The Wilma Theater Opens 09-10 Season with Fugard's COMING HOME Oct. 14 - Nov. 15

The Wilma Theater opens its 2009-2010 Season with Coming Home, the latest work by internationally acclaimed playwright Athol Fugard - the second most frequently produced playwright at the Wilma, following Tom Stoppard. The Wilma's production of Coming Home, directed by the Wilma's co-Artistic Director Blanka Zizka, is only the play's third production, after its premiere at New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre earlier this year.

In his latest play, Fugard, described as "the greatest active playwright in the English-speaking world" by TIME Magazine, crafts a moving tale of a young South African woman's never-ending hope for a better future. As a teenager, Veronica left her cherished grandfather's farm with aspirations of becoming a cabaret singer in Cape Town. Years later, she returns to her hometown with broken dreams, a painful secret, and the unflinching hope of building a new life for her young son.

Coming Home at the Wilma begins previews on October 14, opens on October 21 (press night), and closes on November 15, 2009. Tickets start at $36 and are available at the Wilma Box Office by calling (215) 546-7824, visiting 265 South Broad Street, or online at www.wilmatheater.org. Student tickets are available for $10, depending on date and time, made possible through a grant from PNC Arts Alive.

The Wilma has previously produced four of Fugard's plays, beginning with Statements After An Arrest Under the Immortality Act in the 1987-1988 Season, followed by The Road to Mecca, Playland, and most recently My Children! My Africa!, also directed by Blanka Zizka in the 2006-2007 Season.

Fugard, now 76, first visited the Wilma in 1988, during Zizka's production of Statements After An Arrest Under the Immortality Act. He told the Wilma's Dramaturg and Literary Manager, Walter Bilderback, "I fell in love with Blanka's vision for her theater. Her understanding that good theater has to both educate and entertain the minds and hearts of her audience, is exactly what I strive for in my writing... How wonderful that Coming Home is going to find a home on the stage of the brave and courageous Wilma Theater."

Zizka says she first became familiar with Fugard's work in the early 80s. "All of Athol's plays have always moved me to tears," Zizka says. "His characters seemed so alive and full of potential, but the ugliness of the world they inhabited, with its depraved laws, crawled into their souls and defeated them. Athol's plays show us that individual lives are not isolated from the society they live in. The policies and laws that may seem abstract and bureaucratic can horrendously disrupt the potential to lead a decent life."

Coming Home is a sequel to Fugard's mid-90s play Valley Song, an optimistic, hopeful play about South Africa's future. In Coming Home, Fugard revisits the character of Veronica, whom he describes as "a real young girl who I knew and who dreamt about going to the city, and I realized she could be an embodiment of the hope that we all had... But then, twelve years on, things have changed in South Africa."

"[Valley Song] expressed my - and I think the majority of South Africans' - hope that, with the fall of apartheid, we had entered a new world and that it was going to be a different story from now on," Fugard told The Hartford Courant's Frank Rizzo in a January 2009 interview. "Well, the truth is, as the years have passed, I have seen the dreams start to wither... South Africa just went into a state of total idiocy and madness that cost the lives of thousands of men, women and children... It just seemed to me, at this moment in South Africa's history, I needed to follow up and take a look at that big dream that we had."

Cast & Production Team
The Wilma's cast includes Lou Ferguson as Oupa Jonkers. Ferguson also portrayed Oupa in the world premiere of Coming Home and last appeared at the Wilma in Playland. His numerous credits include TV, film, regional theater, and Broadway credits such as Seven Guitars, Two Trains Running, and Playboy of the West Indies.

Veronica Jonkers is played by Patrice Johnson, whose Broadway credits include The Crucible and Racing Demon; regional credits include the role of Desdemona, opposite Patrick Stewart, in Shakespeare Theatre Company's Othello; in addition to several Off-Broadway, film and TV credits, including Without a Trace, The Guardian, and ER. Johnson is also the writer, director and producer of three independent feature films - Kingcounty, Ny's Dirty Laundry, and Hill and Gully.

Alfred Witbooi is played by Nyambi Nyambi, who has appeared on Broadway in Joe Turner's Come and Gone at Lincoln Center Theater and Off-Broadway with Classic Stage Company, Classical Theatre of Harlem, and Partial Comfort Productions, among others.

Two young local actors will play the role of Veronica's son, Mannetjie. 10-year-old Antonio J. Dandridge will portray Mannetjie at age 9, and 9-year-old Elijah Felder will portray Mannetjie at age 5.

The set and costumes are designed by Anne Patterson, with lighting design by Thom Weaver, sound design by Andrea Sotzing, and original music composed by South African musician Mogauwane Mahloele.

 

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