5th Wall Theatre Announces It's Seventh Season

5th Wall Theatre, the award-winning professional theatre dedicated to breaking through boundaries, will open its seventh season this fall with "Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods" by Tammy Ryan. This powerful and timely play about immigration, human need, and human aid kicks off a four-show subscription season in October.

The season schedule:

Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods by Tammy Ryan
Preview October 10, 2019
October 11 - November 2, 2019
Directed by Keith Fitzgerald

In the early '90s in Sudan after civil war destroyed their villages, an exodus of boys trekked 800 miles across Africa until making it to refugee camps in Kenya, where they lived on a bowl of grain a day for 10 years. In 2001, the U.S. resettled 3,600 of these "lost boys" in cities across America. Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods tells the story of Christine, a recently divorced "East Ender" from Pittsburgh, who meets Gabriel, a former "lost boy" working in the produce section of Whole Foods. Soon Gabriel's world becomes enmeshed with hers and daughter Alex - leading to a remarkable journey of awareness, struggle and hopefulness. The play asks the question: what happens when we open up our lives to help another human being - leaving us to wonder about the effect of one soul upon another.

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Preview January 16, 2020
January 17 - February 8, 2020

Amanda Wingfield is a faded remnant of Southern gentility who now lives in a dingy St. Louis apartment with her son and daughter, Tom and Laura. Laura has a physical handicap and debilitating shyness. The father has left home; Tom supports his mother and sister with a shoe-factory job he finds unbearable. When Amanda convinces Tom to bring home from his workplace a "gentleman caller" for Laura, the illusions that Tom, Amanda, and Laura have each created in order to make life bearable collapse about them. A drama of great tenderness, charm, and beauty, THE GLASS MENAGERIE is an icon of the American theater.

Fulfillment Center by Abe Koogler
Preview April 2, 2020
April 3- April 25, 2020

In the New Mexico desert, a down-on-her-luck folk singer takes a job at a giant online retailer's shipping center. Her young manager struggles to connect with his girlfriend newly relocated from New York. And a drifter living at a local campground dangerously links them all. A raw, surprising, and funny play about four lonely lives coming together in the search for fulfillment. "[A] quietly shattering play...though you're likely to feel the pressure of unshed tears when [it] is over, FULFILLMENT CENTER is also an unexpectedly inspiriting work. ...The [play] is steeped in a luminous and illuminating empathy that feels both uncommon and essential...The New York Times.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (A co-production of 5th Wall Theatre and TheatreLAB)
Book by Alex Timbers
Music and Lyrics by Michael Friedman

Preview July 16, 2020
July 17 - August 22, 2020

A co-production of 5th Wall Theatre and TheatreLAB, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson follows America's seventh president from his early days as a child on the wild frontier to his controversial reign in the White House. With the country divided into rich and poor (and with continued skirmishes with the Native Americans upsetting pieces of the new world), Jackson begins his steady climb from military strategist to populist rabble-rouser to President of the United States. Along the way, he meets his wife, Rachel, takes on the Founding Fathers - and rocks like no political figure has ever rocked before, with the help of an onstage trio and an entourage of singing, joking cohorts. It also asks the question: is wanting to have a beer with someone reason enough to elect him? What if he's really, really hot? It's an exhilarating and raucous look at one of four of our nation's founding rock stars, reinventing the life of our seventh president.

All performances for Season 2019-2020 are at The Basement, 300 E. Broad Street in RVA's Downtown Arts District. Tickets for each show are $32 ($20 RVAT card holders; $15 students; group rates available).

The price of a 4-show subscription for Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods, The Glass Menagerie, Fulfillment Center and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is $110. Subscriptions can now be purchased at www.5thwalltheatre.org.

The company's name expands on the concept of the "fourth wall," a metaphor for the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage through which the audience sees the world of the play. The "5th wall" represents yet another dimension to the theatrical experience, breaking the traditional social and theatrical boundaries. The theatre's mission is to provide insights into our human condition through theatrical expression. For more, visit our website at www.5thwalltheatre.org.

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