Works by DiPietro, Bryan, Rebeck, Logan & More Play Alley Theater in 2011-2012

Artistic Director Gregory Boyd announced that the Alley Theatre's 65th Season beginning in September 2011 will include two world premieres, Elizabeth Egloff's epic play Ether Dome and Theresa Rebeck's black comedy What We're Up Against, (the latter in a rolling world premiere that includes theatres in San Francisco and Chicago), and the Outer Critics Circle Award-winning rock musical The Toxic Avenger by Joe DiPietro and David Bryan, winners of last year's Best Musical Tony Award for Memphis. Also in the Season is last year's Best Play Tony Award Winner, Red by John Logan, about the abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, and Conor McPherson's haunting comedy drama The Seafarer; a new production of Michael Frayn's brilliant farce Noises Off; the return to the Alley of the late Texas playwright Horton Foote, with his Dividing The Estate, and the Alley resident company in Anton Chekhov's masterpiece The Seagull.

"Our new season focuses both on contemporary playwrights - and the return of a master - and a bushel of brilliant opportunities for actors" says Alley Theatre Artistic Director Gregory Boyd. "Each of the plays, new and 'classic' provide a wealth of outstanding opportunities for the resident artists, and for a wonderful group of returning actors, as well as some extraordinary performers making their Alley debuts. The season embraces the full breadth of bold, inventive theatrical storytelling coupled with unforgettable characters."

The Alley's subscription season includes five Hubbard Stage productions and three Neuhaus Stage plays, all produced in the Alley's two-theatre complex at 615 Texas Avenue in downtown Houston. The Theatre proudly welcomes returning Season Sponsor United Airlines, the official airline of the Alley Theatre.

Please note: play titles and dates are subject to change.

Alley Theatre'S 2011 - 2012 SEASON:

World Premiere
Ether Dome
By Elizabeth Egloff
Directed by Michael Wilson

September 9 - October 9, 2011
Recommended for mature audiences.

Ether Dome is about love, medicine, and the relationship between two of the greatest medical innovators in Western history, Horace Wells and his student, William Morton, who in 1847 discovered Ether as anesthesia, thereby opening the door to the enormous medical achievements of the 20th and 21st centuries, and challenging our understanding of God, pain, and what it means to be truly human.

Elizabeth Egloff's plays The Swan, The Devils, Phaedra, and Wolf-Man have been given productions at major theatres across the United States and abroad and garnered her a wide array of prestigious awards and grants including The Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation Writer's Award, The Weissberger Prize and The Kesselring Prize. Among her numerous screen credits is the award-winning series The Reagans, Emmy nominated for Best Screenplay.

Michael Wilson returns to the Alley to direct Ether Dome. His Alley productions have included A Christmas Carol, Angels in America, A Streetcar Named Desire, and many more. He has been for 13 seasons the Artistic Director of Hartford Stage in Connecticut, and his New York productions include Dividing the Estate, The Orphans' Home Cycle, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, Enchanted April and Necessary Targets.

Dividing the Estate
By Horton Foote
Directed by Michael Wilson

October 7 - October 30, 2011
Recommended for mature audiences.

Horton Foote, the award-winning writer of The Trip to Bountiful and The Day Emily Married, returns to the town of Harrison, Texas, with this sharp satire about a Southern dynasty in crisis. At odds over the fate of their dwindling inheritance, several generations of the well-to-do Gordon family must confront their disreputable past as they grapple with an uncertain future. Will they face possible ruin and indignity together or take their chances and go their separate ways?
"The theatrical equivalent of a page-turner" - Bloomberg

The work of the late Texas playwright Horton Foote comes back to the Alley where his play The Carpetbagger's Children premiered (Alley 2001). His many plays include The Day Emily Married, The Roads to Home, The Young Man From Atlanta (Alley 1996), The Trip to Bountiful (Alley 2003), Lily Dale, The Widow Claire, Laura Dennis and The Traveling Lady (Alley 1986). His honors include the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Young Man From Atlanta and two Academy Awards for his screenplays for To Kill A Mockingbird and Tender Mercies.

