Soho Rep Announces 2008-09 Season

Nine-time Obie Award-winning Soho Rep (46 Walker Street) will present a full slate of new works representing a diverse array of contemporary theater artists during the company's 2008-09 season, beginning with the New York premiere of English playwright Sarah Kane's BLASTED starting October 2, it has been announced by Sarah Benson, artistic director of Soho Rep.
 
"With plays by Sarah Kane, Dan LeFranc and a compelling new work by Nature Theater of Oklahoma, we are delighted to be producing a season of distinctive plays—all furthering Soho Rep's mission to create and produce innovative, unpredictable new work designed only for a theatrical idiom," Ms. Benson says.
 
October:  BLASTED -- begins October 2, 2008.  Directed by Sarah Benson, the three-character play features Marin Ireland, Reed Birney and Louis Cancelmi. Kane's starling imagery and bleak humor forge a potent theatrical vision of destruction, collapse and, ultimately, redemption and love. Upon its London debut in 1995 the play sparked an extraordinary public controversy, while introducing a new sensibility to the modern theatre.
 
The first play in the short life and career of the late Ms. Kane, BLASTED was embraced by Ms. Kane's British contemporaries Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill and Martin Crimp, and has subsequently been widely produced worldwide.  Ms. Kane's other plays include PHAEDRA'S LOVE, CLEANSED, CRAVE and 4.48 PSYCHOSIS.
"I am delighted that New York audiences will finally get to see this play," noted Ms. Benson.
 
November:  SIXTY MILES TO SILVER LAKE -- co-produced with Page 73 Productions, the world premiere of Dan LeFranc's play begins November 25.  Directed by Anne Kauffman (Obie winning director of Adam Bock's "The Thugs" at Soho Rep) SIXTY MILES TO SILVER LAKE is a linguistically adventurous two-character work that gives language to memory and that covers seven years in the relationship of a boy and his father. A participant in Page 73's development programs and this year's Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Mr. LeFranc is also a recent inductee of New Dramatists and adjunct faculty at Brown University where he earned his MFA in playwriting.
 
Page 73 Productions (Executive Directors Liz Jones and Asher Richelli) has been making a name for itself as a home for the development and production of new work by early-career playwrights. Their most recent shows include Quiara Alegria Hudes' Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue (Pulitzer Prize finalist) and Jason Grote's 1001 (Top 10 of 2007, Time Out New York). "We have been fans of Soho Rep's project-based aesthetic for years and are thrilled to be producing with them not only the world premiere of this extraordinary new play, but also Dan LeFranc's first professional production" noted Liz Jones and Asher Richelli. For more information go to www.p73.org.
 
March:  Nature Theater of Oklahoma -- the company whose most recent Obie Award-winning work, NO DICE, enjoyed rave reviews, an extended run and sold-out houses at Soho Rep last year -- returns to Soho Rep with the New York premiere of its latest theatrical adventure, RAMBO SOLO, beginning mid-March. The performance -- built upon Nature Theater of Oklahoma actor Zachary Oberzan's own deep-seated obsession with the story of Rambo: First Blood -- is a complex examination of version and memory in which the company strives to recount the entire plot in all it's sweaty, athletic detail, stopping along the way to consider issues of character, realism, ownership, psychology, character, and ultimately -- adaptation. Conceived and Directed by Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska, with video design by Peter Nigrini.
 
In addition to the main stage productions, Soho Rep will also present its Soho Rep Studio Series of free, open-to-the-public workshops of new plays -- with projects by Erin Courtney and the Obie-award winning Theater of the Two Headed Calf in February and March, as well as the 11th season of its popular Writer/Director Lab in the spring. Soho Rep also announces its 2008/2009 Soho Rep Dorothy Streslin Playwrighting Fellow, Thomas Bradshaw (Purity, Prophet and voted best provocative playwright of 2006 by the Village Voice).
 
Now in its 33rd year, Soho Rep's 2008-09 season is the second under the leadership of Artistic Director, Sarah Benson, and the first for new Executive Director, Tania Camargo. This is the second season the company will operate as an Off-Broadway company after decades of presenting work in the off-off-Broadway arena.  One of the company's most popular and innovative programming features from last year -- 99-cent tickets for all Sunday performances of main stage productions throughout the year -- returns this season, as well.
 
Under the leadership of new Artistic Director Sarah Benson and the company's recently appointed Executive Director, Tania Camargo, Soho Rep is dedicated to cultivating and producing visionary, uncompromising, and exuberant new plays. They perform to one of the youngest adult audiences in New York City, with over three-quarters of its audience aged 18-40.
 
Over the last nine seasons, Soho Rep productions have garnered nine OBIE Awards -- most recently NO DICE by Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and playwright Adam Bock and director Anne Kauffman for THE THUGS -- four Drama Desk nominations for their critically acclaimed production of FRANKENSTEIN, the Oppenheimer Award for EVERYTHING WILL BE DIFFERENT, and two Kesselring Awards for Melissa James Gibson and Mark Schultz. In recent years, Soho Rep has presented plays by established and emerging theatre artists such as Richard Maxwell, Mac Wellman, Young Jean Lee and The Flying Machine.
 
For information about the Soho Rep season, call (212) 941-8632 or visit www.sohorep.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.