BWW reviewer, Peter Nason, celebrates 2018 with his choices for the best in local theatre (Tampa, St. Pete and Sarasota) that the past year had to offer.
Tampa Repertory Theatre will present Michael Frayn's Tony award-winning drama Copenhagen January 4-20, 2019 (with a paid preview performance on January 3) on the USF campus in Studio 120, 3837 USF Holly Drive, Tampa. Performances are at 8 PM on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and at 3 PM on Sundays. Tickets are $25 ($20 student/military/senior). Patrons may purchase tickets at the door or from TampaRep's website at http://www.tamparep.org/copenhagen.
Dog Days Theatre begins its second season with Joe Orton's farce What the Butler Saw, playing July 12 through 29 in the Cook Theatre at FSU Center for Performing Arts in Sarasota. Single tickets are $30, or a season ticket package-paired with Dog Days Theatre's August production of The Turn of the Screw-is available for $55. What the Butler Saw is made possible with support from The Observer, Sarasota County Tourist Development Tax Services, The Exchange, and WUSF Public Media, and is presented by FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training.
The cast is phenomenal, especially Ned Averill-Snell in a performance that brings to mind the odd combination of Daniel Day-Lewis, Harpo Marx and Lon Chaney, Jr. It's a timely show that must be seen to be believed.
Jobsite Theater is thrilled to offer the pitch-black family comedy HIR (pronounced "here") by Taylor Mac, March 9 - April 1, 2018 in the Shimberg Playhouse at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts where they are resident theater company.
The title, HIR, (again, pronounced "here") refers to a genderqueer pronoun. "It's not simply a reference to the character of Max," says David M. Jenkins, "but a commentary on what it is all four of these characters (and Mac as a playwright) are trying to do with masculinity. Mac sets up a very traditional, very familiar-feeling kitchen-sink play - one that is positively hilarious -- and then spins it on its axis, or maybe better stated tries to burn it all down. The style is described as "absurd realism," but the emphasis here is on the real. Mac requires that any absurdity in the show be driven by the reality of the situation, only moving to an absurd level because of the extreme circumstances." In an interview with the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, where the show enjoyed a highly successful run after the New York engagement at Playwrights Horizons (and where Annie Baker's The Flick, produced earlier this year, also premiered), Taylor Mac says that he was highly inspired by Sam Shepard's groundbreaking Buried Child. "In addition to the Buried Child comparisons HIR has, in my estimation, taken its place alongside great American family dramas like Long Day's Journey into Night, The Little Foxes, A Raisin in the Sun, Death of a Salesman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Fences. It truly represents our day and age in ways audiences will continue to look back to for decades, if not centuries."
Jobsite Theater, resident theater company of the Straz Center, is excited to once again collaborate with internationally-renown playwright, poet, and film-maker Israel Horovitz on his play Gloucester Blue, which runs May 19 - June 11, 2017, in the Straz's Shimberg Playhouse.
Tampa Repertory Theatre will produce Eugene O'Neill's landmark American drama THE ICEMAN COMETH at Studio 120 on the University of South Florida campus from June 16 to July 3.
Ned Averill-Snell, Katrina Stevenson and Derrick Phillips offer lessons of versatility in this thought-provoking, albeit busy theatrical mockumentary..
Jobsite Theater starts the new year with a new collaboration with one of the world's greatest living dramatists. Israel Horovitz visited Tampa for a week this past February for a week-long residency culminating in a rehearsed staged reading of his play Sins of the Mother that featured a talkback and poetry reading with the award-winning writer, film-maker, and 'Beastie Dad' (he is also the father of Adam 'Ad Rock' Horovitz). He once again returns for the opening week of his play LEBENSRAUM that runs tonight, Jan. 8-31, 2016, in the Shimberg Playhouse at the Straz Center where Jobsite is resident theater company. Scroll down for a sneak peek at the cast onstage!
Jobsite Theater starts the new year with a new collaboration with one of the world's greatest living dramatists. Israel Horovitz visited Tampa for a week this past February for a week-long residency culminating in a rehearsed staged reading of his play Sins of the Mother that featured a talkback and poetry reading with the award-winning writer, film-maker, and 'Beastie Dad' (he is also the father of Adam 'Ad Rock' Horovitz). He once again returns for the opening week of his play LEBENSRAUM that runs Jan. 8-31, 2016, in the Shimberg Playhouse at the Straz Center where Jobsite is resident theater company. Scroll down for a sneak peek at the cast onstage!