SMU Division of Theatre announces 2008-2009 season

by Shawn Parikh

SMU's school year has already begun, and their Division of Theatre has revealed the lineup for their fall and spring semesters. This year, they also have 2 shows in co-production with 2 professional theater companies, Kitchen Dog Theater and Dallas Theater Center. Make sure to check out what the prestigious program will be performing:

• The Overwhelming by J.T. Rogers. From September 24-28, 2008. Directed by Stan Wojewodski, Jr. An American professor and his family travel to Rwanda in 1994 seeking his old college classmate, a Tutsi doctor who treats children with AIDS. Once there, as they fruitlessly search for the doctor, they become drawn into the tension and terror building to the genocidal war, facing overwhelming risks, betrayals, and life and death decisions. This suspenseful drama by award-winning playwright J.T. Rogers had its world premiere at the National Theatre of Great Britain and its American premiere in fall 2007 to critical acclaim at New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company; SMU is presenting the play’s first Dallas performance. In the Margo Jones Theatre.
• An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde. From October 15-19, 2008. Directed by James Crawford. Premiered in 1895, Wilde’s highly successful comedy revolves around a prominent politician whose youthful mistake is threatened with exposure by a blackmailing aristocratic woman. Social expectations and a rigid Victorian sense of duty and honor contrast with the reality of human imperfection and foibles in a play renowned for its wit and insight. In the Bob Hope Theatre.
• Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. From November 19-23, 2008. Directed by Michael Connolly. Shakespeare’s bittersweet comedy about mistaken identities and misguided passions is one of his most popular works. Written in 1601, it remains fresh and even modern in its exploration of shifting identity, transformation and love. In the Greer Garson Theatre.
• In the Beginning – 15th century mystery plays. From January 21 - February 22. Co-produced with Dallas Theater Center, and Directed by Kevin Moriarty. Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, and many other vivid Biblical characters come to life in a collection of classic short plays that were among the first ever written in the English language. Crowds in 15th-century England thronged churchyards and market squares to enjoy these spiritually uplifting yet often raucously entertaining plays based on favorite stories from the book of Genesis. With their mix of poetry and pageantry, these rarely-produced plays are as compelling today as they were more than 500 years ago. At the Dallas Theater Center.
• Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage. From February 25 - March 1, 2009. Directed by TBA student director. Winner of five national awards for best play, including the New York Drama Critics Circle award, Intimate Apparel revolves around the character of Esther, an African-American seamstress living in New York at the beginning of the 20th century who creates beautiful lingerie for society women and prostitutes alike. She falls in love with a Panama Canal laborer who woos her through romantic letters, though she is also admired by the shy Jewish merchant who sells fabrics to her. Nottage, who based the play on the life of her great-grandmother, called it “a lyrical meditation on one woman’s loneliness and desire.” In the Margo Jones Theatre.
• New Visions, New Voices. From March 25-29, 2009. Produced by Stan Wojewodski, Jr. A spring playwriting festival now in its 15th year, NVNV annually presents three new plays written and directed by our undergraduate theatre students. Alumni of previous years’ festivals have formed new theatre companies, become writers, actors, and directors in New York, Los Angeles and other major cities, and gone on to study theatre at graduate schools around the country. In the Greer Garson Theatre.
• Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare. From April 17 - May 16. Co-produced with Kitchen Dog Theater. Adaptation by Leah Spillman and Lee Trull and directed by Christopher Carlos. Shakespeare’s bloodiest play is transposed, for this production, to an ancient Mayan setting. The themes of revenge, justice and violence begetting violence remain shocking and relevant. For mature audiences only; includes scenes of murder, rape and dismemberment. At the McKinney Avenue Contemporary.
• Musical Workshop, produced by Cecil O’Neal and Hank Hammett. From April 29 - May 3, 2009. A major new collaboration between the Divisions of Theatre and Music, the workshop will showcase a new musical theatre piece developed with a guest artist in residence. In the Bob Hope Theatre.