Culver City Public Theatre's Upcoming Season Will Include THE ODYSSEY, A SERVANT TO TWO MASTERS and More

Culver City Public Theatre (CCPT) announces its 14th season of summer shows in Dr. Paul Carlson Park for families and theatre fans of all ages. All performances are open to the public and free. Founded in 1998, CCPT (a donation and grant supported 501c3 non-profit) is a member of the American Association of Community Theatres (AACT).

CCPT’s 2012 summer-season opens July 14th at 12:00pm, with a world premiere adaptation of Homer’s epic poem. THE ODYSSEY, written and directed by six-year CCPT veteran and LA Weekly Award Nominee Blake Anthony Edwards, tells the tale of Odysseus’ ten-year journey home from the Trojan War. This is the second show Mr. Edwards has penned for CCPT’s Children’s Popcorn Theatre, the annual production designed for young audiences; he also wrote last year’s Big Bad Wolf Tales. Park regulars will recognize him from roles in King Midas, The Good Doctor, Slue-Foot Sue and Pecos Bill, and She Stoops to Conquer, or outside productions of Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Good Smoke, and In on It, for which he received an LA Weekly award nomination.

A SERVANT TO TWO MASTERS opens July 14th at 2:00pm. Mike Peebler returns to direct after prior CCPT productions The Merry Wives of Windsor (New Jersey) and Around The World in 80 Days. No stranger to outdoor productions, he has worked extensively with Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, and has appeared on television and in films including Medium, NUMB3RS, Las Vegas, Scrubs, and Valkyrie. Carlo Goldoni wrote the first version of his Commedia dell’arte comedy A SERVANT TO TWO MASTERS in 1743, with large sections left for improvisation. It was revised a decade later, to a more scripted form which is the version used today. Relying on a cast of stock Commedia characters, the story follows Beatrice, who disguises herself as her deceased brother to collect the dowry from the father of her brother’s betrothed. She does this to free her own lover who was her brother’s murderer. Meanwhile, her servant Truffaldino takes on a second master to feed his overwhelming appetite but not before falling in love.

Alex Wells returns to direct his seventh play with CCPT, THE MATCHMAKER. You may know Mr. Wells from directing CCPT’s “She Stoops to Conquer,” or his 2008 LA Weekly Award win for Best Male Comedy Performance in John Clancy’s “Fatboy” at Need Theatre. In 2011 he directed a reading of “The Wild Duck” by Henrik Ibsen for the Classical Theatre Lab in West Hollywood and he recently appeared as the King in Ionesco’s “Exit the King.” Pulitzer Prize winner Thornton Wilder adapted THE MATCHMAKER from Johann Nestroy's Einen Jux will er sich Machen, which itself was an adaptation of John Oxenford’s one-act farce A Day Well Spent. After a successful 1955 Broadway run THE MATCHMAKER, was adapted to a 1958 film. In 1964 David Merrick based the musical Hello Dolly! on THE MATCHMAKER and that too was adapted to a movie in 1969. The story follows the widower Horace Vandergelder who seeks the services of a matchmaker, Dolly Gallagher Levi, to match him to a new wife. While Dolly tries to match herself to Vandergelder, and convince him to allow his niece to marry her artist love Ambrose Kemper, she must keep Vandergelder from proposing to Irene Molloy.