Acclaimed Stage Play FAITH HEALER Leads 17th Season At City Theatre Austin

Acclaimed Irish playwright Brian Friel takes us across the sea to a mystical and haunting land as City Theatre Austin begins its 17th season with the celebrated play Faith Healer.

City Theatre is thrilled to begin the 2022 - 2023 season in partnership with Genesis Presbyterian Church. Genesis is located right in the heart of Austin, just blocks from the Mueller community and City Theatre's previous venue.

Throughout the remote and forgotten corners of the British Isles, Frank Hardy offers the promise of redemption to the sick, the suffering, and the most desperate and hopeless of souls. But his is an unreliable gift, a dangerous calling which brings him into conflict with his wife, Grace and his manager, Teddy. Each tale they tell stirs old memories and new revelations in a spellbinding narrative, as their competing accounts of past events reveal the fragility of memory and the necessity of stories that we are never forgotten.

Brian Friel is the best-known Irish playwright of his generation. Often referred to as "Ireland's Chekhov," his major works include, Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Molly Sweeney, and the critically acclaimed Faith Healer and Dancing at Lughnasa, which won the Olivier Award and three Tony Awards. Other honors include the Evening Standard Award for Best Play, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play, membership into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the British Royal Society of Literature, and induction into the American Theater Hall of Fame. His plays have been compared to those of contemporaries such as Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter, and Tennessee Williams. The New York Times's theater critic, Vincent Canby, spoke for many when he wrote that Mr. Friel has long been recognized as Ireland's greatest dramatist, having "dazzled us with plays that speak in a language of unequaled poetic beauty and intensity." In Friel's literary career, he wrote twenty-four published plays, two short-story collections and eight published play adaptations. Faith Healer was first produced at the Longacre Theatre, New York, in 1979 and was revived at The Donmar Warehouse, London, in 2016.

The Austin production is led by City Theatre Artistic Director Andy Berkovsky and features the veteran all-star cast of Rick Smith (Gross Indecency, Virginia Woolf?, All My Sons), Dawn Erin (Agnes of God, The Miracle Worker, Macbeth) and Steve Wright (An Ideal Husband, The Seafarer, Reckless). City Theatre is celebrating its 17th anniversary season of live theatre entertainment. CTC is an Austin-based, not-for-profit arts organization and is sponsored in part by the Austin Creative Alliance and the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin. Founded in 2006, the company has been recognized by the Austin Critics Table Awards, the B. Iden Payne Awards, the Central Texas Excellence in Theatre Awards, BroadwayWorld Austin, Central Texas Live Theatre, and has twice been voted "Best Theatre Company" by Austin American-Statesman's Austin 360. CTC is dedicated in providing a quality, reputable, and diverse public theatre and Stage Entertainment experience that is accessible to all artists and the entire Austin community. CTC continues to offer its student and group discount ticket program for any show. Put a little theatre in your life!

Faith Healer

by Brian Friel

November 17 - December 11. Thursday - Saturday 8:00 pm. Sunday 3 pm.

Genesis Fellowship Hall. 1507 Wilshire Blvd. Austin, TX 78722.

General Seating $15. Center Reserved $20-25. Group and student discounts.

Tkts 512-470-1100 or info@citytheatreaustin.org. www.citytheatreaustin.org

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