HEDDA GABLER, ATHENA and More Announced in Undermain Theatre's 2020/2021 Season

At Undermain, we're planning for the future. For our 37th year of cutting-edge performances, Undermain is pleased to announce the season of the feminine hero. Plays about women will comprise the four central productions that make up the season. ATHENA by Gracie Gardner, Ibsen's HEDDA GABLER adapted by Blake Hackler, the workshop production of FEEDING ON LIGHT by Lenora Champagne and Aeschylus's SEVEN AGAINST THEBES adapted by Danielle Georgiou and Justin Locklear. Undermain is looking past the pandemic, affirming the well-being of our audience, our company and our community and looking forward to presenting the season of the feminine hero.

~Bruce DuBose
Producing Artistic Director

Athena

by Gracie Gardner

A Dallas Premiere

Directed by Associate Artistic Director Danielle Georgiou

Preview Performances 9/9, 9/10 and 9/11

Opening Night Saturday 9/12/20

In Performance 9/9/20- 10/4/20

Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m.

Mary Wallace and Athena are brave, and seventeen, and fencers training for the Junior Olympics. They practice together, they compete against each other, they spend their lives together. They wish they were friends. Undermain presents the regional premiere of Gracie Gardner's searing look into two young women driven to make their way through the ranks of competitive fencing and their fascination with each other.

Gracie Gardner is a New York based playwright. Her play Pussy Sludge was selected for the 2019 Theatertreffen Stückemarkt in Berlin, and previously received the Relentless Award (2017); it was developed by Less Than Rent at HERE Arts Center, and The Old Vic in London. Her play Athena (New York Times Critics' Pick) was presented by The Hearth at JACK and will have its regional premiere at Theatre Horizon in Philadelphia. Gracie is the recipient of the 2013 James E. Michael Award, 2019 James Stevenson Prize, and a 2018 Samuel French OOB Festival publication; she has received commissions from Clubbed Thumb, Manhattan Theatre Club, and Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. She is currently developing a project with Anonymous Content at Paramount TV.

Danielle Georgiou is the Associate Artistic Director of Undermain Theatre, and is a Dallas-based choreographer, performance artist, and director. Since 2011, she has been the Artistic Director of the Danielle Georgiou Dance Group (DGDG), an ensemble-based dance theatre company that produces original dance plays and musicals. DGDG was selected as Best Dance Troupe of 2017 and 2015 by the Dallas Observer and Best Dance Company for 2016 by the Readers of D Magazine. The Show About Men (2015) was named Best New Play or Musical and cited for Outstanding Creative Contribution for Choreography by the Dallas Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum Awards. At Undermain, Danielle has worked on so go the ghosts of méxico parts two and three, How Is It That We Live or Shakey Jake + Alice, Three Sisters, and the Whither Goest Thou America Festival. She has also worked at Theatre 3, Kitchen Dog Theater, Echo Theatre, Dead White Zombies, Stage West, and Circle Theatre. She was the Movement Consultant for the Off-Broadway production of Lonesome Blues, and her choreography and video works have been presented nationally and internationally. She holds a Ph.D. in Humanities-Aesthetic Studies from the University of Texas at Dallas, is a guest teacher in the division of theatre at Southern Methodist University and is the Program Coordinator of Dance at Eastfield College.

Hedda Gabler

by Henrik Ibsen

Adapted and directed by Blake Hackler

A new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's classic play

A World Premiere

Preview Performances 11/11, 11/12 and 11/13

Opening Night Saturday 11/14/20

In Performance 11/11/20 - 11/29/20

Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m.

There will be no performance on Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 26.

Hedda Gabler, Ibsen's masterpiece of realism that permanently changed the face of world drama, is the story of an extraordinary woman trapped in a conventional life of secrets and lies that fuel her own personal explosion. Blake Hackler adapts and directs this Ibsen classic.

A modern classic sponsored by Ford and Cece Lacy.

