Theatre Lab at FAU Announces 2017-18 Season
BOCA RATON, Fla. (July 10, 2017) – Theatre Lab, the professional resident company of Florida Atlantic University, will present three new plays for its 2017-18 season, including a world premiere from Peter Sagal, playwright and host of NPR’s “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me,” along with a Playwright’s Forum and Masterclass series featuring the work of Pulitzer Prize-winner Nilo Cruz. All of the events will take place in the Heckscher Stage theater space in Parliament Hall, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton campus. Tickets will go on sale in August at www.fauevents.com or 561-297-6124.
“In its first two seasons, Theatre Lab has established FAU as a force in the national professional theater movement,” said Lou Tyrrell, Theatre Lab’s artistic director. “With our third season, Theatre Lab will continue to expand on our foundation as an artistic laboratory and a home for theater artists to explore and develop new American plays.”
With its laboratory approach to new play development, Theatre Lab allows the FAU faculty and students, along with the entire South Florida community, to be an actual part of the artistic process, actively engaged by world-class professional theater performances, workshops and conversations with leading playwrights and theater artists. Under the leadership and guidance of Michael Horswell, Ph.D., new dean of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts & Letters at FAU, the Theatre Lab will expand its impact through greater participation and cooperation among departments throughout the University.
“One of my favorite aspects of having this amazing professional theater company on campus is the intellectual exploration that accompanies each reading or performance through collaborations between our academic experts and the playwrights, directors and actors of Theatre Lab,” said Horswell. “Lectures illuminate the context of the plays, while the performances and conversations with world-renown artists inform how we can more deeply understand the universal themes that touch all of our lives. This season we will be connecting Theater Lab to history, English, languages, women, gender and sexuality studies, and Holocaust studies, just to name a few of the collaborating departments.”
First up in the fall, Theatre Lab’s Playwright’s Forum program will include the work of four master playwrights, starting with Pulitzer Prize-winner Nilo Cruz (“Hannah and The Tropics”). Readings of three of Cruz’ plays will be combined with lectures, a master-class with Cruz, and conversations with the playwright following each of the play-readings during the weekend of Oct. 6 – 8. In addition to the mainstage season, other Theatre Lab programs include the annual New Play Festival, Jan. 3 – 7, 2018, and the 24 Hour Theatre Project, on Monday, March 5, 2018.
THE 2017-18 THEATRE LAB MAINSTAGE SEASON
‘Most Wanted’ by Peter Sagal
World Premiere
Dec. 1 – 17
Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. ($35)
Preview Performance: Nov. 30, 7:30 p.m. ($25)
Special opening weekend matinee: Saturday, Dec. 2, 3 p.m. ($35)
From the magical mind of playwright and celebrated host of NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell me…,” Peter Sagal. Frank and Doris are retired, comfortable and desperate. One day, they snatch their darling baby granddaughter and make a run for Florida, land of eternal sunshine and eternal rest, where they meet a variety of characters living on the fuzzy border between life and la-la-land—all of whom look just like the people they left behind. Cornered by an affable detective, they make one last run to U.S. President Truman’s Little White House in Key West, at the very end of the road. There, their daughter, Isabel, an avenging angel in expensive clothes, corners and confronts them with every mistake they’ve ever made. This comedy about parents, children, and the fate that awaits us all, won a MacArthur Fellowship from the O’Neill Theater Center. Advisory: This Florida adventure may make your heart race and your mind bend, but it’s fun for the entire family.
‘The Revolutionists’ by Lauren Gunderson
Florida Premiere
Feb. 9- 25, 2018
Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. ($35)
Preview Performance: Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018, 7:30 p.m. ($25)
Special opening weekend matinee: Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018, 3 p.m. ($35)
True story? Total fiction? Or that special place where the two collide in your very own imagination? ~ Four women lose their heads in this irreverent, girl-powered comedy set during the French Revolution. At the height of the Reign of Terror, playwright Olympe de Gouges, assassin Charlotte Corday, activist Marianne Angelle and former queen Marie Antoinette hang out, plot murder and try to beat back extremist insanity in Paris. This fantasia by one of the country’s most exciting playwrights considers how we actually go about changing the world. Advisory: “The Revolutionists” is appropriate for adults and older teenage audiences. These four women may wear corsets and wigs, but they have a distinctly modern (and hilarious) sensibility when it comes to very strong adult language and ousting political tyrants.
‘Be Here Now’ by Deborah Zoe Laufer
Florida Premiere
April 6 – 22, 2018
Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. ($35)
Preview Performance: Thursday, April 5, 2018, 7:30 p.m. ($25)
Special opening weekend matinee: Saturday, April 7, 2018, 3 p.m. ($35)
When life just seems too difficult to face, how far are we willing to go for love and happiness and to create meaning in our lives? ~ Two lost souls come together under most unusual circumstances in this deeply insightful and charmingly funny new play by the prolific Deborah Zoe Laufer (“The Three Sisters of Weehawken”). Surrounded by painfully cheerful co-workers, Bari is deeply cynical and woefully underemployed working at a small-town fulfillment center. After an unexpected and unexplainable turn of events, Bari finds herself on an enlightening new path. When she meets Mike, a man who makes art out of garbage, it is Bari’s turn to pull another out of the darkness. Advisory: “Be Here Now” is appropriate for adults and older teenage audiences. This searching story about existential happiness contains adult language, sexual content and other mature themes that are handled with both humor and honesty.
For more information about Theatre Lab, visit www.fau.edu/theatrelab.
– FAU –
About Florida Atlantic University:
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University, with an annual economic impact of $6.3 billion, serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students at sites throughout its six-county service region in southeast Florida. FAU’s world-class teaching and research faculty serves students through 10 colleges: the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, the College of Business, the College for Design and Social Inquiry, the College of Education, the College of Engineering and Computer Science, the Graduate College, the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing and the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. FAU is ranked as a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The University is placing special focus on the rapid development of critical areas that form the basis of its strategic plan: Healthy aging, biotech, coastal and marine issues, neuroscience, regenerative medicine, informatics, lifespan and the environment. These areas provide opportunities for faculty and students to build upon FAU’s existing strengths in research and scholarship. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.