Doane Theatre

2007-08 Mainstage Season

Reeling

by Barry Kornhauser 

Whrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Clickety, click click click click… Flicker... flicker... flicker... All the slapstick, melodrama, pratfalls and daredevil stunts of the silent movie era are coming off the screen and onto the live stage. So places everyone... a-a-a-and action! Here comes our "leading man." A most recognizable little fellow in a porkpie hat. Our everyman clown/hero with the indomitable spirit, who takes you through his world of Keystone Kop-esque chases – "Hey, you!" Narrow escapes – "Look out!" And pining for the love of his life – "Be still my heart!" Follow him right into a Hollywood movie studio, where he declares he's going to make something of himself to win his beloved. Predicaments galore? Indeed, but this little guy triumphs in the most endearing, madcap, calamitous way. It's all the best from the silent movie era, now coming to a stage near you.

Arabian Nights

By Mary Zimmerman

November 29 - December 1

A sixteen-member cast enacts Scheherazade's tales of love, lust, comedy, and dreams. Scheherazade's cliffhanger stories prevent her husband, the cruel ruler Shahryar, from murdering her, and after 1,001 nights, Shahryar is cured of his madness, and Scheherazade returns to her family. This adaptation offers a wonderful blend of the lesser-known tales from Arabian Nights with the recurring theme of how the magic of storytelling holds the power to change people. The final scene brings the audience back to a modern day Baghdad with the wail of air raid sirens threatening the rich culture and history that are embodied by these tales.

My Eyes Have Seen the Glory

Music by Mark Hayes & Book by Jim Harris

March 6-8

Penned from the accounts of five ordinary men and women in an extraordinary time ... the American Civil War. Emotional moving and uplifting, this musical weaves their incredible stories together with the timeless songs of that by gone era reinvented anew. This is a hauntingly beautiful world premiere event not to be missed.

Titus Andronius

By William Shakespeare

April 24 - 26

War begets revenge. Victorious general, Titus Andronicus, returns to Rome with hostages: Tamora queen of the Goths and her sons. He orders the eldest hewn to appease the Roman dead. He declines the proffered emperor's crown, nominating Saturninus, the last ruler's venal elder son. Saturninus, to spite his brother Bassianus, demands the hand of Lavinia, Titus's daughter. When Bassianus, Lavinia, and Titus's sons flee in protest, Titus stands against them and slays one of his own. Saturninus marries the honey-tongued Tamora, who vows vengeance against Titus. The ensuing maelstrom serves up tongues, hands, rape, adultery, racism, and Goth-meat pie. There's irony in which two sons survive.

Titus Andronicus may be Shakespeare's earliest tragedy. The play is by far his bloodiest work. The play lost popularity during the Victorian era because of its gore, and has only recently begun to revive its fortunes as seen in the popular film version by Julie Taymor and the smash hit at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

2007-08 Panthera Studio Season

Proposed Season 

The Vagina Monologues

By Eve Ensler

Spring

This Obie Award-winning episodic play written by Eve Ensler which ran at the off-Broadway Westside Theatre after a limited run at HERE Arts Center in 1996. Ensler originally starred in the production, playing all the various women who share their views about their vaginas with the audience; when she left the play it was recast with three celebrity monologists. The production has been staged internationally, and a television version featuring Ensler was produced by cable TV channel HBO.

By Christopher Durang

Spring

Marriage isn't a bed of roses for housewife Bette and her alcoholic husband Boo, it¹s more like a bed of nails. Surrounded by their neurotic, deeply disturbed parents, they desperately attempt to cope, raising their son to new heights of confusion. A searing dissection of marriage and family life, The Marriage of Bette and Boo is the failure to communicate taken to its most disturbing extremes.

The Goat Or, Who is Sylvia?

By Edward Albee

Spring

In Edward Albee’s The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?, which swept all the major theatrical awards for best new play in New York, we come upon Martin, a just-turned-50 architect who seems to have it all: fame and phenomenal success within his field, a great marriage, a bright kid in a good school. Ah, the rub. He’s fallen in a love with a she-goat (the “Sylvia” of the title) with whom he’s having a torrid sexual affair. No kid-in. He spills the beans to his pal Ross, who spills the beans to Martin’s wife, Stevie, who tips off their son, Billy. Hoo! What a mess. This all goes down in dead seriousness, albeit with considerable caustic humor relative to the proprieties of syntax and goat-loving.