April 6 - 22, 2012
Killer Joe
by Tracy Letts
Directed by Artistic Director Milt Zoth



The plot is set spinning within the first few minutes, Letts taking little time setting the scene. That scene is a trailer in a Texas park inhabited by the revolting Smith family. Young Chris Smith needs to get hold of $6000 or his creditors will kill him. With his father Ansel he decides to murder his mother for what, he has been told, is a sizeable life insurance policy. They agree to hire Joe Cooper, a police detective with a sideline in contract killing.

This is a truly wonderful play, inhabiting Tennessee Williams territory both geographically and emotionally.

C.P. Taylor's Good examines Germany's descent into Nazism through the story of John Halder, a literature professor who is initially reluctant to accept the philosophy of the Nazi Party. With different pressures from his wife, mother, mistress and a Jewish friend, Halder finally succumbs to New Order to advance his career and comes face to face with the consequences of the path he's chosen. Good was first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Donmar Warehouse in September 1981, with Alan Howard winning both the Evening Standard Award and the Plays and Players Best Actor awards.

Season's Greetings

Alan Ayckbourn
Directed By Elizabeth Helman, PhD
November 30-December 18, 2012

Half a dozen friends and relatives are celebrating Christmas with Neville and Belinda. Various children are also there and, though unseen, their presence is always felt. Petty squabbles break out and some not so petty. The arrival of Clive, a young writer, leads to what momentarily appears to be a tragedy: Clive is shot by trigger happy Harvey who thinks he is a burglar. Hilarious highlights include a chaotically incompetent puppet show and a midnight love scene that sets off a fearful din among mechanical Christmas toys.

"Brilliantly combines cynicism and humor."
— Sunday Express.

"Superbly crafted."
—Sunday Telegraph.

The Goat, or who is Sylvia

Edward Albee
Directed By Wayne Salomon
January 18-February 3, 2013

Winner of the 2002 Tony Award for Best Play. "THE GOAT is about a profoundly unsettling subject, which for the record is not bestiality but the irrational, confounding, and convention-thwarting nature of love. Powerful [and] extraordinary…Mr. Albee still asks questions that no other major American dramatist dares to ask." —NY Times. "…as challenging—and…as outrageously funny—as theater gets." —NY Post. "…as fine a piece of theatrical art as any Edward Albee has created—and perhaps boldest of them all." —Houston Chronicle. "The edgiest, most fervently debated Broadway play of 2002…" —Seattle Times.

THE STORY: The tale of a married, middle-aged architect whose life crumbles when he falls in love with a goat, the play focuses on the limits of an ostensibly liberal society. Through showing this family in crisis, Albee challenges audience members to question their own morality in the face of other social taboos including infidelity, homosexuality, pedophilia, incest and, of course, bestiality.The play also features many language games and grammatical arguments in the middle of catastrophes and existential disputes between the characters.

Day of the Dog

World Premier

Daniel Damiano
Directed by Milton Zoth
March 8-24, 2013

THE STORY: A South Florida couple obtains the services of a somewhat enigmatic Canine Relations Specialist in order to curb the violent behavior of their dog Carrot, but gradually learn that a dog is merely a reflection of the people who house him.

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Becket
Directed By Wayne Salomon
April 19-May 5, 2013

"…moving, often funny, grotesquely beautiful and utterly absorbing."
—NY Post.

"…at once pathetic and hilarious."
—NY World-Telegram.

THE STORY: The NY World-Telegram describes: "GODOT cannot be compared to any other theater work, because its purpose is so different. Two dilapidated bums fill their days as painlessly as they can. They wait for Godot, a personage who will explain their interminable insignificance, or put an end to it. They are resourceful, with quarrels and their dependence on each other, as children are. They pass the time 'which would have passed anyway.' A brutal man of means comes by, leading a weakling slave who does his bidding like a mechanical doll. Later on he comes back, blind, and his slave is mute, but the relationship is unchanged. Every day a child comes from the unknown Godot, and evasively puts the big arrival off until tomorrow…It is a tragic view. Yet, in performance, most of it is brilliant, bitter comedy…It is a portrait of the dogged resilience of a man's spirit in the face of little hope."

