tension between all these ideas and elements skillfully, while also bringing to life the warmth and simplicity of the everyday world in which these characters exist… creatively and technically, this production is beautifully mounted.”
-Stage Magazine
TRAVESTIES
Written by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Candace Cihocki
June 7-23, 2012
Plays & Players Skinner Studio
Photo credit: Kyle Ober
Starring: Kaki Burns, Andrew Carroll, Jim Ludovici, Cathy Mostek, Kristen Norine, Tim Rinehart, and Eric Wunsch
The second of two plays looking back at 100 years ago, Travesties is written by one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th Century. A Tony Award winning comedic masterpiece from the writer of Coast of Utopia, Arcadia, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Travesties takes you on a stylistic joy ride through an imagined meeting between James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin and Tristan Tzara who all lived in Zurich during World War I. When Joyce casts British consular official Henry Carr in a performance of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest in the lead role of Algernon, Carr finds himself immersed in a wacky and wonderful world of Wildean wit, Joycean limericks, Leninist ideology, and sheer Tzarist anarchy.
Photo credit: Kyle Ober
“His [Stoppard’s] 1974 Travesties is a supersmart, super-theatrical tour de force challenging both actors and audiences, and plucky little Plays and Players sometimes meets that challenge and sometimes doesn’t, but it’s well worth a look.”
-Philadelphia Inquirer
“This is a beautifully-written play that’s deliciously directed by Candace Cihocki… I really liked the way that she chose to use the entire space, making even inanimate objects have personality and spirit… please do yourself and a friend a favor and please see this show.”
-The Examiner