LOBSTER ALICE, TERMINUS & More Set for convergence-continuum's 2014 Season

convergence-continuum has announced its 2014 Season - check out all the details below!

SERIES ONE: THE MENAGERIE SURREAL

In this three-play series the themes vary significantly, but the common thread is that each takes a surrealistic approach to its subject matter and each features a stylized animal/human character. The series features two surrealistic romantic comedies and finishes off with a quirky consideration of the role of chance in our lives.

Lobster Alice by Kira Obolensky (Cleveland premiere), March 14 - April 5

Directed by TBA

It's 1946 and Alice Horowitz, coffee-bearing secretary, wants life to be interesting. John Finch, an animator at work on Disney's Alice in Wonderland, wants Alice. When the great and outrageous Salvador Dali arrives at the studio to work on a short animated film (this part is actually true), life becomes curiouser and curiouser. Dali scandalizes the conservative Finch; Alice, coffee-bearing secretary, becomes Alice, girl down the rabbit hole; and Finch and Alice both experience the very surreal whimsies of the human heart.

Swimming in the Shallows by Adam Bock (Cleveland premiere), May 2 - 24

Directed by Lisa Wiley

Barb finds out that Buddhist monks in Thailand only own eight things and wonders if that is all she wants. She starts giving away her things, but her husband Bob keeps buying her new ones. Donna wants Carla Carla to marry her, but Carla Carla doesn't like that Donna smokes. Nick falls in love with a shark at the aquarium. They go on a date to the beach, and Nick tries not to sleep with the shark too fast. Plus dream sequences. Plus a wedding.

A Map of Virtue by Erin Courtney (Regional premiere), June 20 - July 12

Directed by Clyde Simon

Part interview, part comedy, part middle-night-middle-forest horror story, A Map of Virtue is a perfectly symmetrically-structured play guided by a bird statue. An unlikely friendship between Mark and Sarah develops when he gives her a small bird statue during a chance encounter. Although inextricably linked, they remain strangers (she's married, he has a boyfriend) until they are forced, along with Sarah's husband Nate and Mark's boyfriend Victor, to share a frightening weekend in a cabin deep in the woods that derails into a quiet, pitiless nightmare. The play is a meticulously symmetrical arrangement of themes, organized around seven virtues which are announced by the narrator - the tiny statue of a meadowlark. "Though it begins as a quirky meditation on chance and symmetry, Ms. Courtney's drama soon reveals itself as one of the most terrifying plays of the past decade." (Alexis Soloski, The New York Times)

Series One is supported in part by the residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture

SERIES TWO: THE ARTIST AND OPPRESSION

For this two-play series we take a dark-comedy look at the role of the artist in the face of repression.

Amazons and Their Men by Jordan Harrison (Ohio premiere), August 8 - 30.

Directed by Clyde Simon

Inspired by the life and work of Leni Riefenstahl: The Frau used to direct beautiful films for a fascist government. Now she's trying to make a film that's simply beautiful. The Frau casts herself in the lead role of the Amazon queen Penthesilea, who falls in love with Achilles on the battlefield of the Trojan War. She recruits a man from the Jewish ghetto to play her Achilles. The movie's handsome Achilles, however, is falling for the beautiful young man, a messenger (who the Frau casts as Petroclus) who keeps bringing her telegrams from her "friends" in the Fascist government on the verge of starting a war. Meanwhile, the Frau's sister, a recurring extra in her films whose specialty is spectacularly dying on camera, is trying to get her to wake up to the ominous goings-on in the world.

The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh, September 26 - October 18

Directed by Geoffrey Hoffman

The setting of this dark dramatic comedy is an unnamed totalitarian state where Katurian, a writer of short stories which often depict violence against children, has been arrested by two detectives, Ariel and Tupolski, because some of his stories resemble recent child murders. When he hears that his brother Michal has confessed to the murders and implicated Katurian, he resigns himself to his execution but attempts to save his stories from destruction. The play includes both narrations and reenactments of several of Katurian's stories, most notably the autobiographical "The Writer and the Writer's Brother", which tells how Katurian developed his disturbed imagination by hearing the sounds of Michal being tortured by their parents.

AND ONE MORE!

A rare U.S. production of this Edinburgh Fringe Festival standout sensation.

Terminus by Mark O'Rowe (Regional premiere), November 21 - December 20

Directed by Clyde Simon

Three people are ripped from their daily lives and catapulted into a fantastical world. Terminus charts their violent collision course with wickedly funny and shocking twists featuring singing serial killers, avenging angels and lovesick demons. Terminus is a recounting of the events of one rather surreal and occasionally terrifying night in Dublin when three characters, A, B and C are yanked from their everyday lives. A goes on a quest to try and stop a women who is eight months pregnant from having an abortion, B finds herself falling from a crane after her friend tries to steal her lover and C makes a pact with the devil in exchange for a beautiful singing voice which is guaranteed to woo the ladies. A, B and C tell their stories in three separate intertwining monologues, written entirely in a lilting verse style reminiscent of Hip-Hip.

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