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Following its artistic and popular successes of the past 12 months, which included multiple Jeff nominations for The Playboy of the Western World, praise for the rarely produced Vieux Carré by Tennessee Williams, universal acclaim for All My Sons and the Chicago premiere of Horton Foote's Dividing the Estate, Raven Theatre will produce a five-show subscription season for the first time in the company's 33-year history. Three of the subscription-season plays will be performed on the company's 140-seat East Stage and two will be played in its intimate 60-seat studio, the West Stage.
Raven's 33rd Season has been dubbed "Fierce Five," acknowledging the ferocity with which the five plays' characters struggle for personal fulfillment and even basic survival, according to Producing Artistic Director Michael Menendian andCo-ArtisticDirector JoAnn Montemurro. The season will include two dramas, two comedies and a satire of a dark chapter in American history. Each play will tell stories of people fighting for their lives in some way. Menendian says of the five plays, "Whether battling a death sentence, Hurricane Katrina, or the Great Depression; competing against romantic rivals, or looking for fame in a crazy world, their fierce determination is unshakable."
The season will open in September with the Midwest premiere of Direct from Death Row The Scottsboro Boys (An Evening of Vaudeville and Sorrow), a play by Mark Stein with music and lyrics by Harley White, Jr., to be directed by Menendian. The dark chapter of American history - in which nine African-American teenagers were falsely convicted of assaulting two white women and spent decades in the legal system fighting for their lives - is told surreally and satirically in Stein's play. In it, the "boys" return from eternity to the stage, where they keep their story alive through songs, a magic act, a ventriloquist act, skits and soft shoe - all to convey the tawdry show that their case became.
Next, the company will produce another Midwest premiere when The Play About My Dad, a critical success off-Broadway in 2011, opens on Raven's West Stage under the direction of guest artist Marti Lyons. The play by Boo Killebrew tells of the author's father, a doctor in Gulfport, Mississippi during Hurricane Katrina who stayed behind to tend to those who couldn't or wouldn't evacuate to safety when the waters began to rise. Their fights for survival against the storm are played against the backdrop of the doctor's relationship with his adult daughter, the playwright. Raven's production of this meta-theatrical tragicomedy will be staged in October, shortly after the tenth anniversary of that devastating storm that hit the Gulf coast from August 23-31, 2005. Ms. Lyons, Michael Maggio Directing Fellow at the Goodman Theatre and a much sought-after freelance director, will make her Raven Theatre debut with this project.
Raven's Midwest premiere of Horton Foote's The Old Friends will mark the company's third consecutive season with a Foote play on its schedule, and its second regional premiere in two years of a title by that author. Set in the 1960s in the fictional town of Harrison, Texas, The Old Friends tells of the combative members of two longtime old-money Texas families. When hometown beauty Sibyl returns to Harrison after a long absence, not-quite-forgotten passions and jealousies resurface in a wildly funny play that is, uncharacteristically for Foote, brutally satiric in its depiction of small-town people with big money..
The Old Friends was first fully staged in 2013, by New York's Signature Theatre. Warmly received by New York critics and audiences, that production directed by Michael Wilson was remounted at the Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas in August 2014, with Betty Buckley, Hallie Foote and Veanne Cox repeating their roles as Mamie, Sibyl and Julia. Raven Theatre is the first company since the Signature/Alley staging to be granted a license for The Old Friends. Raven co-founder and Co-Artistic Director Michael Menendian will helm Raven's production, to be performed from late January through late March, 2016.
The season will continue with a rare production of William Inge's A Loss of Roses, playing from mid-February through early April. In Inge's drama, which opened on Broadway in 1959 starring a 22-year-old Warren Beatty, a widow and her 21-year-old son are getting by in a small Depression-era Kansas town when their old friend, a down-on-her-luck but attractive actress, moves in with the two. They learn that survival comes at a price and that moving on requires letting go. The Wall Street Journal said this nearly-lost classic by the author of Bus Stop and Picnic is "a fine play that should never have slipped from sight." The play, which has not been produced professionally in Chicago since 1999, will be directed by Raven Associate Artistic Director Cody Estle in Raven's 60-seat West Stage studio theatre.
The season will conclude withJohn Guare's The House of Blue Leaves, directed by Co-Artistic Director JoAnn Montemurro. Guare's dark comedy premiered off- Broadway in 1971 and was revived on-Broadway in 1986 and 2011. Set in Queens, New York during Pope Paul VI's 1965 visit, struggling songwriter Artie wants to be famous and feel important while his heavily medicated wife Bananas just wants to feel. Can Artie's old high school buddy, now a Hollywood movie producer, give him a shot at the big time? Or will a blessing from the Pope do the trick? Living means more than just survival to these misfits in this insanely funny play, which will run from mid-April through early June of 2016.
Raven will offer several different options for subscriptions this season. Subscribers can choose to see all five plays for $70 for preview performances or $110 for "anytime" packages good at any performance during either preview weeks or regular run weeks. Four-show subscriptions are also available for any four of the five plays for $64 for preview performances or $96 for "anytime" packages. Current subscribers receive a 10% discount for renewals purchased by May 31, 2015. Subscriptions may be purchased online at www.raventrheatre.com or by telephone at 773-338-2177.
