Rebecca Goering

Tom Stoppard's autobiographical parallel The Real Thing focuses on the successful playwright Henry and his close circle of family and friends. Starring his wife, Charlotte, Henry's newest work examines the intricacies of love, honesty and infidelity. Soon, as this play within a play continues, the lines between fiction and reality start to blur. Relationships break, bend and change, as lust, deceit and selfishness take center stage, leaving us all searching for 'the real thing'.

Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paula Vogel joined together with the Wilma Theater and a team of actors and directors over the course of two years to develop the world premiere production of Don Juan Comes Home from Iraq. Based on the 1936 work Don Juan Returns from the War by Ödon von Horvath, this piece transpired directly from interviews and playwriting workshops with veterans. With a cast in place when just a few pages of the script existed, this work was created in a truly collaborative setting, a very unique happening in today's theatre.

Christopher Durang's 2012 Tony® and Drama Desk® award-winning comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike follows three middle-aged siblings during a whirlwind reunion weekend. Vanya and Sonia live a quiet, uneventful live in the Bucks County farmhouse where they grew up. Vanya (a gay man who may never have actually come out) and Sonia (the adopted sister as she frequently mentions) remained in the family home to care for their ailing parents and never got around to going out and making lives for themselves. The pair's static existence is abruptly disturbed when Masha, their movie star sibling who funds their life of unhappy leisure, returns for a weekend with her twenty-something boy toy in tow, announcing that she plans to sell the house.

Jon Robin Baitz' Other Desert Cities tells the story of a dysfunctional family with a troubled past. A depressive formerly successful author, Brooke Wyeth returns home to celebrate Christmas with her family after being away for six years. Previously prominent Republicans, Brooke's parents Polly, a powerful society player with impossible standards, and Lyman, a former actor and former U.S. ambassador, are shocked to learn that Brooke's soon-to-be released novel is actually a memoir about the family's history. Add to the mix Brooke's liberal recovering alcoholic aunt and her brother who, though closer in proximity, has still managed to erect a wall between himself and the family, and the reunion becomes a drama-filled event as they all try to come to grips with the past. Loyalties are questioned, secrets are revealed and the story twists and turns as truths come out, further changing the family forever.

Nina Raine's Tribes tells the loud story of Billy, a young deaf man living amongst his opinionated, abrasive family who talk a lot but never stop to listen. When Billy meets Sylvia, a young woman who is going deaf, he learns what it's truly like to have someone listen and understand, something his family has just never bothered to do. As Billy and Sylvia's relationship grows, they learn from each other and their time spent with those in the deaf and hearing communities. The 2012 Drama Desk Award winner for Outstanding New Play, Tribes is a compelling and relevant drama that creates an important portrait of family dynamics and life's challenges.

Long before Windows, IPhones, Xboxes and IPods, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were simply nerds working to create technology that would take the world to the next level. NERDS follows these rivals on their personal and professional journeys from 1970s garage inventors to Silicon Valley mega-billionaires.

Based on the popular film, Elf tells the heartwarming story of Buddy, an orphaned baby who crawls into Santa's toy bag and is accidentally taken to the North Pole. Buddy is raised as an elf until his size and inept toy-making skills force him to face the facts. So, he heads to New York to meet his newly discovered human father, a children's book publisher who turns out to be quite the Grinch. It seems his dad's on the naughty list, his half-brother doesn't believe in Santa and New York is completely lacking in Christmas spirit. It's up to Buddy to bring his new family together and save Christmas for all!

Amy Herzog's Pulitzer Prize nominated play 4000 Miles showcases a natural relationship between Vera and her 21-year-old grandson, Leo. Hiding out from family and life in general, Leo returns from a cross-country bike trip for an unplanned stay with Vera in her West Village apartment. As time passes, this feisty independent woman and her hippie grandson become a rather unlikely pair that laugh, learn and love together as one grows up and one grows old, while both grow to depend on the other.

In a theatrical adaptation by Michael Bloom, Lantern Theater Company takes on the typical Jane Austen tale of the self-serving and precocious Emma Woodhouse as she concocts matchmaking schemes for her closest friends.

Infused with surprising humor, Some Other Kind of Person takes a smart, thought-provoking look at foreign labor outsourcing, Cambodia's underage sex trade, multinational adoptions and misguided American intentions.

David Ives tells the seductive yet funny tale of Vanda, an actress on an unwavering quest to win the lead in Thomas' new play, based on the classic erotic novel, Venus in Fur. Vanda's eager and captivating depiction electrifies the room and leads the pair into a whirlwind power struggle that teeters between reality and fantasy.

Theresa Rebeck's (Pulitzer Prize nominee and creator of NBC's Smash) Seminar follows four aspiring novelists in Manhattan who form a weekly writing seminar under the fallible guidance of a renowned and callous literary expert. Sharing chapters from a few hours' work or several years' worth of painstaking effort leads to brutal critiques and new revelations. Vulnerabilities are exposed, loyalties shift and plots are afoot - the creative process has never been so fictitiously juicy.

Everyone's got to start somewhere. Unfortunately for Nick and Nora, that means working as office assistants for a demeaning and demanding boss. Juggling the never-ending phone calls, impossible expectations and nasty insults creates an office full of 20-somethings blinded by ambition and hooked on the need to succeed. Some thrive, while others are burned by the pressure of following their misguided dreams of success.

Having been laid off from his university faculty position, Bertolt Brecht scholar Dick Fig (Dan Hodge) is forced to endure an exit interview with Eunice (Cheryl Williams), an eccentric and ultra-religious administrator. When faced with his personal pet peeve, small talk, Dick dives into discussions on science and religion that culminate in an encounter with a masked gunman. Product placement, ex-girlfriend drama, offensive cheerleaders, political agendas and a visit from a priest combine in this comedic and abrasive new play.

Stars of David is a world premiere musical based on Abigail Pogrebin's book, Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish. Nancy is a journalist who doesn't feel a connection with her Jewish heritage and decides to embark on a book project to interview well-known figures about their cultural identity. The interviews result in words, videos and musical portrayals of Gloria Steinem, Leonard Nimoy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Joan Rivers, Aaron Sorkin, Tony Kushner, Fran Drescher and more.

It's time to name your favorites, give some props and get your picks in for the best of the best - nominations for the 2012 BWW Philadelphia Awards are open now!

It's not often we get to revisit characters and a story from a previous evening at the theatre. Luckily for Philadelphia theatre audiences, The Wilma Theater took on both parts of the epic Angels in America saga by Tony Kushner. The Wilma's Millennium Approaches was a powerful closure to the 2011/12 theatre season. Perestroika kicks off their 2012/13 season with an equally resounding force.

Based on Erich Segal's novel, Love Story tells the tale of upper-class Harvard student, Oliver Barrett IV, and his life-changing encounter with Radcliffe music major, Jenny Cavilleri.

Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner is a powerhouse theatrical event that garnered numerous prestigious awards including a Drama Desk award for Best Play, a Tony® Award for Best Play and the Pultizer® Prize for Drama. This epic work tackles a melting pot of social issues through the intertwined lives of several New Yorkers in 1985.

reasons to be pretty, the third installment in Neil LaBute's trilogy concerning the contemporary fixation on appearances, delves into how what you say, what you mean and how it's perceived by others don't always fall in line. Conversations, however insignificant or unintentional, come back to haunt Greg (Daniel Abeles) when his comment about his girlfriend's ordinary looks is overheard and repeated back to her. This event spirals into a portrait of four young, working class friends who struggle with the mediocrity of life and the societal obsession with image.