Pear Theatre's 2015-16 Season to Include AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, TRIBES & More

Pear Theatre Artistic Director Diane Tasca has announced details of the company's line-up for its 2015-16 season, the first in its new state-of-the-art theatre located at 1110 La Avenida, Mountain View. The ambitious season launches with a world premiere romantic comedy, and includes works by Tracy Letts, Amy Freed, Chekhov, Katori Hall, and Nina Raine. For subscriptions ($100-$212) and more information the public may visit www.thepear.org or call 650-254-1148.

Since opening in 2002, the Pear has produced more than eighty innovative productions of classics, world premieres, and experimental works. Pear Theatre's contributions to the lively arts community have been recognized with accolades including many Bay Area Critics Circle Awards and Silicon Valley Small Theater Awards. In 2014, the company was singled out by the Bay Area Theatre Critic's Circle to receive The Paine Knickerbocker Award, presented annually to only one company in the greater Bay Area in recognition of its contribution to the local arts community.

The Pear Theatre 2015-16 season schedule is as follows:

THE WALLS OF JERICHO
September 18-October 4, 2015
By Diane Tasca

The company's new home on La Avenida will be christened with the world premiere of a fresh new comedy by Artistic Director Diane Tasca. In this reverse Cinderella story, a runaway heiress meets a penniless newsman, who follows her to get her story. THE WALLS OF JERICHO is based on the short story ("Night Bus" by Samuel Hopkins Adams) that was the inspiration for the Academy Award-winning film It Happened One Night starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Full of witty sparring in the classic 1930s mode, it is a romantic comedy in the best tradition.

TRIBES
November 6-22, 2015
By Nina Raine

The autumn lineup continues with this touching and witty drama about growing up deaf in a hearing world. Called "Smart, lively" by The New York Times, TRIBES had its world premiere in 2010 at London's Royal Court Theatre and its North American premiere Off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theatre in 2012, winning the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. In it, audiences meet Billy, who is deaf but the only one who actually listens in his idiosyncratic, fiercely argumentative Bohemian family. When Billy encounters Sylvia, who wants to teach him sign language, he decides he finally wants to be heard. With sharp, compassionate insights, Nina Raine crafts a penetrating play about belonging, family, and the limitations of communication.

THE MOUNTAINTOP
January 15-31, 2016
By Katori Hall

The New Year kicks off with THE MOUNTAINTOP by Katori Hall, winner of the 2010 Olivier Award for Best New Play. Called "emotionally powerful and theatrically stunning" by Variety, this London/Broadway hit re-imagines the events on the night before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After delivering one of his most memorable speeches, an exhausted Dr. King retires to Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel. Camae, an effervescent and beautiful motel maid, arrives but it soon becomes clear that she is not what she appears to be - revealing some surprising news that will force Dr. King to confront his life, his legacy, and the future of his people.

UNCLE VANYA
February 27-March 13, 2016
By Anton Chekhov

Having produced THE SEAGULL, THREE SISTERS, and THE CHERRY ORCHARD, The Pear now offers its audiences another of Chekhov's "Big Four," in a new translation by local playwright and director Dave Sikula. Chekov's look at an elderly professor, his glamorous, young second wife, and the two friends who fall under her spell, will be revisited by Sikula, who has helmed location productions of The Diary of Anne Frank, Sylvia, Art, The Fantasticks, Copenhagen, and The Farnsworth Invention, among others.

THE BEARD OF AVON
April 8-24, 2016
By Amy Freed

A farcical take on the long-contested issue of Shakespearean authorship, this riotous period piece was declared "A sparking comedy. Highbrow art served up as lowgrade fun" by Variety. In Elizabethan London, did a stagestruck dreamer named Shakespeare become a front man for Sir Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford and even Queen Elizabeth, authors too proud to admit they scribbled plays for the unwashed masses? This delicious and witty farce fashions the longstanding debate over who really penned the Bard's canon into a merry look at the mortality of artists and the immortality of their legacy. Freed is a Pulitzer finalist, who has had works produced at A.C.T., the California Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Rep, South Coast Rep, Seattle Rep, Goodman Theatre, Playwrights Horizons and others. She currently teaches playwriting and acting at Stanford.

PEAR SLICES 2016
May 13-29, 2016

The Pear's annual short play festival, featuring new works by local authors and members of the Pear Playwrights Guild, a support and training ground for emerging playwrites.

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY
June 24-July 10, 2016
By Tracy Letts

The season concludes with this winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Best Play. "I'd bet the farm that no family has ever been as unhappy in as many ways-and to such sensationally entertaining effect. Fiercely funny." said The New York Times, while Variety exclaimed, "Ferociously entertaining. Corrosive humor so darkly delicious and ghastly that you're squirming in your seat even as you're doubled-over laughing." This major play unflinchingly-and uproariously-exposes the dark side of the Midwestern American family, from the scathingly acidic matriarch to her squabbling descendants.