Dare to Defy Productions Announces 2015-16 Season

Dare to Defy Productions announces the company's 2015-16 season today. Featuring six productions presented in either the Mathile Theatre in the Schuster Center or the Victoria Theatre in downtown Dayton, the season includes Into the Woods, Godspell, Footloose, The Great American Trailer Park Musical, Wild Party and American Idiot!

"We are delighted to announce our second full season! The theme for this season is based on discovery. All of the shows in our season are in some way about the search and discovery of self and then dealing with the consequences of that discovery. This is apropos as our organization is maturing, we are discovering and defining who we are and how we can best support our community, our audience and our talented artists."

Dare to Defy Productions opens its 2015-16 season in September with a Sondheim masterpiece. Into The Woods tells the gripping story of several of our favorite fairytale characters.

The musical intertwines mainly the plots of several Brothers Grimm fairy tales and follows them to explore the consequences of the characters' wishes and quests. The main characters are taken from "Little Red Riding Hood", "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Rapunzel", and "Cinderella" as well as several others. The musical is tied together by an original story involving a childless baker and his wife and their quest to begin a family, their interaction with a witch who has placed a curse on them, and their interaction with other storybook characters during their journey.

A Time Magazine reviewer wrote that Into The Woods "basic insight ... is at heart, most fairy tales are about the loving yet embattled relationship between parents and children. Almost everything that goes wrong - which is to say, almost everything that can - arises from a failure of parental or filial duty, despite the best intentions." Every character in this show goes through an emotional journey discovering who they really are and how they move forward in a world that is never as simple as it seems.

Into The Woods was written by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. Sondheim said Into The Woods is a story about his troubled childhood. He told Time Magazine that the "father uncomfortable with babies [was] his father, and [the] mother who regrets having had children [was] his mother."

Into The Woods will be presented in the Victoria Theatre, at 8 PM on September 4th and 2 PM and 8 PM on September 5th, 2015. Tickets can be purchased online at my.ticketcenterstage.com or by calling the Box Office at 1-888-228-3630.

Into The Woods opened on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on November 5, 1987, and closed on September 3, 1989 after 765 performances. It starred Bernadette Peters, Joanna Gleason, Chip Zien, Kim Crosby, Ben Wright, Danielle Ferland, Chuck Wagner, Merle Louise, Tom Aldredge, and Robert Westenberg.

The second show in our season is the beloved favorite Godspell. Written by Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak, Godspell is a musical made up of a series of parables.

Godspell grips the audience by introducing them to an ensemble of changing characters and featuring some very well known music. Included is the song "Day by Day," which reached #13 on the billboard pop singles chart in the summer of 1972.

Based on the Gospel of Matthew, the show stresses Jesus' humility and compassion, reinforcing that he's a hero for secular humanists as well as the pious. Whether you go for it depends not on your religious affiliation, but on your tolerance for the format; it can suggest a giddily earnest children's program, with Jesus cast as the firm but likable teacher and his disciples as eager but often unruly students. There are interesting character insights into who someone is in contradiction to what is expected.

Godspell will be presented in the Mathile Theatre, located in the Schuster Center, at 8 PM on October 16th and 23rd and 2 PM and 8 PM on October 17th and 24th, 2015. Tickets can be purchased online at my.ticketcenterstage.com or by calling the Box Office at 1-888-228-3630.

Godspell first opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre on June 22nd, 1976. It was later revived on Broadway at The Circle in The Square Theatre on November 11th, 2011.

In November, Dare to Defy Productions is dancing onto the stage with the four time Tony nominated favorite, Footloose. Footloose is about dance, but it's also about the conflict between wanting to fit in and the desire to change an intolerable situation.

Teenagers have lots of problems, but Footloose high schooler Ren McCormack really feels put upon. Ren's dad has deserted the family and he and his mom Ethel are forced to move from that toddlin' town of Chicago all the way to the nowheresville that is Bomont, described as "a small Midwestern town."

As well as teenage angst, Footloose is all about fun and the carefree nature of being a teen, which of course is never fully appreciated at the time.

Footloose will be presented in the Victoria Theatre, at 8 PM on November 27th and 2 PM and 8 PM on November 28th, 2015. Tickets can be purchased online at my.ticketcenterstage.com or by calling the Box Office at 1-888-228-3630.