Actress HAllie Foote is perhaps the most highly regarded interpreter of her father's work. She began her stage career in 1986 in the title role of her father's play The Widow Claire, opposite Matthew Broderick. Father and daughter later collaborated on The Orphans' Home Cycle, Talking Pictures, Night Seasons, Laura Dennis, When They Speak of Rita, The Last of the Thorntons, The Day Emily Married and The Trip to Bountiful, for which she won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actress, and was nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play. She created the role of 'Sissie' in the Alley premiere of The Carpetbagger's Children and returns to the Alley to recreate her Tony-nominated performance as 'Mary Jo' in Dividing the Estate.

Ms. Foote said "I'm very excited to be doing Dividing the Estate at the Alley. Having a play produced there was always kind of like going home for my father. Houston is close to Wharton where my father grew up, and was always a very familiar and comforting part of the world to him."

Director Michael Wilson staged the premiere of Horton Foote's The Carpetbagger's Children at the Alley, and recently the nine play Horton Foote marathon The Orphans' Home Cycle at the Signature Theatre in New York. He directed the Broadway/Lincoln Center Theatre production of Dividing the Estate, where its many accolades included a Tony nomination for Best Play, the 2008 Outer Critics Circle Award, and Horton Foote's 2008 Obie Award for Playwriting. He returns to the Alley this season to direct Dividing the Estate and the premiere of Ether Dome.

The Toxic Avenger
Book & Lyrics by Joe DiPietro
Music & Lyrics by David Bryan
Directed by John Rando

January 13 - February 12, 2012
Not recommended for young children.

The Toxic Avenger is a charming love story and laugh-out-loud musical that has it all -- an unlikely hero, his beautiful girlfriend, a corrupt New Jersey mayor, an onstage rock band, and two guys who play... well, everyone else ... bullies, mobsters, old ladies, and stiletto-wearing back-up singers. The Toxic Avenger features music from Bon Jovi's David Bryan and book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro, the Tony Award winning team of Memphis.
"Hysterically Funny!" - New York Post
"Four Stars! A Rock n Roll romp" - Time Out

John Rando (Tony Winner for Urinetown) returns to the Alley to reinvent his hilarious 2009 Off Broadway staging of The Toxic Avenger following his smashing Alley productions of The Man Who Came to Dinner, Mrs. Mannerly and Be My Baby.

The Seagull
By Anton Chekhov
Directed by Gregory Boyd

February 3 - March 4, 2012
Mature themes; General audiences.

Chekhov created, in his 1895 play that describes the romantic entanglements of a group of actors, writers and artists gathered on a Russian estate, one of the enduring masterpieces of the world theatre, and a modern classic that grows richer with time. The extraordinary ensemble cast includes James Black as the novelist Trigorin and Josie de Guzman as the actress Arkadina.

Tony Award Winner - Best Play
Red
By John Logan
Directed by Jackson Gay

March 2 - March 25, 2012
Explicit language, mature situations.

Master abstract expressionist Mark Rothko has just landed the biggest commission in the history of modern art, a series of murals for New York's famed Four Seasons Restaurant. In the two fascinating years that follow, Rothko works feverishly with his young assistant, Ken, in his studio on the Bowery. But when Ken gains the confidence to challenge him, Rothko faces the agonizing possibility that his crowning achievement could also become his undoing. Red is a searing portrait of an artist's ambition and vulnerability as he tries to create a definitive work for an extraordinary setting.
"Smart, Exciting and Scintillating." - The New Yorker

Playwright John Logan is the Academy Award nominated screenwriter of Gladiator, The Aviator and Sweeney Todd.

Jackson Gay returns to the Alley, following her triumphant production of August: Osage County last season, to direct this raw, provocative and powerful new play.

The Seafarer
By Conor McPherson
Directed by Gregory Boyd

April 6 - April 29, 2012
Explicit language, mature situations.