King Lear

William Shakespeare
Directed By Milt Zoth
June 7 - 23, 2013

THE STORY: King Lear, the aging King of Britain, determines to split his domain evenly between his three daughters: Goneril, Regan, and the young Cordelia. Goneril, when asked, gushes her protestations of love for her father; Regan follows with even more flattery. Cordelia, however, is sincere in her love of Lear, and she declines to pander to him—she simply says she loves him the way a daughter should love her father. Lear is put off by this lack of pomp and disinherits her, although the King of France says that he would be proud to marry her. When one of his lords, Kent, tries to reason with him, Lear banishes him from the kingdom. Also introduced are Gloucester's two sons, Edgar and Edmund. Edmund is Gloucester's bastard, and intends to gain his father's inheritance by tricking him into thinking that Edgar is plotting to murder him. Edgar disguises himself as a madman and goes into hiding.

Lear is soon to find out how much love Goneril and Regan actually have for him. Both daughters treat him miserably when he stays with them, and Lear is transformed from a powerful king to an impotent old man with only Kent (who has disguised himself and disobeyed Lear's decree of banishment) and a Fool to accompany him. In the middle of the play, Lear is driven mad by his grief at seeing the true nature of his daughters. On a lonely heath, he rages at a storm. There they encounter Edgar, in his disguise as Tom o' Bedlam. Gloucester helps them, providing shelter and sending them to Dover to meet Cordelia and the French king, who has landed an army in England to come to Lear's aid. For his succor to Lear, Gloucester is betrayed by Edmund and has his eyes put out by Cornwall. However, a servant comes to his aid and manages to deliver a fatal wound to Cornwall before being slain by Regan.

In his poor, blind state, Gloucester encounters Edgar (still disguised). Edgar does not yet reveal himself but leads his father toward Dover. In the meantime, Albany, husband of Goneril, has voiced his displeasure at the treatment of Lear and Gloucester. With Regan becoming a widow, and Goneril seeing her husband as a coward, both women turn their attentions to Edmund as a prospective love interest. While this intrigue is going on, the English and French armies meet on the battlefield; the English win the day. When Lear and Cordelia are taken captive, Edmund gives an order that they be hanged, unbeknownst to Albany. Edgar encounters Edmund, and the two duel, with Edgar giving Edmund a mortal wound. Word also comes that Regan and Goneril are dead; Goneril poisoned Regan to win Edmund from her, then killed herself upon Edmund's defeat. Knowing he is about to die, Edmund repents and reveals his plots—including the impending deaths of Lear and Cordelia.

His repentance will go for naught. Lear enters, bearing Cordelia's body. Overcome by his sorrow, Lear collapses and dies beside his lone loving daughter. Gloucester is dead as well, having been reconciled at the last with Edgar. Kent and Edgar depart, leaving Albany to rule Britain.

October 7 - 23, 2011
NUTS
by Tom Topor
Directed by Artistic Director Milt Zoth

A Broadway hit, Nuts has been called the best courtroom melodrama since Witness for the Prosecution and The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. Set in a courtroom in New York’s Bellevue Hospital, the story follows a high-priced call girl incarcerated on a charge for killing a violent “john”. The State, represented by a court appointed psychiatrist and an aggressive prosecutor, say Claudia Faith Draper is unfit to stand trial. As testimony from experts, physicians and her parents unfolds, with her psyche and childhood dissected, she proves to the judge that she isn’t “nuts” and stands legally sane at trial for manslaughter.

November 4-20, 2011
PALMER PARK
by Joanna McClelland Glass
Directed by Ron Himes

Joanna McClelland Glass’s play centers on five couples in the Detroit neighborhood of Palmer Park following the race riots of 1967. Their integrated lives are threatened when the high performing neighborhood school is forced to accept children from an adjacent working-class neighborhood. Racial harmony and friendships are changed forever with very sad and very real consequences.
History Museum-Co-Production with the Black Rep

December 2 - 18
My Three Angels
by Samuel and Bella Spewack
Directed by Elizabeth Helman PhD

Christmas Eve and it’s only 105 degrees in the shade. Welcome to French Guiana where paroled convicts from the local penal colony move about with relative freedom. What we soon learn is that on the outside it is often very hard to tell who the real criminals are. Sometimes the only difference between freemen and those from the Bastille is that the incarcerated have been caught and prosecuted for their crimes. My Three Angels takes a warm, witty and romantic look at our long-standing moral convictions of what is right and wrong. We are taught that good must surely and always triumph over evil. But as is the case in our story, does the end always justify the means? This you will have to decide for yourself as our felonious triumvirate intervenes in the lives of an innocent family which is now perched on the brink of financial ruin. Proficient in the illicit skills of theft, forgery, extortion and yes, even murder, our unlikely heroes arrive in timely fashion to remind us all of what is truly most important. An honest appreciation of life, love and the simple serenity of domestic bliss. An old fashioned and wonderfully crafted fable to take home for the holidays!