SPOKANE, CARNAGE et al. to Play The Alley Theatre in '10-'11

The Alley Theatre was founded over sixty years ago as Houston's theatre company. It exists to provide audiences with the highest quality theatre, offering a wide variety of work including new plays, classics, the re-discovered and the rarely-performed, and new musical theatre, with an emphasis on new American works - to provide the inspirational and the provocative - to make our audiences think, feel, dream and be entertained. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Gregory Boyd and Managing Director Dean Gladden, the Alley is committed to moving forward to increase its reach into the community, to further its collaboration with the best theatre artists working today, and to encourage and cultivate the new voices, new work, new artists of the American theatre. The Alley Theatre is in the heart of Houston's downtown Theatre District located at 615 Texas Avenue; bordered east by Louisiana, north by Prairie, west by Smith, south by Texas. For more information call 713-220-5700.

2010-11 Season

A Weekend With Pablo Picasso - 2/2 - 2/27/2011

Acclaimed actor-writer Herbert Siguenza (¡Cantinflas! and Culture Clash in America) returns to the Alley with a new play. Siguenza brings his virtuosic writing, acting and design skills into Picasso's private studio, "Le Californie" on the coast of France, for an intimate and revealing weekend. Picasso's controversial and flamboyant opinions and creations gripped the public imagination and forever changed 20th century art. Delving into the creative mind and work of one of the most inspiring artists of modern history, this play explores Picasso's proclamations about ambition, destruction, creativity and art as an agent of social change.

August: Osage County - 2/23 - 3/13/2011

Variety describes this play as a "very juicy...epic evening...( a) richly entertaining dysfunctional-family juggles the hilarious, the poignant and the appalling on a scale seldom seen." Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play, Tracy Letts' August: Osage County is a grand, gripping new play that tells the story of the Westons, a large extended clan that comes together at their Oklahoma home when the alcoholic patriarch disappears. Forced to confront unspoken truths and astonishing secrets, the family must also contend with Violet, a pill-popping, deeply unsettled woman at the center of this storm. Los Angeles Times says it is "sensationally entertaining...a feast for actors and audiences alike." Time Magazine named it the "#1 Show of the Year!" Don't miss this powerful production, a tale filled with unforgettable characters and told with unflinching honesty.

Amadeus - 4/6 - 5/1/2011

Peter Shaffer's Tony award-winning play is a riveting tale of obsession and vengeance. Loosely based on the lives of Viennese court composer Antonio Salieri and his young rival Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amadeus follows a murder plot that shocks and fascinates. After committing his life to God in order to be blessed with the ability to create the world's most sublime music, Salieri believes that God graced the rebellious Mozart with greater inspired creativity. Envious Salieri schemes to destroy Mozart and, in so doing, rebukes God. The film version of Amadeus won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1985.

The Medusa Body - 5/4 - 5/29/2011

Alley Company Artist and Pulitzer finalist Rajiv Joseph (Gruesome Playground Injuries, World Premiere at the Alley October 2009) returns with a psychological thriller that pits the corporate world against a 21st century artist in a violent and wickedly funny play about a woman with a paintbrush and a man with a spreadsheet. World-renowned artist Maya Akhet is commissioned by a global securities firm to create a painting for the lobby of their world headquarters. She loses her head, stops taking her medication, outwits the corporation's lawyers and begins to wreak havoc in her studio with a sawed-off shotgun. Unfortunately for her, removing the beast's head doesn't always kill the body.

Pygmalion - 5/25 - 6/12/2011

A unique masterpiece, Pygmalion is one of George Bernard Shaw's most popular plays. It is the story of phonetics professor Henry Higgins who bets that he can transform Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a lovely lady and pass her off in high society. Pygmalion is a modern myth and also a strikingly contemporary view of sexual politics and the science of romance. The screenplay of Pygmalion won the Academy Award in Gabriel Pascal's 1938 motion picture and inspired the well-known Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady (1956).