It's Christmas Eve and Sharky has returned to Dublin to look after his irascible, ageing brother who's recently gone blind. Old drinking buddies Ivan and Nicky are holed up at the house too, hoping to play some cards. But with the arrival of a stranger from the distant past, the stakes are raised ever higher. In fact, Sharky may be playing for his very soul . . .
"Shines in a world gone adrift" - Chicago Tribune

Conor McPherson (The Weir, Shining City) follows last summer's Alley debut (St. Nicholas) with this powerful, funny, unsettling tale.

What We're Up Against
A New Play by Theresa Rebeck
Directed by Scott Schwartz

May 4 - June 3, 2012
Explicit language, recommended for mature audiences.

"They told me it wasn't like this anymore. Why is it still like this?" bemoans Eliza, a female architect, as she slams into the firm's glass ceiling yet again in this brilliant black comedy. Theresa Rebeck returns to the Alley after the hugely successful Mauritius, Bad Dates and The Scene with her latest comedy, "probing how sexism remains well entrenched in the work-place, not least when pitting women against each other in a boys' club atmosphere" (Variety).

Scott Schwartz (the Alley's Mauritius, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing) returns to direct.

"The two new plays this season, Ether Dome by Elizabeth Egloff and What We're Up Against by Theresa Rebeck, are the latest fruits of the Alley Theatre's New Play Initiative Program created by Gregory Boyd and me," explains Senior Dramaturg and Director of New Play Development Mark Bly. "Egloff and Rebeck's plays have an urgency, an immediacy whose issues will speak to our community and national audiences. We are proud to be helping to launch the work of two major artists and offering the fullest production values and support to enhance Egloff and Rebeck's theatrical poetry and astonishing imagination for our stage and beyond."

Noises Off
By Michael Frayn
Directed by Gregory Boyd

May 25 - June 24, 2012
Mature themes; General audiences.

The funniest of modern comedies, and a farce within a farce, Noises Off takes the clichés of the genre and shakes them up in a wild comic blender into a hilarious melee of compromising situations and eccentric characters as they stampede in and out of doors, voices rising, trousers falling - to create something truly brilliant and unique. A tour de force for the actors and a special treat for audiences. "As side-splitting a farce as I have ever seen. Ever? Ever!" - New York Magazine.
"Is, was and probably always will be, the funniest play written in my lifetime" - Frank Rich.

A playwright, novelist and journalist born in London, Michael Frayn first established his reputation with witty, gently satirical columns in The Manchester Guardian and The Observer. He wrote a series of novels in the same vein, including The Russian Interpreter (1966). His many plays include Copenhagen, Benefactors, Alphabetical Order, and Clouds. He also wrote the script for the film Clockwise and the novel The Trick of It.

HOLIDAY PRODUCTIONS:

Houston's Holiday Favorite
A Christmas Carol - A Ghost Story of Christmas
By Charles Dickens
Adapted and Originally Directed by Michael Wilson
Directed by James Black

November 18 - December 27, 2011
Recommended for general audiences.

Houston's seasonal favorite that the Houston Press described as having "Spectacular London sets ...the inimitable Dickens' tale - spiced with the usual fog and an unusual twist on the ghosts past, present and future." A Christmas Carol - A Ghost Story of Christmas returns this year with a re-telling of Charles Dickens' classic story, that follows Ebenezer Scrooge's journey with the three ghostly spirits that visit him on Christmas Eve. A Christmas Carol instills a powerful message about redemption and the spirit of the holiday season.

David Sedaris' Irreverent Holiday Comedy
The Santaland Diaries
By David Sedaris
Adapted for the stage by Joe Mantello
Directed by David Cromer

November 30 - December 31, 2011
Recommended for mature audiences due to language and subject matter.

Company Artist Todd Waite reprises his role as "Crumpet the Elf" in the outlandish, and true, chronicles of David Sedaris' experience as a worker in Macy's SantaLand display. This compact, one-character comedy is an hilarious cult classic, featuring comic encounters during the height of the holiday crunch. NPR humorist and best-selling author of Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris has become one of America's pre-eminent humor writers.

