NOLA Project Announces 2017-18 Season

The NOLA Project, New Orleans' premier professional ensemble theatre company, under the Artistic Direction of A.J. Allegra, is excited to announce the company's 2017-18 Season, Lucky No. 13. Now entering its teenage years, The NOLA Project is eager to present a season that is part angst, part rebellion, and all nerve, in the tradition of the very best and provocative NOLA Project work seen over its 13-year history.

"This season is very much informed by an examination of our political situation, both local and national," says Allegra. "We wanted a season that spoke to a sense of unease that we detect right now in America, and a great sense of change that we feel both as a nation and as a city settling into our new normality a decade-plus after our great national redefinition. The American people and our political system are at odds, and the stories we tell in our 2017-18 Season reflect those oppositions in humorous, frank, exaggerated, and fantastical means. I think each story speaks in some way to our identity as Americans and our identity as New Orleanians."

URINETOWN, music and lyrics by Mark Hollmann, book and lyrics by Greg Kotis, running September 29-October 15 at UNO's Robert E. Nims Theatre. Directed by A.J. Allegra. Co-produced by Theatre UNO at the University of New Orleans.

For the first time since 2008's ASSASSINS, The NOLA Project presents a musical! An absurd notion fully realized, URINETOWN shows us a dystopian metropolis where a terrible water shortage caused by a 20-year drought has led to a government-enforced ban on private toilets. The citizens must use public amenities owned and operated by a single malevolent company and its ruthless egomaniacal CEO that profits by charging admission for one of humanity's most-basic needs. Amid the people, a simple amenity worker decides that enough is enough and plans a revolution to lead them all to freedom!

Inspired by the works of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, URINETOWN is an irreverent Tony Award-winning musical satire in which no one is safe from scrutiny. This 2001 musical comedy concerning unbridled corporate greed and the privatization of a basic human right seems oddly compelling and dangerously timely in the modern American Age of Trump. NOLA Project Artistic Director A.J. Allegra will direct.

THE BATTLE FOR NEW ORLEANS by Jim Fitzmorris, running November 2-November 18 at the St. Alphonsus Art and Cultural Center in the Irish Channel. Directed by Beau Bratcher.

Times are tense in New Orleans. A new upscale food court masquerading as a community market is about to open in a hip (some would say "developing") New Orleans neighborhood. And the members of the neighborhood protection organization, Oak Roots, are not going to take it lying down. Set up in an oddly-opulent makeshift office inside of an Irish Channel church recently saved from demolition, the members of Oak Roots must prepare for battle with the developers, draw alliances with members on the City Council, and face off with one another as they confront the ultimate question: Who gets to say what's best for New Orleans?

Playwright Jim Fitzmorris and The NOLA Project team up for this World Premiere follow-up play to A TRUCKLOAD OF INK, the 2013 award-winning drama about the internal collapse of New Orleans' iconic newspaper. While not a direct sequel, THE BATTLE FOR NEW ORLEANS continues the exploration of crucial local themes such as gentrification, agency, politics, and development through characters that are instantly familiar and classically Jim Fitzmorris. For the production, The NOLA Project will continue its bold tradition of presenting plays in unique, site-specific locations by staging THE BATTLE FOR NEW ORLEANS inside the historic St. Alphonsus Church, now operating as the St. Alphonsus Art and Cultural Center in New Orleans' Irish Channel neighborhood. Big Easy Award winner Beau Bratcher will direct.

MEN ON BOATS by Jaclyn Backhaus, running March 22-April 8 in Lusher's Lions Gate Theatre. Directed by Shannon Sindelar.

Ten explorers. Four boats. One Grand Canyon. MEN ON BOATS is the true(ish) history of an 1869 expedition, when a one-armed captain and a crew of insane yet loyal volunteers set out to chart the course of the Colorado River. Along the way, they must battle the elements, and all too often, one another. This at turns hilarious, at turns poignant play is an insightful commentary of American history turned on its head, as the entire cast and creative team of "men" are all played by women. Originally premiering in NYC at Playwrights Horizons in 2015, this marks the first-ever production of the play in the American South. The original production received thrilling reviews with Variety calling the play "OFF-THE-CANYON-WALLS FUNNY. Paddle or portage your own boat to the theater-but get there!" And Time Out New York said, "???? - A thrilling, gender-flipped slice of manifest destiny."

Shannon Sindelar, New York-based theatre director and producer, is our special guest directing the production. She is the former producing Artistic Director of Brooklyn's Brave New World Repertory Theatre and is a co-founder and curator of the Incubator Arts Project in the East Village.

THE THREE MUSKETEERS, a new adaptation by Pete McElligott, running May 9-27 in the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden at NOMA. Produced in partnership with NOMA. Directed by Mark Routhier.

The NOLA Project returns to NOMA's Besthoff Sculpture Garden with another exciting and hilarious adaptation by award-winning playwright Pete McElligott (ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, DON QUIXOTE). This time, the company takes on Alexandre Dumas' classic tale THE THREE MUSKETEERS in an adaptation that is part Monty Python foolishness, part swashbuckling adventure tale, and all NOLA Project. Big Easy Award winner Mark Routhier will direct.

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