Caldwell's 10th Year of Play Readings Announced

Caldwell Theatre Company Announces
Play Reading Series 2006-2007

Caldwell Theatre Company's Play Reading Series is celebrating its tenth season. This Series gives playwrights the opportunity to showcase their works by having their plays read by seasoned professional actors in front of an audience in Caldwell's professional 305-seat theater. Audience members participate in spirited TalkBack sessions after the show, providing valuable and insightful information to the playwright.

Caldwell is proud to have cultivated this series that has resulted in many plays produced and staged professionally after their Caldwell readings, either at Caldwell or at other professional theaters around the country. This past Mainstage season's World Premiere of Michael McKeever's The Impressionists made its play reading debut during Caldwell's 2004-5 Play Reading Series. Caldwell's Play Reading Series has become so popular with theatergoers that it sells out well in advance of its performance.

Play Reading # 1 December 11, 2006 2PM & 7PM
The Walk In
by Jeff Millar

This machine-gun-fast serio-absurdist play retaliates against the American health insurance system in a way that makes us laugh at the system and ourselves as well. Written by the man who has spent a lifetime dishing out sharp-toothed social satire in "Tank McNamara," the iconoclastic comic strip about the nation's obsession with sports, which he has written for decades. Mr. Millar said he devised much of this 90 minute, real-time, no-intermission play "while I was waiting on hold for my health-insurance company."

Playwright Background
Jeff Millar writes – and with cartoonist Bill Hinds co-created – the comic strip "Tank McNamara."
Millar grew up in League City, TX, a then-small town between Houston and Galveston. He graduated from the University of Texas and went to work as film critic for the Houston Chronicle in 1965. He added a humor column in 1972 and retired in 2000. "Tank," a satiric look at the American obsession with sports, began syndication through Universal Press Syndicate in 1974. Millar's novel "Private Sector" was published by Dial. He has had two plays produced by small-professional-company-contract Actors' Equity theaters in Houston. Stages Repertory Theatre staged Icehouse, adapted from characters recurring in his column. In the 2004-2005 season, under the title The Rice, Main Street Theater staged Sometimes She Goes by Melody, based upon a file folder of photographs and documents Millar found in long-abandoned ruin of what was once Houston's premier hotel. Millar, childless except for his creations, has been married since 1994 to Peg Millar, retired from teaching middle
school.

Play Reading #2 January 8, 2007 2PM & 7PM
Unwavering Light
by Richard Janaro

In 1933 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Albert Einstein gives a speech on how he arrived at the special and general theories of relativity. Einstein opens the door to his personal life telling of the journey that his family, wife and friends followed, which led to his recognition as the greatest mind of the 20th century.

Playwright Background
Richard Janaro, educated at Harvard and Boston University, is the retired Associate Dean of Theater at the New World School of the Arts in Miami. He is the author or co-author of 12 college textbooks, including The Art of Being Human, now in its eighth edition, which has sold more than a quarter million copies in over 200 schools and colleges. He has written more than 25 plays, which have been produced in both professional and academic theaters. His adaptation of Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables was presented at New Theatre in Miami for a sold-out five-week run and was nominated for a Carbonell Award as Best New Work. Two of his other plays, Youth and Asia and Mickey and Will, were similarly nominated. More recently his play Virginia Woolf: The Last Day, about the final two hours of the novelist's life before her suicide, was presented in both Michigan and New York. Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan commissioned him to write a play last
year, which would celebrate this year's centennial of Einstein's five papers that changed the world. Unwavering Light: Einstein in 1905 premiered at the university in September and is currently under consideration by The National Theatre in London.

Play Reading #3 March 5, 2007 2PM & 7PM
The Whipping Man
by Matthew Lopez

It is Passover in April 1865, and American slaves have been set free throughout the South. A Jewish Confederate soldier returns from the war to find that his home is in ruins and that his family has disappeared. Only two former slaves remain. As each man contemplates an uncertain future, they are forced to face the truth about their past, and the complexity of freedom.

Playwright Background
The Whipping Man was developed at Luna Stage over a two-year period. The play also received developmental readings at the Lark Play Development Center and at breedingground productions' biannual Spring Fever Festival. Luna Stage presented the world premiere of The Whipping Man April 27 – May 21, 2006. Other plays include Between Us and Tio Pepe's All Singing! All Dancing! Latin Minstrel Show, a play con musica. He is a staff writer for Readingground Magazine, a newly launched online magazine. Matthew is a graduate of the University of South Florida and currently lives in Brooklyn.

Play Reading #4 April 23, 2007 2PM & 7PM
Lover's Leap
by Frank Higgins

A silent film star, whose career has been wiped out by the advent of the talkies, returns to her home town to find her ex-flame on the verge of great accomplishments, if only she can get him to acquire the vision of America that she alone can give him. A nightclub singer called The Cinnamon Chanteuse serves as a Greek chorus and sings period hits including "Ain't We Got Fun?" "If You Want the Rainbow, You Must Have the Rain," "Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out," and "You're the Cream in my Coffee."

Playwright Background
Frank Higgins is the author of "The Sweet By 'n' By" which was produced with Gwyneth Paltrow and Blythe Danner. His play Gunplay has been produced across the country, and had several scenes read on Capitol Hill prior to Congress's passage of the Brady Bill. His musical play WMKS: Where Music Kills Sorrow has been produced at several major regional theaters. The production he directed of WMKS at the Fulton Opera House in Pennsylvania became the biggest hit in that theater's history. His evening of one-act titled "Crazyology: A Kaleidoscope of Carnality" was a recent finalist for the Eugene O'Neill National Playwriting Conference.

Tickets are $8 for non-center seats and $10 center seats. Matinee performances @ 2PM and @ 7PM for each play. ALL READINGS ARE ONE DAY ONLY ON MONDAYS AND ALL TITLES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Tickets go on sale to Caldwell subscribers on Monday, October 16, 2006 at 9AM for window sales only, with telephone sales beginning at 10AM first day only. Tickets go on sale to the general public starting Monday, October 23, 2006 at 10AM.
For more information, please call Box Office at 561-241-7432 or 877-245-7432. Check out Caldwell's web site @ http://www.caldwelltheatre.com

FALL IN LOVE TODAY!  ADOPT A PET FROM YOUR LOCAL ANIMAL SHELTER

To post a comment, you must register and login.