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Finally Season 14!
We are so happy to announce our 14th season and that we will be returning to the Gaslight Stage in September 2021!
Get your Season Tickets here!
The Zoo Story/The Dumb Waiter by Edward Albee/Harold Pinter Directed by Wayne Salomon, Starring William Roth* September 17 – October 3, 2021 Classic early one act plays by two giants of the theatre. Edward Albee and Harold Pinter.
THE ZOO STORY - A man sits peacefully reading in the sunlight in Central Park. There enters a second man. He is a young, unkempt and undisciplined vagrant where the first is neat, ordered, well-to-do and conventional. The vagrant is a soul in torture and rebellion. He longs to communicate so fiercely that he frightens and repels his listener. He is a man drained of all hope who, in his passion for company, seeks to drain his companion. With provocative humor and unrelenting suspense, the young savage slowly, but relentlessly, brings his victim down to his own atavistic level as he relates a story about his visit to the zoo.
“Edward Albee is a voice unparalleled in American theater." —NY Times
"The dialogue crackles and the tension runs high." —Associated Press "Darkly comic and thrilling." —Time Out NY Synopsis:
THE DUMB WAITER: As the New York World-Telegram & Sun describes: "In the basement of a long-abandoned restaurant, two hired killers nervously await their next assignment. Barred from daylight Page 4 of 25 and living public contact by the nature of their work, they expend their waiting time in bickering. So eerie is the situation that everything becomes comic, or grotesque, or both. Ben re-reading a newspaper and exclaiming in disbelief over the news items, Gus fussing with an offstage stove and offstage plumbing. Ben bludgeoning Gus into silence if he as much as mentions their work. Gus worrying that someone had slept in his bed. So then the ancient dumbwaiter comes to life, the suspense becomes almost unbearable—that expertly has Pinter put the nerves of his characters and audience on edge."
“a distinguished gift for sheer, old-fashioned theatrical effectiveness, including the use of melodramatic suspense and the hint of sinister forces lying in ambush." —NY Times
Comfort by Neil LaBute, Directed by Associate Artistic Director, Annamaria Pileggi December 3-19, 2021 Starring Kari Ely* and Spencer Sickmann*
A new play by STLAS friend and associate Neil LaBute in which a successful author and herson meet after some time apart and revisit their troubled relationship. What’s at stake? Whether or not the instinctive bond between mother and child can survive not just the past,but also two new book deals.
"Mr. LaBute is writing some of the freshest and most illuminating American dialogue to be heard anywhere these days." —NY Times.
"No contemporary writer has more astutely captured the brutality in everyday conversation and behavior: That kind of insight requires sensitivity and soul-searching." —USA Today.
"It is tight, tense and emotionally true, and it portrays characters who actually seem part of the world that the rest of us live in." —Time.
Hand to God by Robert Askins Directed by Associate Artistic Director John Pierson February 18- March 6, 2022. Starring Eric Dean White* and Colleen Backer
In the devoutly religious, relatively quiet small town of Cypress, Texas, Margery is a widow whose husband has recently died. To keep her occupied, her minister, Pastor Greg, has asked her to run the puppet club. Fundamentalist Christian congregations often use puppets to teach children how to follow the Bible and avoid Satan. The teenage members of the club are her son Jason; Jessica, the girl next door that Jason has a crush on; and Timmy, the neighborhood troublemaker whose mother is attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings at the church. Pastor Greg wants the puppet club to put on a performance at the church next Sunday. The characters become sexually attracted to each other. Jason's hand puppet, Tyrone, takes on a life of his own, announces that he is Satan, leads them into sin, and expresses secrets that the characters would rather have left unacknowledged.
"....Robert Askin's darkly delightful play “Hand to God,” really inspires goose bumps..." - The New York Times "A scabrously funny scenario that steadily darkens into suspense and Grand Guignol horror, this fiery clash of the id, ego and superego is also an audacious commentary on the uses of faith, both to comfort and control us." - The Hollywood Reporter
LaBute New Theater Festival July 8-31, 2022. Our One-Act Play Competition returns for emerging playwrights and High School Students.
* Member Actors' Equity Association