Philadelphia Theatre Workshop Announces 2010-11 Season

Philadelphia Theatre Workshop will produce 5 world premieres for their 2010-2011 season. Front Row Seat by Kathy Anderson starts the season off this fall followed by the 4th Annual PlayShop Festival in the spring. Both productions will perform at the Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5 located at 825 Walnut Street.

Kathy Anderson's Front Row Seat opens November 20, runs until December 12, 2010 and will be directed by Bill Felty. In Front Row Seat, we meet the Flannery family who is on a trip, a rare outing from their little hometown. They are not experienced travelers and suffer multiple mishaps and calamities. Frannie wrestles with a killer girdle. Inez crashes into a wayward cow. Billy fends off a knife-wielding Christian. The strangers they meet are getting stranger and stranger. But they are increasingly determined to realize their once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the President and First Lady in person -- and they want to be right up front.

The 4th Annual PlayShop Festival will showcase four plays in progress from April 29 to May 22, 2011. During this unique and intensive program, playwrights work collaboratively with a director, dramaturg, designers, actors, and audiences over a five-week period to fully develop scripts into plays ready for world premiere productions. Each performance includes a talkback that allows audience members to give opinions and suggestions to the playwright and director. Then, the playwright implements some of the suggestions immediately into their scripts, the director and cast rehearse the changes, and finally they test out the new material at a performance later in the festival.

This season's festival includes Loved Ones by Robin Rodriguez, Reindeer, Magnetosphere by David Strattan White, Seven by Kelsey Amnett, and The Ugly Past by Kevin Grauke.

Loved Ones (directed by James Haskins) introduces us to Crystal who is in search of a life. She's seen plenty of lives on TV, in the movies, and on all those cool social networking sites--and now she'd like one of her own. Fortunately, Crystal has found an agency that provides instant friends and family--for a price. But when her money starts to run out, and the line between fact and fiction becomes blurry, Crystal has to decide which is more costly: to continue with her rented life, or to risk coming up with a "real" one of her own.

In Reindeer, Magnetosphere (directed by Mark Cofta), Rudy Reidner and Conner Flowers are never invited to join in any reindeer games at Thomas Paine High. So they find comfort in Mr. Hammel's Ethical Philosophy class. When Joseph Willoughby, basketball star, writes "Conner Flowers is a fag" on Mr. Hammel's board, the teacher wants him suspended. Yeah, that doesn't happen. Instead, Rudy and Conner's world gets flipped upside down when Rudy decides to take matters into his own hands. Consequences are a bitch.

What if you had a chance to change the past? In Seven (directed by Cara Blouin) Jack gets that elusive chance. His marriage to Jill has been anything but a fairy tale. After a heated argument, Jack walks out on his family and is hit by a truck. The accident breaks more than just Jack's crown - it puts him in a coma. The spirit of Jack's deceased father-in-law implores Jack to go back and fix his marriage. Waking after seven years, Jack has only seven days to win his wife back and get Jill to tumble after him again.

Finally, we meet Warren in The Ugly Past (directed by Adrienne Mackey). Warren is a successful businessman in New York with a much-younger girlfriend. Doyle, his long-lost brother, is a playwright with a new play about two Young Brothers growing up in Texas, one of whom murders their baby sister. Is the play based on fact? Or is it fiction? What about their father? Did he die in an accident? Or did he commit suicide? Myth and memory collide with resentment and revenge in a true case of art imitates life. Or does it?

A season subscription for PTW's 7th season costs $40. More information and updates on surprise additions to the season can be found by visiting the company's website: www.philadelphiatheatreworkshop.org.

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