2011-2012 SEASON CALENDAR:

Ether Dome
By Elizabeth Egloff
Directed by Michael Wilson
Neuhaus Stage
September 9 - October 9, 2011 (press opening: September 14, 2011)
Recommended for mature audiences.

Dividing the Estate
By Horton Foote
Directed by Michael Wilson
A co-production with the Old Globe Theatre, San Diego, California
Hubbard Stage
October 7 - October 30, 2011 (press opening: October 12, 2011)
Recommended for mature audiences.

A Christmas Carol - A Ghost Story of Christmas
By Charles Dickens
Adapted and Originally Directed by Michael Wilson
Directed by James Black
Hubbard Stage
November 18 - December 27, 2011 (press opening: November 19, 2011)
Recommended for general audiences.
This play is a subscription add-on.

The Santaland Diaries
By David Sedaris
Adapted for the stage by Joe Mantello
Directed by David Cromer
Neuhaus Stage
November 30 - December 31, 2011 (press opening: December 2, 2011)
Recommended for mature audiences due to language and subject matter.
This play is a subscription add-on.

The Toxic Avenger
Book & Lyrics by Joe DiPietro
Music & Lyrics by David Bryan
Directed by John Rando
Hubbard Stage
January 13 - February 12, 2012 (press opening: January 20, 2012)
Not recommended for young children.

The Seagull
By Anton Chekhov
Directed by Gregory Boyd
Neuhaus Stage
February 3 - March 4, 2012 (press opening: February 8, 2012)
Mature themes; General audiences.

Red
By John Logan
Directed by Jackson Gay
Hubbard Stage
March 2 - March 25, 2012 (press opening: March 7, 2012)
Explicit language, mature situations.

The Seafarer
By Conor McPherson
Directed by Gregory Boyd
Hubbard Stage
April 6 - April 29, 2012 (press opening: April 11, 2012)
Explicit language, mature situations.

What We're Up Against
A New Play by Theresa Rebeck
Directed by Scott Schwartz
Neuhaus Stage
May 4 - June 3, 2012 (press opening: May 9, 2012)
Explicit language, recommended for mature audiences.

Noises Off
By Michael Frayn
Directed by Gregory Boyd
Hubbard Stage
May 25 - June 24, 2012 (press opening: May 30, 2012)
Mature themes; General audiences.

TICKET INFORMATION AND PACKAGES

$25 "CHEAP THRILLS" TICKETS
The Alley's $25 "Cheap Thrills" ticket program makes low-priced tickets available year-round for Tuesday and Sunday evening performances of most Alley subscription series productions on the Hubbard Stage. Call the Alley Box Office at 713.220.5700 for details
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SUBSCRIPTIONS
Season subscriptions are available starting at $130 and may be purchased at www.alleytheatre.org, by phone at 713.220.5700, or in person at the Alley Theatre Box Office, 615 Texas Ave.

SINGLE TICKETS
Single tickets will be on sale to the general public at a later date, please check www.alleytheatre.org for future updates. Single tickets are available for purchase online at www.alleytheatre.org, by phone at 713.220.5700 or in person at the Alley Box Office at 615 Texas Ave. Single tickets start at $25. Tickets are available for purchase online using our new interactive ticketing area. It's fast, easy to use and allows ticket buyers the ability to select a section as well as their own individual seats from the interactive seating map. And there are no additional handling fees when tickets are purchased online, by phone or in person at the box office.

GROUP TICKETS
Groups of 10 or more can receive special discounts and concierge services by calling the group sales department at 713.315.3346.

