Spotlighters Announces 56th Season!

Spotlighters is thrilled to announce a challenging and inspiring selection of exceptional theatre for our 56th Season. This season, we take our audiences on a journey of discovery and introspection, of searching and longing, to find a place we belong!

We hope that you will join us and find your place for Exceptional, Diverse, Creative & Bold theatre at Spotlighters. Season subscriptions will be available by late May 2017.

Season 56 - 2017/2018

Two Trains Running

August Wilson

Fuzz Roark, with Anya Randal Nebel

Sept 15-Oct 8, 2017

This is the 1960s chapter of the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright's decade by decade saga of ordinary African Americans in this turbulent century. It takes place in Memphis Lee's coffee shop in a Pittsburgh neighborhood that is on the brink of economic development. Focus is on the characters who hang out there: a local sage, an elderly man who imparts the secrets of life as learned from a 322 year old sage, an ex con, a numbers runner, a laconic waitress who slashed her legs to keep men away, and a retarded man who was once cheated out of a ham. With Chekhovian obliqueness, the author reveals simple truths, hopes and dreams, creating a microcosm of an era and a community on the brink of change.

The Hairy Ape

Eugene O'Neil

Sherrionne Brown

Oct 27-Nov 19, 2017

The Hairy Ape is a 1922 expressionist play by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. It is about a brutish, unthinking laborer known as Yank, the antagonist of the play, as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich. At first, Yank feels secure as he stokes the engines of an ocean liner, and is highly confident in his physical power over the ship's engines and his men.

However, when the rich daughter of an industrialist in the steel business refers to him as a "filthy beast", Yank undergoes a crisis of identity and so starts his mental and physical deterioration. He leaves the ship and wanders into Manhattan, only to find he does not belong anywhere-neither with the socialites on Fifth Avenue, nor with the labor organizers on the waterfront. In a fight for social belonging, Yank's mental state disintegrates into animalistic, and in the end he is defeated by an ape in which Yank's character has been reflected. The Hairy Ape is a portrayal of the impact industrialization and social class has on the dynamic character Yank.

Women on the Verge (Musical)

Pedro Almodovar

Fuzz Roark

Michael Tan, musical direction

Dec 15, 2017 - Jan 21, 2018

Both touching and hilarious, Women On The Verge is a story about women and the men who pursue them... finding them, losing them, needing them, and rejecting them. At the center is Pepa whose friends and lovers are blazing a trail through 1980s Madrid. Along with Pepa, there's her missing (possibly philandering) lover, Ivan; his ex-wife of questionable sanity, Lucia; their son Carlos; Pepa's friend, Candela, and her terrorist boyfriend; a power-suited lawyer, and a taxi driver who dispenses tissues, mints and advice in equal proportion. Mayhem and comic madness abound, balanced by the empathy and heart that are trademarks of Almodóvar's work.

I Hate Hamlet

Paul Rudnick

Ilene Chalmers

Feb 9 - Mar 4, 2018

A young and successful television actor relocates to New York, where he rents a marvelous, gothic apartment. With his television career in limbo, the actor is offered the opportunity to play Hamlet onstage, but there's one problem: He hates Hamlet. His dilemma deepens with the entrance of John Barrymore's ghost, who arrives intoxicated and in full costume to the apartment that once was his. The contrast between the two actors, the towering, dissipated Barrymore whose Hamlet was the greatest of his time, and Andrew Rally, hot young television star, leads to a wildly funny duel over women, art, success, duty, television, and yes, the apartment. "...fast-mouthed and funny...It has the old-fashioned Broadway virtues of brightness without pretensions and sentimentality without morals." -Village Voice.

Dessa Rose (Musical)

Ahrens/Flaherty

Fuzz Roark withJ Purnell Hargrove

Mar 23 - Apr 22, 2018

Dessa Rose is a remarkably engaging piece of musical theatre which charts the life of two women from the mid 1800s to the early 1920s in America, mostly the South. Dessa Rose is born as a slave but by the time she is sixteen she has had a child, been sentenced to death and gone on the run. Her story is intermixed with that of Ruth, a white woman born into stately Southern graciousness and expected to marry well. She marries, but not well - and finds herself alone and abandoned by her gambler husband, a dysfunctional plantation her home.

The musical charts the friendship which eventually grows strong between these two women, both of whom are remarkable, tenacious and wonderful in their own way. It's almost a fable;at times, except for the fact that it is a tale about two women, you could be forgiven for thinking that Mark Twain had written it, such is the comic spirit and the raw, intense observations about the vicissitudes of life for women and African Americans in the Deep South in those decades where slavery was de rigeur and hope and harmony hard fought.

It's funny and deeply touching in turns, and there are many turns before the tale is done.

Purlie (Musical)

Ossie Davis, Peter Udell, Phillip Rose

Anya Nebel

May 11 - June 10, 2018

Purlie Victorious, that strutting, new fangled preacher man is back home and he wants a church and he wants freedom. Witty, memorable music and a whole lotta of fun unfold as Purlie outmaneuvers ol' Colonel and gets his girl Lutiebelle (or she gets him!). From the composers of Shenandoah.

Judy & the General (Musica)

A NEW MUSICAL WORK

Rosemary Toohey

Sherrionne Brown

Michael Tan, musical direction

June 29 - July 29, 2018

Based upon the Old Testament book of Judith - a history, that wasn't included in the Old Testament Canon. The story of a woman who takes it upon herself to save her town from impending destruction, and the indecision of the male dominated leadership!

Individual Ticket Prices for the 2017/2018 Season

Adults $22

Seniors (60+) $20

Students/Military (ID required) $18

Information will be available online by early May, and subscription sales will be available in late May 2017.

More information, email Info@spotlighters.org

To post a comment, you must register and login.