ShareAnnouncing our 2008/2009 Season!
The Best Man
By Gore Vidal
Directed by Tom Ross
August 22 – September 28, 2008
Gore Vidal's The Best
Man features two front runners for a political party nomination
that will almost certainly make one the next President of the
United States. Each candidate is in possession
of some serious mud to sling and each has to decide just how dirty
to play the game. Written with the deep insight of a true political
insider (Vidal ran for Congress in 1960, the same year he penned
the play) and the wit of a grand man of letters, The Best Man remains,
as The New
Yorker wrote
in 2000,” A sophisticated, elegant and damnably entertaining
play!”
Just in time for the Fall election, Aurora Theatre Company Artistic Director
Tom Ross helms The Best Man , about which NY Magazine said “Gore
Vidal's best play! Well-crafted and witty with surprises.”
The Devil’s Disciple
By George Bernard Shaw
Directed by Barbara Oliver
October 31 – December 7, 2008
Set in a New England village during the Revolutionary War, the scandalous Richard Dudgeon, a self-proclaimed devil’s disciple, finds himself mistaken for the local reverend…and arrested by the British army as a rebel. Dudgeon goes along with them and pretends to be the wanted man. Was it for love, country, or duty, or did the devil make him do it? Brimming with Shaw's trademark humor and paradoxes, The Devil’s Disciple brings Shavian wit and “swashbuckling action” to America (it is his only play set in the U.S.).
Aurora Theatre Company founding Artistic Director Barbara Oliver, who directed the company’s productions of Shaw’s The Man of Destiny, The Philanderer, Saint Joan, and others, brings her Shavian expertise to this classic comedy.
“The play, which pokes fun at self-important piety and political arrogance with equal gusto, …is full of event, swashbuckling action, sexual tension and looming violence.” - New York Times
Betrayed
West Coast Premiere
By George Packer
Directed by Robin Stanton
A part of the 4th Annual Global Age Project
January
23 – March 1, 2009
Still in the midst of a successful run in New York, Betrayed is
a theatrical adaptation of journalist George Packer’s (author
of The Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq) eye-opening essay
in New Yorker magazine. A Sunni and Shi’a Muslim build
a rare bond as they face with humor, dignity, and outrage the daily
dangers of working for the Americans in Iraq. Joined by a woman who
refuses to submit to Islamic law, the men struggle to be heard by
their allies while all three fight to realize their dreams and hopes
for a new world.
Filled with drama and urgency, Betrayed is, according to Theatremania, “that
rare theater experience that commands absolute attention while watching it,
and which continues to haunt the viewer long after the play ends.”
Miss Julie
By August Strindberg
Directed by Mark Jackson
April 3 – May 10, 2009
The celebrated Mark Jackson (Salome) returns to bring his unforgettable style to Strindberg’s classic and controversial chamber play. Miss Julie is the volatile daughter of a count. During the intoxication of a midsummer’s eve celebration, she flirts shamelessly with one of her servants and seduces him, thus beginning an erotic dance of sexual politics and class warfare.
Written in 1888, Miss Julie remains a masterwork. Bruce Weber of The New York Times has called it “an amazing play that still terrifies with its insoluble equation of sex, class and death.” Miss Julie influenced Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire as well as countless other 20th-century dramas.
Jack Goes Boating
Bay Area Premiere
By Bob Glaudini
Directed by Joy Carlin
June 12 – July 19, 2009
Meet lovable slacker Jack, who enlists the aid of his two best friends, a married couple, to win the girl of his dreams. The plan? Concoct the perfect gourmet meal to impress her and take her out for a boat ride in Central Park. Never mind that it’s the middle of winter, Jack can’t swim and has never cooked a meal in his life. As obstacles grow, the inner workings of two delicate love affairs are wonderfully illuminated by laughter in Glaudini’s portrait of four everyday eccentrics.
Fresh from Off-Broadway where audiences and critics fell in love with its unassuming characters, Jack Goes Boating is a refreshingly modern take on the old-fashioned romantic comedy. Bay Area theatre veteran Joy Carlin (Hysteria, The Price) directs this unique play.
“An endearing romantic comedy …witty and knowing and all heart.” - Variety
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