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Stage
Women at heart of Stage season
Female-centered productions are all the rage on American Stage's 2006-07 schedule.
By JOHN FLEMING
Published March 8, 2006
ST. PETERSBURG - American Stage is taking a cue from Broadway with its 2006-07 season-opening production of Three Days of Rain by Richard Greenberg. Julia Roberts is starring in a much-anticipated revival on Broadway this spring, and the theater's producing artistic director, Todd Olson, plainly hopes it will stimulate interest in his production. "I think it has the best aspects of a mystery," Olson said of the 1997 play, which is about a brother, sister and childhood friend who meet for a reading of the siblings' father's will. "I find I discover new things every time I read it." With its strong role for a woman, Three Days of Rain fits into a theme Olson identifies in other works in the upcoming season, such as Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams and Casa Blue: The Last Moments in the Life of Frida Kahlo, a premiere about the Mexican artist by Olson, Karen Garcia and Jeremy Childs (actors who starred as Kate and Petruchio in an American Stage park production of The Taming of the Shrew in 2005) and Grammy-winning songwriter Steve Earle. "I think I purposely looked for female-centered stories this year," Olson said, noting that "65 to 70 percent of our audience is women." Nine Parts of Desire by Heather Raffo is a one-woman show that American Stage is co-producing with the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. "It was written by an American woman of Iraqi descent who spent more than two years interviewing American and Iraqi women during the reign of Saddam, and has created this performance piece based on all the women she met," Olson said. "We'll do it for two weeks in the Shimberg (Playhouse of TBPAC), and then when we're in the park, two weeks (on the theater's main stage). Then in the weeks between those two runs we're working with TBPAC to try to put together a Florida tour." Next season's park show, at Demens Landing on the downtown waterfront, will be Tick...Tick...Boom!, a rock musical by the late Jonathan Larson, who wrote Rent. "It's about friends who are artists who are getting older. I think it's Rent in miniature," Olson said. "It's about friends who are artists who are getting older. I think it'sin miniature," Olson said. In April, with the gospel musical Crowns, the theater will put on a non-Shakespearean park production for the first time in more than 20 years. Othello is on the main stage schedule for 2006-07. "I think it is going to be exciting to bring Shakespeare indoors," Olson said. "When we did an audience survey, Othello and Hamlet were the Shakespeare plays people wanted to see the most." American Stage's most successful play this season has been Dial "M" for Murder, which drew attendance of more than 4,000 in January and February. The theater will fill that slot next season with another play with broad appeal, Chapter Two by Neil Simon. "I think you'll find that the December and January slots will skew a little more commercial," Olson said. In December, the theater is bringing back one of its biggest hits, David Auburn's Proof, with the cast that performed it in 2005. Katherine Tanner will reprise the role of Catherine, a brilliant young mathematician. In an odd coincidence, Three Days of Rain and the second play on the 2006-07 schedule, All the Great Books (Abridged) by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor, authors of The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged), are also being done, though later in the season, by Jobsite Theater, a company in residence at TBPAC's Shimberg Playhouse. American Stage has 2,200 subscribers this season, up from 1,900 in 2004-05. Last season's total attendance for main stage productions in the 140-seat theater was more than 21,000, and Olson is projecting at least that much for this season. ASOLO THEATRE COMPANY: The Sarasota group has announced its 2006-07 season, the first under incoming producing director Michael Donald Edwards, who will succeed Howard Millman. Amadeus, Peter Shaffer's popular drama about Mozart, will open the season in November, followed by Men of Tortuga by Jason Wells; The Plexiglass Slipper, a musical by Scott Warrender and Jim Luigs; Expecting Isabel by Lisa Loomer; A Few Good Men by Aaron Sorkin; Pride and Prejudice, a stage adaptation of the Jane Austen novel by Catherine Sheehy and Mark Rucker; and a musical to be announced. The FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training also announced its upcoming season. The opener, The Parisian Woman by Henri Becque, will be staged in the Historic Asolo Theatre at the Ringling Museum. The rest of the conservatory's season includes This Is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan; Blue Window by Craig Lucas; The Bacchae by Euripides; and Iron Kisses by James Still. Subscriptions are on sale now, and single tickets go on sale in October. 941 351-8000, toll-free 1-800-361-8388; www.asolo.org AMERICAN STAGE 2006-07 Sept. 6-Oct. 1: Three Days of Rain by Richard Greenberg; Nov. 1-26: All the Great Books (Abridged) by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor; Jan. 17-Feb. 11: Chapter Two by Neil Simon; March 14-April 7, 2007: Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams; April 11-May 13: Tick...Tick...Boom! by Jonathan Larson; May 23-June 17: Othello by William Shakespeare; July 18-Aug. 12: Casa Blue: The Last Moments in the Life of Frida Kahlo by Todd Olson, Jeremy Childs, Karen Garcia and Steve Earle. BONUS EVENTS: Dec. 7-23: Proof by David Auburn; April 25-May 6: Nine Parts of Desire by Heather Raffo. Subscriptions are on sale at a discounted rate ranging from $132 to $231 for a seven-play package. 727 823-7529; www.americanstage.org
[Last modified March 8, 2006, 02:08:01]
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