Announcing our 2008-2009 Season
RAGTIME -
This epic new musical by the
award-winning composer/lyricist team Stephen Flaherty and Lynn
Ahrens (Lucky Stiff, My Favorite Year, Once On This
Island, Seussical) paints a nostalgic and powerful
portrait of life in turn of the century America. Based on E.L.
Doctorow's distinguished novel, Ragtime intertwines three distinct
stories that poignantly illustrate history's timeless contradictions
of wealth and poverty, freedom and prejudice, hope and despair, and
love and hate. The score by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty is just
as diverse as the Melting Pot of America that it seeks to recreate.
It draws upon traditional Jewish folk sounds to color the haunting
music and yearning lyrics of the immigrants, Vaudeville's outrageous
style to capture the spectacle of Evelyn Nesbit, and Joplin and Jazz
to invoke the enlivened spirit of Harlem. With a book by Terrance
McNally (Kiss of the Spider Woman, Master Class), this 1998 Tony
award winning show for best score, book, and orchestrations,
features such show stopping songs as Getting Ready Rag, Your
Daddy's Son, Wheels of a Dream, Till We Reach That Day, Back To
Before, and Make Them Hear You. This momentous musical
is sure to inspire actors and audiences alike! Ragtime
will play at the Roseville Theater. Directed by Brent Null
Auditions: July 21 and 22 at 8:00pm with
call-backs July 23 at 8:00pm at the ROSEVILLE THEATER
Production Dates: Sept. 5 - Oct. 4, 2008
THE
LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO -
THE LAST NIGHT OF
BALLYHOO takes place in Atlanta, Georgia, in December
of 1939. Gone with the Wind is having its world premiere, and
Hitler is invading Poland, but Atlanta's elitist German Jews are
much more concerned with who is going to Ballyhoo, the social event
of the season. Especially concerned is the Freitag family: bachelor
Adolph, his widowed sister, Beulah (Boo) Levy, and their also
widowed sister-in-law, Reba. Boo is determined to have her dreamy,
unpopular daughter, Lala, attend Ballyhoo, believing it will be
Lala's last chance to find a socially acceptable husband. Adolph
brings his new assistant, Joe Farkas, home for dinner. Joe is
Brooklyn born and bred, and furthermore is of Eastern European
heritage - several social rungs below the Freitags, in Beulah's
opinion. Lala, however, is charmed by Joe and she hints broadly
about being taken to Ballyhoo, but he turns her down. This enrages
Boo, and matters get worse when Joe falls for Lala's cousin, Reba's
daughter, Sunny, home from Wellesley for Christmas vacation. Will
Boo succeed in snaring Peachy Weil, a member of one of the finest
Jewish families in the South? Will Sunny and Joe avoid the land
mines of prejudice that stand in their way? Will Lala ever get to
Ballyhoo? The family gets pulled apart and then mended together with
plenty of comedy, romance and revelations along the way. Events take
several unexpected turns as the characters face where they come from
and are forced to deal with who they really are. The
Last Night of Ballyhoo will play at the Tower
Theater. Directed by Michelle
Pabst
Auditions: July 28 and 29 at 7:30pm at the
TOWER THEATER
Production Dates: Sept. 19 - Oct. 11, 2008
CABARET
- The scene is a night club in
Berlin, as the 1920's are drawing to a close. The Master of
Ceremonies welcomes the audience to the show and assures them that,
whatever their troubles, they will forget them at the Cabaret. His
songs provide wry commentary throughout the show. On the train to
Berlin we find Cliff, a young American writer, and Ernst, a German
who surprises Cliff by putting his briefcase among Cliff's luggage
at the German border. History is in the process of being made.
Musical numbers include It Couldn't Please Me More, Willkommen,
Cabaret, Don't Tell Mama and Two Ladies. We find Cliff on
the train again, now leaving Berlin alone. He writes about Sally and
the people of Berlin leading up to the Third Reich. It has been a
tumultuous and heartbreaking era. Cabaret
will play at the Tower Theater.
Directed by Rosemarie Gerould
Auditions: Sept. 29 and 30 at 7:30pm with
call-backs on Oct. 1 at 7:30pm at the TOWER THEATER
Production Dates: Nov. 14 - Dec. 13, 2008
at the TOWER THEATER
OKLAHOMA!
-
Rodgers & Hammerstein's first collaboration
remains, in many ways, their most innovative, having set the
standards and established the rules of musical theatre still being
followed today. Set in a Western Indian territory just after the
turn of the century, the high-spirited rivalry between the local
farmers and cowboys provides the colorful background against which
Curly, a handsome cowboy, and Laurey, a winsome farm girl, play out
their love story. Although the road to true love never runs smooth,
with these two headstrong romantics holding the reins, love's
journey is as bumpy as a surrey ride down a country road. That they
will succeed in making a new life together we have no doubt, and
that this new life will begin in a brand-new state provides the
ultimate climax to the triumphant Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! will play at the
Roseville Theater. Directed by
Brent Null
Auditions: Oct. 20 and 21 at 8:00pm with
call-backs Oct. 22 at 8:00pm at the ROSEVILLE THEATER
Production Dates: Jan. 9 - Feb. 7, 2009 at
the ROSEVILLE THEATER
CHAPTER TWO -
Based on part of Neil Simon's own life
Chapter Two mixes laughter with heartache.