Footloose opened at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre on October 22nd, 1998 and ran for 709 performances before closing on July 2nd, 2000.

Join us in January, as The Great American Trailer Park Musical written by David Nehls and Betsy Kelso, explores the relationships between the tenants at the Armadillo Acres Trailer Park in Florida.

The characters are just what you would think to see in this over stereotyped musical. You'll meet Pippi, "the stripper on the run," the Dr. Phil loving, agoraphobic, Jeannie, and Jeannie's tollbooth collector husband, Norbert. Other characters include Lin, Pickles, Duke, and Betty. Other residents of Armadillo Acres round out this wonderfully scored ensemble musical. The highlight on stereotypes is a fun way for us to continue with the theme of self-discovery. Although a lighthearted comedy expect to relate to some of the discoveries these exaggerated characters make about themselves and others.

"Joyful and unashamedly vulgar, Betsy Kelso's comic fable about women in a Florida trailer park and their no-account men is more fun than a chair-throwing episode of Jerry Springer set to music." -The New Yorker

The Great American Trailer Park Musical will be presented in the Mathile Theatre, located in the Schuster Center, at 8 PM on January 22nd and 29th and 2 PM and 8 PM on January 23rd and 30th, 2016. Tickets can be purchased online at my.ticketcenterstage.com or by calling the Box Office at 1-888-228-3630.

The Great American Trailer Park Musical opened off-Broadway at Bows at Dodger Stages on September 27th, 2005. The U.S. regional premiere of The Great American Trailer Park Musical opened on June 2nd, 2006 at Hippodrome State Theatre in Gainesville, Florida.

Next up you are invited to join us for a Wild Party. Wild Party, with book, lyrics, and music by Andrew Lippa, is based on Joseph Moncure March's 1928 poem of the same name. It's great fun to watch and puts enough talent on stage to throw a party in the aisles.

In the roaring 20's a beautiful young Queenie cannot find a lover able to satisfy her desires - until she meets Burrs, a vaudevillian clown with a voracious appetite for women. The dark musical moves on to an exciting wild party that spins fatally out of control.

The score is filled with a number of notable high spots like "Let's Raise the Roof," "The Juggernaut," and "The Life of the Party." This show, again, shows character's discovering what they really want, who they really are and how to deal with the fallout.

The Wild Party won the 2000 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical of the 2000 season, Lucille Lortel Awards for Scenic, Costume, and Lighting Design, and the 1999-2000 Obie Award for Best Choreography. It was also nominated for an additional twelve Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding New Musical.

The Wild Party will be presented in the Mathile Theatre, located in the Schuster Center, at 8 PM on April 1st and 9th and 2 PM and 8 PM on April 2nd and 10th, 2016. Tickets can be purchased online at my.ticketcenterstage.com or by calling the Box Office at 1-888-228-3630.

The Wild Party opened off-Broadway on February 24th, 2000 at the Manhattan Theatre Club.

Dare to Defy Productions is thrilled to close their 2015-16 season with American Idiot!

Don't forget that we have one more treat in the 2014-15 Season as we will be presenting Assassins. Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's 5 time Tony Award winning show Assassins, explores the minds of the men and women who attempted (successfully or not) to assassinate a United States President.

Using a murderous carnival theme, Assassins will take you on an intense, sometimes comical, thought provoking journey into the deranged minds of assassins such as John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley, and many others. The music throughout the shows varies among different styles to represent the different eras of our ensemble of criminals. By developing the characters of historic assassins out of the slim biographical information found in the daily news, Assassins prompts us to consider their motivation. "(Sondheim) confronts pain in order to cauterize the decay and heal the sicknesses which lurk at the core of our society".

Assassins will be presented in the Mathile Theatre, located in the Schuster Center, at 8 PM on July 24th and 2 PM and 8 PM on July 25th, 2015. Tickets can be purchased online at my.ticketcenterstage.com or by calling the Box Office at 1-888-228-3630.

Assassins opened Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizon on December 18th, 1990 before later returning with The Roundabout Theater Company's Broadway production on April 22nd, 2004.

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