AUDIENCE PROGRAMS

ACT OUT
ActOUT is Houston's premiere group for GLBT theatre fans and their friends. Patrons enjoy pre-show mixers with fellow gay and lesbian subscribers, who gather to meet their favorite Alley artists and enjoy complimentary cocktails and appetizers from Houston's finest restaurants. ActOUT events take place at the Alley for each Hubbard Stage production, and are complimentary with the purchase of a subscription or ticket to the show. For more information, call 713.228.9341 ext. 556. ActOUT dates for the 2011-2012 season are:

Dividing the Estate: Thursday, October 20, 7:30 PM
The Santaland Diaries: Thursday, December 8, 7:30 PM
The Toxic Avenger: Thursday, January 26, 7:30 PM
Red: Thursday, March 15, 7:30 PM
The Seafarer: Thursday, April 19, 7:30 PM
Noises Off: Thursday, June 7, 7:30 PM

TALKBACKS
Alley patrons are invited to attend post-show TalkBacks with the cast and members of the artistic staff on select Tuesdays. These question-and-answer sessions are held immediately after the evening performance. Talkback dates for the 2011-2012 season are:

Ether Dome: Tuesday, September 20, 7:30 PM
Dividing the Estate: Tuesday, October 18, 7:30 PM
The Toxic Avenger: Tuesday, January 24, 7:30 PM
The Seagull: Tuesday, February 14, 7:30 PM
Red: Tuesday, March 7, 7:30 PM
The Seafarer: Tuesday, April 17, 7:30 PM
What We're Up Against: Tuesday, May 15, 7:30 PM
Noises Off: Tuesday, June 5, 7:30 PM

AFFINITY SERIES SYMPOSIUM
As part of the New Play Initiative, the Alley Theatre will present an Affinity Series Symposium for each world premiere this season featuring the playwright and dramaturg to discuss the genesis of the play, the Alley Theatre rehearsal process, and the larger societal issues raised by the play. The Affinity Series Symposium will occur in conjunction with the world premieres of Ether Dome and What We're Up Against and is open to those holding a ticket for the performance. Affinity Series Symposium dates for the 2011-2012 season are:

Ether Dome: Saturday, September 17, 2:30 PM
What We're Up Against: Saturday, May 12, 2:30 PM

ALLEY EMAIL CLUB
Join the Alley Theatre email club to receive exclusive ticket offers, casting updates, new information about upcoming productions, education and community events, pre-show mixers and other special events. To register, visit www.alleytheatre.org.

ALLEY $10 TIX
The Alley's $10 Tix program rewards patrons who bring a specified item for a designated charity with the opportunity to purchase up to two tickets in the B section for a minimum of $10 each. Purchase in person at the box office (615 Texas Ave.) on the designated day only, beginning at noon. Cash or check only. The partnering organizations for $10 Tix will be announced at a later date. Visit www.alleytheatre.org for more information. Alley Theatre $10 Tix dates for the 2011-2012 season are:

Dividing the Estate: Saturday, October 8
The Toxic Avenger: Saturday, January 14
Red: Saturday, March 3
The Seafarer: Saturday, April 7
Noises Off: Saturday, May 26

AUDIO DESCRIPTION AND CAPTIONING
The Alley offers open-captioned performances for patrons with low hearing and audio described performances for patrons with low vision. Please visit www.alleytheatre.org or call 713.220.5700 for more information. Dates for the 2011-2012 season will be announced at a later date.

Alley Theatre YOUNG PERFORMERS STUDIO
Be part of a creative drama learning experience. The Alley Theatre Young Performers Studio engages students in a dynamic introduction to theatre arts while fostering their individual creativity and building skills that reach beyond the stage. Fall, spring and summer sessions are available for grades 2-12. For more information call Rochelle Sanders, Alley Theatre Training Program Manager at 713.228.9341, ext. 423.

Projects at the Alley Theatre are funded in part by a grant from the City of Houston and the Texas Commission on the Arts.

ABOUT THE Alley Theatre
The Alley Theatre is a professional resident theatre company under the direction of Artistic Director Gregory Boyd and Managing Director Dean Gladden. It is one of the few American Theatre companies that support a company of actors, designers, artisans and craftspeople throughout the year. Productions are built and rehearsed in a 75,000 square foot state-of-the art facility, one of the largest of its kind, adjacent to its two-theatre complex in downtown Houston. For more information visit www.alleytheatre.org.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos