Southern Rep Announces 2010-2011 Season

For our 24th Season, Southern Rep will take audiences on a journey from the dining room table to a 19th century doctor's examining room to a magical realm inhabited by mythical creatures, with plenty of unexpected laughter, epic adventure, music, love and pursuit of pleasure along the way.

It's such gift to bring new work from writers of this caliber to our stage. While the plays are wildly varied, I love that they all somehow dwell in the world of discovery and entering the unknown. We're using these brilliant words to tackle fears and break new ground - I love it.
-Artistic Director, Aimée Hayes

We are thrilled to bring to the stage another play by Sarah Ruhl (author of THE CLEAN HOUSE) and Steve Yockey, who was part of our 2010 Bacchanal. New to our stage this season are gifted writer and performer Carlo Alban, and theatre legend Alan Ayckbourn. Also, January will bring the return of the Southern Rep New Play Bacchanal, with the best of plays, playwrights, and the wilder side of Southern Rep with late night play slams and Dionysian feasts!

Plus - our season gets even more exciting with our new Second Stage venture, Southern Rep @ Le Chat Noir. We are offering a Flex Pass that allows subscribers to sample the eclectic, smart, silly, and audacious work that we have planned for this intimate Second Stage.

The Southern Rep residency at Le Chat Noir is emphatically, indubitably exciting. We're producing zany, funny, intelligent, compelling new plays in a black box format that will highlight the talents of NOLA's best theatre artists. Look for our Wednesday night series that will include a new soap opera, a ten minute play slam, and spoken word. We want audiences to know they can show up at Le Chat any night of the week and be delighted and challenged and bowled-over and blown away!
- Associate Artistic Director, Mark Routhier

ABOUT THE PLAYS:

REGIONAL PREMIERE
IN THE NEXT ROOM or the vibrator play
by Sarah Ruhl
directed by Aimée Hayes
By the playwright who penned the Southern Rep favorite THE CLEAN HOUSE, this Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award Nominee by Sarah Ruhl is a provocative, funny, touching and marvelously entertaining story about a young doctor and his wife. Dr. Givings is obsessed with the marvels of technology and what they can do for his patients. His wife, Catherine, is only a bystander in her husband's world - listening at the door from the next room as he treats his female patients. Dr. Givings is not sure exactly how his new vibrating machine helps the women he treats - but they do keep coming back. The only woman whose problem is not helped by the doctor is his own wife who longs to connect with him - but not electrically.
A woman who has never been allowed to listen to the music of her own body teaches her husband to discover the beauty in his own... a spirited and stimulating new comedy.
- Charles Isherwood, The New York Times

National New Play Network ROLLING WORLD PREMIERE
afterlife: a ghost story
by Steve Yockey
directed by Aimée Hayes
A ghost story in the most literal sense, AFTERLIFE follows Connor and Danielle as they prepare their beachfront home for an impending storm. But when the great wave arrives on their doorstep and demands attention, it may be too late for the couple to escape a haunting world of unsent letters, unexpected snow, unrelenting birds, and unforgettable loss that threatens to swallow them forever. Told with grace, theatrical beauty and dark humor, this World Premiere is destined to be a new American classic.
This production of AFTERLIFE: A GHOST STORY, like past SRT productions of SHOTGUN and SICK, is part of the National New Play Network's (www.nnpn.org) "Continued Life of New Plays Fund," a cooperative venture designed to insure that new plays will see future productions beyond the initial debut. Partnerships of three theatres receive funds in support of multiple productions of the same new play, guaranteeing the play national exposure.

WORLD PREMIERE
The Running With Scissors Holiday Show!
Celebrate the holidays at Southern Rep, with a hilarious new offering from Running With Scissors that will have you ho-ho-ho'ing in the aisles.
I usually have so much fun describing what's onstage in a Running With Scissors production that there's no room to mention the finer points of their productions. And yes, they have them; quite a few, in fact.... Scissors takes its silliness seriously.
- David Cuthbert, WYES-TV "Steppin;' Out" Theater Guy

The New Play Bacchanal
Our celebration of new works continues this year at the Southern Rep New Play Bacchanal, a feast of workshops, readings and one-of-a-kind events. Come be a part of a new play in the making.

REGIONAL PREMIERE
a co-production with LAByrinth Theater Company
Intríngulis
written and performed by Carlo Alban
directed by David Anzuelo
Novelist, sniper, television personality, delinquent youth. Window washer, tourist, Beelzebub, idealist youth. Vigilante, rock star wannabe, minuteman, apolitical youth. Illegal immigrant. These are the people in your neighborhood. Carlo Alban (Whip It, Strangers With Candy, 21 Grams, "Sesame Street") will inhabit them all, taking the stage in this solo piece.

The Norman Conquests
by Alan Ayckbourn
A Trilogy:
Table Manners: The events of one weekend as seen from the dining room. In which Reg finds food rather scarce despite having it thrown at him by Sarah... Sarah is scandalised by Annie... Annie is disappointed by men in general and Tom in particular... Tom knocks down Norman... Norman's romantic proposals are ruined thanks to Ruth... Ruth loses her patience, her temper and her glasses... and in which everyone has trouble deciding where to sit...
Living Together: The events of one weekend as seen from the sitting room. In which Reg is driven mad by Tom... Tom tells Annie a thing or two... Annie nearly comes to blows with Sarah... Sarah sees a different side of Norman... Norman sorts things out with Ruth... Ruth discovers the charms of a fireside rug... and in which nobody enjoys playing board games...
Round and Round the Garden: The events of one weekend as seen from the garden. In which Ruth thoroughly confuses Tom... Tom succeeds in asking Annie... Annie gets a glimpse of Norman's pajamas... Norman tells Sarah stories by moonlight... Sarah disapproves of Reg's outdoor sports... and in which everyone gets to roll in the grass...
See them one day at a time, or in a spectacular full Sunday NORMAN marathon!
Unrequited Lust, in Triplicate ... The hostility behind such outbursts would be scary if it weren't so damn funny ... I know the question you want to ask. If you see only one of these plays, which should it be? Let me put it this way: You can't lose with any one, but you win big if you go to all three. Seeing the entire trilogy in one day, as I did, allowed me the luxurious privilege of getting to know characters in a way that only fat novels allow.
- Ben Brantley, The New York Times

Southern Rep @ Le Chat Noir
Join Southern Rep as we take up residence at Le Chat Noir, for theatrical antics, musical delights and dangerous late-night fare. Our Flex Pass gives you entré to any 5 of Southern Rep @ Le Chat Noir offerings this season.

Some upcoming highlights of the Southern Rep @ Le Chat Noir season:

Zombie Town: A Documentary Play
by Tim Bauer
A theatre collective from San Francisco goes to Harwood, Texas to interview the surviving citizens of a recent zombie attack. This documentary play is the result of those interviews. Waiting for Guffman has nothing on this hilarious and hellacious satire of overly earnest theatre troupes, documentary plays, and zombie madness.

Love Child
by Daniel Jenkins & Robert Stanton
Joel, who as a child put on Greek tragedies with sock puppets for his parents, is now an actor and has found himself in a contemporary version of Euripides' ION. Two actors play all the eccentric characters backstage, on stage, and in the audience, as they navigate Joel's life and the play, and the play within the play, and the play within that play's play. Life and Art: who's imitating who?

Telethon
by Kristin Newbom
Three inhabitants of a group home for adults with physical and mental disabilities and their two caretakers convene at a Dunkin Donuts. What it means to be a family is at once original, astute, and blown out to the edge of the fringes in this in-your-face comedy.
Southern Rep enters its 24th season as the region's premiere professional theatre, continuing to produce bold world and regional premieres under the artistic leadership of Aimée Hayes, with Managing Director, Marieke Gaboury. In addition to its exciting Mainstage offerings and second season at Le Chat Noir; Southern Rep continues to offer educational programs such as free student matinees, $10 student rush tickets and Academy SRT "Free Night of Theatre"; as well as providing an artistic home to new works in development in the New Play Bacchanal.

Southern Rep continues to show that it is staging the most important, challenging, and downright mesmerizing pieces of theater New Orleans audiences are graced to experience.
- Theodore P. Mahne, The Times-Picayune Lagniappe