[Capdist-announce] Theater Voices 2010-2011 Season Announcement

[Theater Voices]

            Theater Voices of Albany announces an adventurous line-up of
plays for its 23rd season.  The award-winning troupe, which has presented
free-of-charge staged readings since 1989, is offering a roster that
includes rarely-performed works by Harold Pinter and Jean Cocteau, as well
as a fresh, contemporary script by Joanna McClelland Glass and a beloved
American romance by Richard Nash.



The first production, to be presented October 15-17, 2010, will be TRYING

by Joanna McClelland Glass, directed by Carol Charniga.

            This richly scripted, bittersweet play is set in 1967 when
Francis Biddle—Attorney General under FDR and Chief Judge of the Nuremberg
trials--is 81 years old and trying to put his life in order. An elegant, but
sharp and cantankerous man, Biddle struggles with the trials of age and
failing health. His wife has forced upon him a new secretary from the
Canadian provinces named Sarah-- all of 25 years old--and the two struggle
to find a way to communicate. These two strangers, at dramatically different
places in their lives, unexpectedly and forever influence one other.  *
Trying* is based upon Glass’ own experience as Biddle’s personal secretary.



The second production, to be presented February 11-13, 2011, will be THE
HOTHOUSE    by Harold Pinter, directed by David Girard

            In this early work by the Nobel Prize-winning playwright, the
scene is a state-run institution, whose inmates are kept behind locked gates
at all times, and referred to by numbers rather than their names.  But to
find the epitome of insanity in this mysterious establishment, one need look
no further than its administrators, led by the superintendent,

 Roote, and his questionable associates.  The mysterious death of one
patient and an equally surprising birth by another, bring matters at this
dysfunctional institution to a head.  This “comedy of menace” was revised
and directed by Pinter himself in 1980.



The third production, to be presented April 8-10, 2011 is THE RAINMAKER

by Richard Nash, directed by Eileen Schuyler

            The blazing heat of a rural town in the Depression-era American
West provides the setting for Nash’s 1954 award-winning classic.  The Currie
family—a father, two brothers and their spinster sister Lizzie--worries more
about her marriage prospects than about their dying cattle.  When a
confidence trickster named Starbuck arrives, promising to bring rain in
exchange for $100, a series of events are set in motion that enable Lizzie
to see herself in a new light.  Translated into over 40 languages, this
captivating play was revived on Broadway in 1999, and was made into both a
renowned film and a musical, *110 in the Shade*.

The final production, to be presented May 20-22, 2011, is LES PARENTS
TERRIBLES

by Jean Cocteau, directed by David Baecker

            Cocteau’s 1938 play—in a sharp translation by Jeremy Sams—has
taken the conventions and clichés of middle-class boulevard comedy
(infidelity, adultery, mistaken identity) and woven them into an alternately
hilarious and ferocious farce.   Set in a prewar Paris rambunctiously
self-absorbed and unaware of the coming deluge, this audacious play features
a handsome, surprisingly innocent young man, whose announcement that he has
fallen in love throws his family into a volcanic turmoil.  The play had
successful revivals in London and New York in the 1990s.

Theater Voices of Albany is a group of dedicated actors and directors, who
for two decades have presented both new and classic works, with the specific
goal of emphasizing the richness of the playwrights’ language. Each
production is a fully performed staged reading, but with minimal scenery and
simple costumes.

        The group is funded in part by the City of Albany and the New York
State Council on the Arts Community ART$ Grant.

Contact: info at theatervoices.org or 518-438-5503
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