Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre Announces Its 2010 Season, 'Dreams and Nightmares'

Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre will turn to the fertile landscape of dreams and the dark underworld of nightmares next year with a world premier musical, Shakespeare, a blow-out festival of the works of Harold Pinter, a holiday comedy, and the popular Storytellers Series.

The 2010 season runs April-August, with a special family-friendly December production in time for the holidays. PICT begins its "Dreams and Nightmares" season with a World Premier music drama by local star Martin Giles. Beautiful Dreamers features the songs of a local who became an international legend - Stephen Foster. The season continues with an intense, intimate production of Shakespeare's masterful Othello in the Henry Heymann Theatre; Hearing Noise in the Silence: A celebration of the life and theatre of Harold Pinter, featuring the hilariously dark comedy The Hothouse and the resonant, haunting No Man's Land, as well as The Room, Celebration, The Dumb Waiter and Betrayal; and wraps up with Harold Brighouse's Victorian comedy Hobson's Choice. The Storytellers Series continues this year with Pinteresque, featuring works by some of the top American and British playwrights who were inspired by the great Harold Pinter. Pinteresque will include directed readings of Joe Penhall's Blue/Orange, Jez Butterworth's The Night Heron, Sam Shepard's Geography of a Horse Dreamer, and Joe Orton's The Ruffian on the Stair.

PICT's mainstage season begins in April, 2010 with the World Premier of Beautiful Dreamers, a music drama co-produced with Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, in association with the Stephen Foster Museum and Center for American Music and featuring the music of Pittsburgh's own Stephen Foster. Beautiful Dreamers is written and directed by PICT associate artist Martin Giles, with musical arrangements by Douglas Levine. An epic human comedy, Beautiful Dreamers uses the great songs of Stephen Foster to help tell the story of a young man's journey across mid-19th Century America and into the heart of the American Dream. Moses Walker, heart broken by love, sets off from New York on a journey West seeking love, self, freedom, and home. He finds companions along the way - a Virginia widow and a runaway slave - and together they cross mighty rivers, the Great Plains, the Rocky and Sierra mountains, and come to the shining Pacific. They find the Oregon Trail and the Badlands of the Dakotas. They meet Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Sam Clemens, soldiers and Indians, rabid ghosts, stolid homesteaders, bitter 49ers, burlesque acts, and a fringe religious sect. They experience love and loss, humor, passion and death - the making of a Nation in a landscape of dreams. The cast includes Stephanie Riso and Kevin Brown.

Beautiful Dreamers previews April 15th and 16th, opens April 17th, and runs through May 1st in the Charity Randall Theatre. Special 10 a.m. student matinees are scheduled for April 14th and April 20th.

Othello will be presented in an intense and intimate production in the Henry Heymann Theatre in May and June. Shakespeare's great tale of jealousy and hubris is as valid today as it was when it was first produced in the early 1600's, with its exploration of timeless themes of love and infidelity, trust and betrayal, and race and disrespect. Othello is the story of a soldier propelled into murderous fury by his wife's apparent unfaithfulness. The hero is a black man who has risen to power in a society ruled by whites; a proud and honorable warrior brought to his knees by the malevolent machinations of his own trusted friend and ensign, the villain Iago. Eminently human (and at times almost too painful to watch), the tragedy of Othello draws us in like no other play, and for that reason it is one of Shakespeare's greatest achievements. PICT Artistic Director Andrew S. Paul directs in the intimate confines of the Henry Heymann Theatre. Othello previews May 20th and 21st, opens May 22nd, and runs through June 12th. Special 10 a.m. student matinees are scheduled for May 19th, 25th, and June 1st.

Following the unprecedented successes of PICT's 2006 BeckettFest and 2008 Synge Cycle, 2010 brings Hearing Noise in the Silence: A celebration of the life and theatre of Harold Pinter. When he succumbed to his long battle with cancer in December 2008, playwright, poet, director, activist and actor Harold Pinter was one of Britain's most lauded and influential artists. In addition to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, Pinter's long list of awards included the Tony Award, BAFTA awards, the French Lègion d'honneur, the David Cohen Prize, Lawrence Olivier Award, and 20 honorary degrees.

