13, JEKYLL & HYDE Highlight Circle Players' 61st Season

Jason Robert Brown's musical about a young Jewish boy making the move from New York to Indiana as his bar mitzvah approaches -- 13 -- is among the highlights of Circle Players' 61^st Season as one of Tennessee's oldest community theatre companies. Circle board president Jim Manning made the announcement of the new season's offerings prior to curtain of the 60^th Season's To Kill a Mockingbird last week.

For its 61^st season, Circle Players will be performing at Donelson's Fifty-Forward Donelson Station - which also is home to Senior Center for the Arts' Nashville Dinner Theatre - after several seasons at the Z. Alexander Looby Theatre in north Nashville.

Circle's season will open with The Grapes of Wrath, running August 13-29 and directed by Clay Hillwig, who currently is playing Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird. Among Hillwig's previous Circle Players directing credits are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Oliver! The Musical.

Veteran director Tim Larson, currently helming the revival of Circle's Titanic the Musical, in collaboration with the Senior Center for the Arts, and director of last summer's Fame the Musical, will direct Frank Wildhorn's Jekyll & Hyde for its October 15-31 run.

Patrick Kramer, director of the 60^th Season's Noises Off, will direct Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, for its January 7-23, 2011, run.

Jamie London, who played the title role in Circle's production of Mame last December, will take the reins for 13, which features music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and a book by Dan Elish and Robert Horn. It runs April 22-May 8, 2011.

Completing the season, in its fourth slot, is a musical still to be determined which will be directed by Paul J. Cook, who this season directed Fat Pig for GroundWorks Theatre and is currently at work on Street Theatre Company's production of The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. That fourth show in Circle Players' season will run February 18-March 6, 2011.

Season subscriptions, which are $60 for 5 Flex Passes for adults, and $50 for Flex Passes for both seniors and students, are available by calling the Circle Players box office at (615) 332-7529, or online at www.circleplayers.net.

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