University Players 2006-2007 season

Contact:
SuzAnne Bradaric
or
Eric Hamme
562.985.4500
publicrelations@calrep.org

For Immediate Release:
June 21, 2006

CSULB University Players 2006–2007 Season

A Season of Challenging Theatre for All Tastes

The 2006-2007 UP season is a challenging mix of delightfully absurd comedy, brilliant musical comedy, Brechtian and Shakespearean epics, and two disturbing, yet dazzling looks at our future .

Opening the fall season is a collection of short gems from Christopher Durang, one of American theatre’s best-loved and most eccentric comic voices. Durang, Durang delivers a pungent potpourri of biting satire, dark comedy, clever parody, Southern Belles, and Russian Tea Rooms, crammed into a compilation guaranteed to shock both sense and sensibility. Don't miss this dizzying tour of Durang's audacious world. Performances are October 6-21 in the Players Theatre.

Following Durang, Durang, the University Players will join with the CSULB Department of Music to present Stephen Sondheim’s modern masterpiece, Into the Woods. This fairy-tale musical fuses the charm of familiar bedtime stories with sober revelations of our innermost fears and desires. Into the Woods will be directed by department chair and world-renowned Sondheim expert Joanne Gordon (author of Art Isn’t Easy: The Theatre of Stephen Sondheim.) Performances run October 27th through November 11th in the Studio Theatre.

Bertholt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle closes the fall semester. Written in the United States near the end of World War II, and based on a fourteenth-century Chinese tale, Bertolt Brecht's epic drama was written for Academy-Award winning film star Luise Rainer and initially intended for Broadway. Set in Soviet Georgia, this modern parable poses timeless questions about the seductive power of goodness. The Caucasian Chalk Circle runs December 8th through December 16th.

Opening the 2007 spring semester is Scintille Futuriste, a thrilling example of Futurism, the early twentieth-century’s art and philosophy movement that attacked Old World values. Through dissonant words, excessive paradox, and collision of contrary situations, the University Players will depart from everyday reality to lift the audience into a 'blinding atmosphere of intellectual intoxication,' propelled by Futurism's fascination with speed, machine power, and scientific revolution. Scintille Futuriste will be directed by guest artist Sandro Carotti, co-founder of Florence, Italy's Zauberteatro. Performances run March 9th through March 24th.

William Shakespeare’s Pericles is a theatrical epic filled with exotic landscapes, roaring tempests, and swashbuckling pirates. This complex story of life, love, devotion, and virtue was written late in the playwright’s career and is set during the Golden Age of Greece. Pericles opens April 20th and runs through April 28th.

Closing the 2006-2007 season is José Rivera’s miraculous play Marisol. Against a surreal backdrop of an apocalyptic American city, Rivera uses the lens of magic realism to offer a shattering look at an unforgivable future, where angels go to war and Marisol Perez, a modern Everywoman, undertakes a dangerous journey of spiritual renewal. Performances of Marisol run May 4th through May 19th.

Please join the University Players for their most profound and highly-theatrical season ever.

University Players productions run Tuesday–Thursday at 7:00 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m., with a 2:00 p.m. performance on the last Saturday of each run.

The Studio Theatre and the Players Theatre are located in the Theatre Arts building on the south end of the CSULB campus, near 7th Street, between West Campus Drive and East Campus Drive. Tickets for University Players productions range from $10 to $15. Several subscription packages are currently available for the 2006–2007 University Players season.

For tickets and subscription information:
please call (562) 985-5526 or visit the department website at www.csulb.edu/depts/theatre/.

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Full-Time Faculty