Blake Hackler is an actor, director, playwright and educator living and working in Dallas, Texas. As a playwright, Hackler's work has been seen across the U.S. and won several awards. He is a lifetime member of the esteemed BMI/Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Writing Workshop and was the 2009 recipient of the Harrington Award for Excellence in Musical Theatre Writing. His plays, The Necessities and What We Were both received nominations for the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Award. His adaptation of Ibsen's Enemy of the People was named Best Play of 2018 by the Dallas Observer. Other plays include: This Sweet Affliction - Yale Cabaret, DRILLS Winner, Primary Stages, The Boss in the Satin Kimono - New York International Fringe Festival, 10 Reasons I Won't Go Home With You (lyrics) - Midtown Theatre Festival, Winner Best of Fest, The Lady in Red - Gene Frankel Theatre, Mother Courage of Westchester - NYTE, Barry Horowitz: A Jewish Fantasia on Catholic Themes - Prospect Theatre and The Wasp Woman - a musical written with Phillip Chernyak. 2020 will see his plays produced in Seattle and London. Blake holds a BFA in Acting from Roosevelt University, and an MFA in Acting from the Yale School of Drama. He currently serves as the Head of Acting at Southern Methodist University. He was named a Fulbright Scholar to Bulgaria in 2015, and in 2018 received a MacDowell Fellowship for Playwriting.

FEEDING ON LIGHT

by Lenora Champagne

Directed by Undermain Artistic Director Bruce DuBose

Preview Performances 3/4/21and 3/5/21

Opening Night Saturday, 3/6/21

In Performance 3/4/21 - 3/21/21

Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm

Nora is a curious writer who seeks to understand her friend and collaborator Katherine's obsession with 20th-century French philosopher and activist Simone Weil. As their discussion deepens, Nora and Katherine embody scenes from Simone's life in an attempt to communicate with her across time and space. Feeding on Light is based on playwright Lenora Champagne's personal relationship and discussions with Undermain Theatre's late Founding Artistic Director Katherine Owens, to whom the play is dedicated.

Lenora Champagne came to New York from Louisiana to be a painter, but she found her voice in performance. She collaborates with sculptors and designers, composers and media artists on large-scale work, and also makes solo performances. An alumna of New Dramatists, she has been working as a performance and theatre artist since 1981. Her multiple awards include fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts in playwriting and solo performance, support and grant awards from the N.E.A. and NYSCA, and residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, and Bogliasco. She lived in Japan on a Fulbright in 2012-13. Champagne's publications include New World Plays, Out from Under: Texts by Women Performance Artists, The Singing: a cyberspace opera in Epic Plays II, TRACES/fades in Plays and Playwrights 2009, Dusk in PAJ and performance texts and essays in Performance Research, Women and Performance, PAJ, Chain and The Iowa Review. She has a Ph.D. from NYU and is Professor of Theatre and Performance at Purchase College, SUNY.


Bruce DuBose is the co-founder and Producing Artistic Director of Undermain Theatre where he has acted, directed, designed and produced for 36 years with his wife and artistic partner Katherine Owens. His most recent productions as director have been Madame Bovary by Adrienne Kennedy and The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse. He has also directed such Undermain productions as JOHN by Annie Baker, Eurydice by Sara Ruhl, The Castle by Howard Barker and Swedish Tales of Woe by Erik Ehn, among others. He has performed in productions such as An Iliad, Henrik Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea, Chekhov's Three Sisters, Bertolt Brecht's Galileo, and Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party among many others. Other area stage work includes Antony and Cleopatra at the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas, Arms and the Man at the Dallas Theater Center, Fool For Love at Stage West. NYC stage appearances include Mud into Gold at H.E.R.E, Swedish Tales of Woe and Glamour at the Ohio Theatre, The Inner Circle at the Sandy Shurin Theatre and Undermain's tour of Neil Young's Greendale at the ICE Factory Festival. Independent films include Spring Eddy, I Become Gilgamesh, Dusk and Late Bloomers. Television appearances: Prison Break, Walker Texas Ranger, The Deep End, Dangerous Curves, and Friday Night Lights. Animation voice-over characters include Marcus Kincaid in Borderlands, King Neptune in One-Piece on the Funimation network, Thor in the video game series SMITE, and the Boomer in Gears of War. National Documentary voice-over work includes narration for the Emmy-winning PBS documentary series The US/Mexican War, and PBS documentary The Marines.