PICT will honor Harold Pinter with a festival devoted to his work, featuring six of his plays. The Hothouse, one of his early and rarely-produced plays, and the haunting and surreal No Man's Land, are the centerpieces of the festival. The Hothouse opens the festival on July 22nd, and plays through August 22nd in the Henry Heymann Theatre. Sinister and scathingly funny, this dark comedy unlocks the secrets of a state-run "rest home" where the staff is even more disturbed than the inmates. Written in 1958 and long buried by its author, The Hothouse was not produced until 1980. It is one of Pinter's best and funniest plays, dealing with the worm-eaten corruption of bureaucracy, the secrecy of government, and the disjunction between language and understanding. No Man's Land plays in the Charity Randall Theatre July 30th through August 21st. The play centers on Hirst, a wealthy recluse haunted by dreams and memories, and Spooner, a down-at-the-heels poet. Do the men really know each other, or are they performing an elaborate charade? The ambiguity - and the comedy - intensify with the arrival of Hirst's manservants Briggs and Foster, who may be lovers. All four inhabit a no-man's-land between time present and time remembered, between reality and imagination. No Man's Land was first presented at the National Theatre at the Old Vic in 1975, in a memorable production starring Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud. PICT's all-star cast will be directed by Artistic Director Andrew S. Paul.

Pinter Celebration featuring four of Pinter's one-act plays in two programs will be performed in the Henry Heymann and the Charity Randall Theatres between August 5th and 21st. Program A consists of the Beckett-inspired two-hander The Dumb Waiter, and Betrayal, which traces an adulterous affair backwards in time, starting two years after the affair has ended. Program B consists of Pinter's chilling first play The Room, and the Pittsburgh premier of his hilarious final play, Celebration. All six Pinter plays can be seen on a single weekend on August 12th - 14th and August 20th - 22nd. The festival will conclude on Sunday, August 22nd at 7 p.m. with a special evening of Pinter poetry and prose performed by and followed by a discussion with the entire Pinter company. PICT's celebration of Harold Pinter will be performed by an ensemble of just 14 actors, 9 men and 5 women, who will each appear in two or more productions.

The 2010 season ends with a holiday production that's sure to captivate the entire family -- Victorian playwright Harold Brighouse's charming comedy Hobson's Choice. Henry Horation Hobson, widower and boot-shop proprietor, is much incensed at the ‘general increase in uppishness' amongst his three daughters. Relations take a turn for the worse when he accuses eldest daughter Maggie of being past the marrying age. Maggie promptly retaliates by marrying Hobson's best boot-maker, Will Mossop, and turning this shy, illiterate laborer into a substantial business rival to Hobson. Hobson disowns the entire family but finds he cannot live without them. Bowing to the circumstances, he has no choice but to accept Will as his partner in the new firm of ‘Mossop and Hobson'. Christopher Newton, the former long-time Artistic Director at Canada's Shaw Festival, directs a cast of twelve, including PICT Associate Artist Simon Bradbury as Will Mossop and Canadian legend Michael Ball in his PICT debut as Hobson. Hobson's Choice plays in the Charity Randall Theatre, with previews on December 2nd and 3rd, opens on December 4th, and plays through December 18th. Special 10 a.m. student matinees are scheduled for December 1st and 7th.

Ten different season subscription packages are available, ranging from $180 to $265. Flexible packages are also available. Single tickets range from $34 to $50, with $20 tickets available for those under 25. Single tickets for Pinter Celebration Programs A and B are $32 each. The Storytellers Series is available as an add-on to subscriptions for only $40; individual tickets for the Storytellers Series are $15. Subscriptions on sale now, and can be purchased by calling Eric Nelson at 412-561-6000 x207 or emailing enelson@picttheatre.org. Single tickets will go on sale early in 2010.

The Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre was founded in 1996 to diversify the region's theatrical offerings by providing Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania audiences with high-quality, text-driven, affordable productions of classical theatre and the works of classical and contemporary Irish playwrights and to significantly improve employment opportunities for local talent in all facets of theatrical presentation and production. PICT is a Small Professional Theatre (SPT) affiliated with Actors' Equity Association, and a constituent member of Theatre Communications Group (TCG) and the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council. PICT is the Professional Theatre in Residence at the University of Pittsburgh and PICT Productions at the Charity Randall and Henry Heymann Theatres are presented in cooperation with the University of Pittsburgh - Department of Theatre Arts.

For tickets and more information contact ProArts Tickets at 412-394-3353 or visit PICT online at www.picttheatre.org

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