George Schneider, a writer whose wife has recently died, returns to
a lonely apartment. His younger brother Leo, a theatrical press
agent and born matchmaker, tries to snap George out of his emotional
tailspin by supplying him with unwanted and unsuccessful dates. Then
Leo comes up with Jennie Malone and she's a winner. Still it's a
rocky road ahead for the not so young lovers. George struggles with
contradictory impulses to embrace a new life but remain faithful to
the old. George and Jennie stumble on, tripping over George's pent
up emotions and Jennie's wariness born of her recent marital fiasco.
In a hilarious, farcical subplot, Leo has a fling with Faye,
Jennie's dizzy and neurotic married friend. The author has up dated
numerous references in the script to enhance current productions of
this timeless comedy. Chapter Two will
play at the Tower Theater.
Directed by Rosemarie Gerould
Auditions: Dec. 1 and 2 at 7:30pm at the
TOWER THEATER
Production Dates: Jan 23. - Feb. 21, 2009
at the TOWER THEATER
BUS
STOP -
Bus Stop
is set in a diner about 20 miles west of Kansas
City in early March, 1955. A freak snowstorm has halted the progress
of the bus, and the eight characters have a weather enforced layover
in the diner from approximately one o'clock until five o'clock in
the morning. The interaction among the characters, and the
interweaving of their stories is the sum of the play's plot.
Bus Stop will play at the Roseville
Theater. Directed by Rosemarie
Gerould
Auditions: Feb. 2 and 3 at 7:30pm at the
ROSEVILLE THEATER
Production Dates: March 27 - April 25,
2009 at the ROSEVILLE THEATER
FORBIDDEN BROADWAY -
In this long-running hit off-Broadway musical revue, Broadway's
greatest musical legends meet Broadway's greatest satirist in this
hilarious, loving, and endlessly entertaining tribute to some of the
theatre's greatest stars and songwriters. Forbidden
Broadway will play at the Tower Theater. Directed by Bob Gerould
Auditions: Feb. 9 and 10 at 8:00pm with
call-backs on Feb. 11 at 8:00pm at the TOWER THEATER
Production Dates: April 3 - May 2, 2009 at
the TOWER THEATER
OLIVER! -
Nothing works on the stage like a
well-crafted tale, and OLIVER! is just
such a show. Based on the Dickens novel, it will engage your
audience with its pathos and drama, while delighting everyone with
its outstanding musical numbers.
Food, Glorious Food, I'd Do Anything, Where is Love?, Consider
Yourself, As Long As He Needs Me, Who Will Buy and
Reviewing the Situation are
musical theatre classics. Dickens' characters are brought to
life-perhaps larger than life-with all their facets glowing in this
production. Oliver! will play at the
Tower Theater. Directed by
Brent Null
Auditions: April 13 and 14 at 7:00pm with
call-backs on April 15 at 7:00pm at the TOWER THEATER
Production Dates: May 22 - June 20, 2009
at the TOWER THEATER
MY FAIR LADY
- This show is the standard by which all others are measured. Based
on Shaw's play and Pascal's movie "Pygmalion," with book, music and
lyrics by Lerner and Loewe, MY FAIR LADY
is triumphant. With Wouldn't It Be
Loverly?, With a Little Bit of Luck, The Rain in Spain, I Could Have
Danced All Night, On the Street Where You Live, Get Me to the Church
on Time and I've Grown
Accustomed to Her Face it's no wonder everyone-not just Henry
Higgins-falls in love with Eliza Doolittle. My Fair Lady
will play at the Roseville Theater.
Directed by Rosemarie Gerould
Auditions: May 11 and 12 at 8:00pm with
call-backs May 13 at 8:00pm at the ROSEVILLE THEATER
Production Dates: July 3 - August 8, 2009
at the ROSEVILLE THEATER
PERILOUS GRAVITY IN A
LOOPY UNIVERSE -
Einstein and Kafka meet in some faraway place and “confront past
mistakes, question whether science or literature explains the
universe and our place in it, and if they were such geniuses, why
were their love lives so screwed up?†Funny, insightful,
thought-provoking.
Perilous Gravity in a Loopy Universe will play at the
Tower Theater. Directed by Bob
Gerould
Auditions: May 18 at 6:00pm at the TOWER
THEATER
Production Dates: July 10 - August 8, 2009
at the TOWER THEATER