Whither Goest Thou America:

A Festival of new American play readings

Undermain presents its fourth series of readings of new American plays examining the American Landscape. Past festivals have brought the work of local writers Jonathan Norton and Blake Hackler as well as other American playwrights such as David Rabe, Adrienne Kennedy, Barbara Hammond, Gordon Dahlquist, and Len Jenkin. In addition to staged readings, Undermain audiences get access to writers featured in the festival in post-show discussions with playwrights, directors and actors. Each week of the series will focus on a different playwright and play with staged readings by an ensemble cast. Audiences will have the opportunity to return each week of the series to experience a new work examining the American experience and asking the question, "Where are we going?"

Play titles will be announced during the season.

Reading weekends

3/13/21 and 3/14/21

3/20/21 and 3/21/21

3/27/21 and 3/28/21

The Festival runs from March 5 through March 28, 2021

Featuring the workshop production of Feeding on Light by Lenora Champagne

Danielle Georgiou Justin Locklear

Seven Against Thebes

by Danielle Georgiou & Justin Locklear

A new adaptation of Aeschylus' Ancient Greek tragedy

A World Premiere

Preview Performances 4/28, 4/29, and 4/30/21

Opening Night Saturday, 5/1/21

In Performance 4/28/21 - 5/23/21

Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m.

The climactic battle for control of Thebes, as told from the perspective of Antigone and Ismene, and the women of the city in Danielle Georgiou and Justin Locklear's adaptation of this classic Greek tragedy. Deadly threatening enemies are standing outside the fragile walls of a city in a country unknown. The citizens continue to live their (miserable) comfortable lives. Military campaigns are rising, monies are being spent. But when iron and steel turn to dust and there is nothing left but empty promises, tragedy ensues. The city is under siege by an enemy with no name; an enemy who wears many masks. The challenge of survival looms- and what will we have to give up to remain human? Are we our own worst enemy?

Danielle Georgiou is the Associate Artistic Director of Undermain Theatre, and is a Dallas-based choreographer, performance artist, and director. Since 2011, she has been the Artistic Director of the Danielle Georgiou Dance Group (DGDG), an ensemble-based dance theatre company that produces original dance plays and musicals. DGDG was selected as Best Dance Troupe of 2017 and 2015 by the Dallas Observer and Best Dance Company for 2016 by the Readers of D Magazine. The Show About Men (2015) was named Best New Play or Musical and cited for Outstanding Creative Contribution for Choreography by the Dallas Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum Awards. At Undermain, Danielle has worked on so go the ghosts of méxico parts two and three, How Is It That We Live or Shakey Jake + Alice, Three Sisters, and the Whither Goest Thou America Festival. She has also worked at Theatre 3, Kitchen Dog Theater, Echo Theatre, Dead White Zombies, Stage West, and Circle Theatre. She was the Movement Consultant for the Off-Broadway production of Lonesome Blues, and her choreography and video works have been presented nationally and internationally. She holds a Ph.D. in Humanities-Aesthetic Studies from the University of Texas at Dallas, is a guest teacher in the division of theatre at Southern Methodist University, and is the Program Coordinator of Dance at Eastfield College.

Justin Locklear is an actor, director, and playwright based in Dallas, TX. He is the currently the Artist-In-Residence at The Ochre House Theater, an experimental theatre producing a season of new works each year, including a bilingual Flamenco show. As a part of that residency, Justin designs puppets and collaborates on new works as the Musical Director. He is also the Producer and Conceptual Artist of the award-winning contemporary dance theatre company, the Danielle Georgiou Dance Group. DGDG will be staging the world premiere of their experimental opera, The Savage Seconds, at Undermain in May. The film Solider Plant, based on his play Smile, Smile Again, is currently in post-production to be released later in 2020. Justin has trained in clown at the Manitoulin Conservatory for Creation and Performance and has performed puppetry at the Prague Quadrennial. He holds a Bachelors in Fine Arts from Baylor University.

 

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