Amaryllis Theatre Company Presents WAITING FOR GODOT 11/10-11/22

Amaryllis Theatre Company opens its 2009-2010 season with Samuel Beckett's masterpiece, Waiting for Godot, from November 10 through 22 at Amaryllis Theatre Company's home in The Playground at the Adrienne (2030 Sansom Street).

Performances are at 7:00 on Tuesdays and Opening Night, November 11; at 8:00 on Wednesdays through Fridays except Opening; and at 2:00 on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets at Amaryllis have been reduced to allow all Philadelphians to attend. They are now $10, available through the Amaryllis website: www:amaryllistheatre.org, by calling 877-260-1126 or at the door. Tickets for groups of 10 or more are $5.

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, widely considered the most significant play of the 20th Century, centers around two men who are waiting for someone (or something) named Godot who may (or may not) ever arrive. Beckett's landmark drama, by turns lyrical and earthly, profound and comic, poses essential questions about the meaning of our existence in an absurd universe.

Directed by Amaryllis Producing Artistic Director Mimi Kenney Smith, the ensemble cast features Philadelphia favorites Michael Toner as Vladimir, Buck Schirner as Estragon and David Stanger as Lucky, as well as L.A.'s internationally acclaimed Lynn Manning as Pozzo, and Noel Smith as the Boy. The production brings together the creative team of set designer Dirk Durossette, lighting designer Jerold R. Forsyth, and costume designer by Millie Hiibel.

"I have loved Waiting for Godot ever since I first read it as an undergraduate, but I wanted to wait to direct it until I had enough life experience myself to approach the depth and purposeful ambiguity of the work," said Mimi Smith. "I am thrilled that the cast, too, brings several years of challenging life experiences to their complex roles. In spite of Lynn Manning's childhood in the foster system and violence-related disability, for example, he has gained success internationally as both a world Judo champion and an actor/poet/playwright. He knows the struggle that Beckett characterizes as ‘dwindling man,' but he also understands physicality and theatre. The incidental fact that Manning is blind helps him bring a more concrete understanding to the character, who is blind himself in the second act."

Michael Toner (Didi) returns to Amaryllis Theatre where he has starred Rock Doves, Molly Sweeney and Blood Guilty. Recently seen at Philadelphia Fringe Festival in The Brothers Flanagan, he has also appeared with the Villanova Shakespeare Festival, the American Shaw Festival, the Edinburgh, Scotland Fringe Festival, the International James Joyce Symposium, the W.B. Yeats Society of New York, the Carnegie-Mellon Beckett Festival, the Walnut Street Theatre, and Wilma Theatre.

Buck Schirner (Gogo) works as an actor in most of Philadelphia's professional theatres. He also does Audio book narration for Brilliance Audio and Zondervan. This year, Buck has appeared in three independent films: The Fields with Cloris Leachman (currently filming), Cost of a Soul (soon to be released), and Mayor Cupcake with Lea Thompson and Judd Nelson (just finished filming in September).

Lynn Manning (Pozzo) is a critically acclaimed performance artist, poet and playwright based in Los Angeles. His solo masterpiece, Weights, has won him recognition from Croatia to the Kennedy Center, and from Off Broadway to the Edinburgh Fringe. He performed Weights with Amaryllis in 2007.

David Stanger (Lucky) has performed in many productions in the Philadelphia area, including two mainstage productions with Amaryllis: Much Ado About Nothing and Blood Guilty, as well as two of its touring educational productions. Most recently he performed in the Hear Again Radio Project with Aspire Arts.

Noel Smith (Boy) is a third grade student at Lansdowne Friends School in Delaware County where he plays violin and performs in school productions. This is his first professional production.

Amarylllis' season continues with Gregory Burke's Gagarin Way, a co-production with Inis Nua Theatre Company running January 19 to February 7, 2010. In Gagarin Way two dispossessed factory workers decide to make a political statement by kidnapping an executive from the factory's multi-national corporate owner. But the Cold War is long since over, the workers are too late for the revolution and they find that their hostage challenges their assumptions about the evils of the global economy. Inis Nua Artistic Director Tom Reing directs.

The season concludes with a new production, in American Sign Language and simultaneously spoken English, of I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright from May 11 to 23, 2010. Winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, I Am My Own Wife chronicles Doug Wright's fascination with the life of transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf and her unlikely survival through the Nazi and Communist regimes in East Germany. Featuring Robert DeMayo and Stephen Patrick Smith, this is the first time the play will have been performed in ASL.

Open Captioning is provided on Opening Night, November 11 at 7pm and on Friday, November 20 at 8pm, Audio Description and Sensory Seminars are provided on Opening Night and Sunday, November 15 at 2pm and Braille and Large Print programs are provided for each performance. Additional audio described or open captioed performances are available with 72 hours notice depending on availability of equipment. Amaryllis is wheelchair accessible.

Amaryllis Theatre Company is the theatrical producing arm of VSA arts of Pennsylvania, an affiliate through VSA arts of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. For the last nine years, Amaryllis has been producing award-winning, professional theatre that is fully inclusive and accessible, sharing its accessibility equipment with its colleagues at no charge and training them in its use.
Please call 215-564-2431 or check the website www.amaryllistheatre.org for more information.

 

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