'ARTURO UI', 'MR. BURNS', SPRING AWAKENING Set for Wilbury Group's 2016-17 Season

The Wilbury Theatre Group's Founding Artistic Director Josh Short has announced the Group's 2016/17 season.

The exciting five-play season includes a new adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's timely The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, new works by Young Jean Lee and Erik Ehn, and one of the most critically acclaimed musicals of the last 20 years, Spring Awakening.

Additionally, the 2016/17 season will be the first season performed in The Group's newly acquired 4,000 square foot performance space in the historic Capital Records building, in Olneyville.

"We couldn't be more excited about getting into our new home in Olneyville next September with what promises to be our most ambitious season yet," says Josh Short. "We open our Main Series with a new adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui that's just in time in for the political season, then a further continuation of the examination of power at home with Young Jean Lee's Straight White Men. Then on to Harold Pinter's masterpiece work of love and power, Betrayal, then we flash forward to the end of the world with Anne Washburn's brilliant Mr. Burns, a post-electric play. Finally we end the season with one of the greatest musicals of all time, fresh off an acclaimed Broadway revival, Spring Awakening.

"This year also marks the beginning of our new Studio W program, a new producing arm designed to support work that breaks new ground in its style or content with three or four innovative productions outside of the Main Series each season, including immersive productions, and world premiere projects. And we're so proud to open this new program with an ambitious new work by our friend and acclaimed playwright, Erik Ehn created specially for the Wilbury Group that's sure to challenge our audiences, and an immersive dance piece by Andy Russ co-produced with Passive Aggressive Novelty Company, developed in our New Works program this season, and more productions to be announced. Moving forward, Studio W will also be the new home for our ongoing New Works projects, workshops, and staged reading series."

Memberships for the 2016/17 season start at just $55 and are available for purchase online at www.thewilburygroup.org, or by calling the box office at (401) 400-7100.

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THE WILBURY GROUP'S 2016/17 SEASON:

MAIN SERIES

THE RESISTABLE RISE OF ARTURO UI
by Bertolt Brecht, adapted by Josh Short with music by David Tessier
SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER

From one of the greatest dramatists of all time comes Arturo Ui, a funny, sharp and thrilling take on the rise of Hitler shot through with Brecht's razor-sharp wit. Chicago in the 1930s, the Great Depression - a time of unemployment, fear and political unrest, and the perfect time for a small-fry crime boss and his henchmen to make it big, to seize a greater power, an absolute power. Using a wide range of parody and pastiche - from Al Capone to Shakespeare's Richard III and Goethe's Faust - Brecht creates a hilariously comic and darkly condemnatory tale of the persistence of fascism and the inevitable rise of those unlikely leaders willing to cater to the masses.

STRAIGHT WHITE MEN
by Young Jean Lee
NOVEMBER - DECEMBER

When Ed and his three adult sons come together to celebrate Christmas, they enjoy cheerful trash-talking, pranks, and takeout Chinese. Then they confront a problem that even being a happy family can't solve: when identity matters, and privilege is problematic, what is the value of being a straight white man? An incredibly important and insightful new work from the Obie Award winning playwright that The New York Times has named "the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation." "Young Jean Lee is one of the hottest playwrights in America right now. She uses theater as a tool to reveal and dismantle our perceptions - of each other and of ourselves. For her, it's a place to check complacency at the door."-NPR

BETRAYAL
by Harold Pinter
JANUARY-FEBRUARY

For seven years, Emma and Jerry engage in a passionate love affair, deceiving their spouses, each other, and at times, even themselves. One of the 20th century's most influential dramatists, Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter innovatively explores the complexities of love, guilt, and duplicity in this Olivier Award-winning classic.A critical and popular success on both sides of the Atlantic. Winner in New York of the Drama Critics Circle Award as best foreign play and in London of the West End Award as best play of the season.

MR. BURNS, A POST-ELECTRIC PLAY
by Anne Washburn, music by Michael Friedman
MARCH-APRIL

After the collapse of civilization, a group of survivors share a campfire and begin to piece together the plot of "The Simpsons" episode "Cape Feare" entirely from memory. 7 years later, this and other snippets of pop culture (sitcom plots, commercials, jingles, and pop songs) have become the live entertainment of a post-apocalyptic society, sincerely trying to hold onto its past. 75 years later, these are the myths and legends from which new forms of performance are created. A paean to live theater, and the resilience of Bart Simpson through the ages, Mr. Burns is an animated exploration of how the pop culture of one era might evolve into the mythology of another.

SPRING AWAKENING
by Steven Slater and Duncan Sheik
MAY - JUNE

The winner of 8 Tony Awards, including Best Musical - told by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater through "the most gorgeous Broadway score this decade" (Entertainment Weekly) - Spring Awakening explores the journey from adolescence to adulthood with poignancy and passion that is illuminating and unforgettable. The landmark musical is an electrifying fusion of morality, sexuality and rock & roll that since its premiere has been exhilarating audiences across the nation like no other musical in years. Based on the 1892 Frank Wedekind play-banned in Germany for two decades after its publication-Spring Awakening challenges and thrills with a "shivery, sensual allure unmatched by anything in the theater right now" (the New York Times).

Memberships for the 2016/17 Main Series start at just $55 and are available for purchase online at TheWilburyGroup.org/membership, or by calling the box office at (401) 400-7100. Discounts available for students, artists, and military personnel.

STUDIO W:

SHADOW IN SHADOW
a world premiere by Erik Ehn
A YEAR-LONG PERFORMANCE EVENT

An exploration of the limits of mercy and extent of distraction in a busy age. How do we care for the things that need tending? How do we wake up our eyes? At the center of the process: text + shadows... shadow puppetry, shadows as design elements, and - shadow as cultural erasure. Erik Ehn is an American playwright and director known for proposing the Regional Alternative Theatre movement. His work includes The Saint Plays, Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling, Maria Kizito, No Time Like the Present, Wolf at the Door, Tailings, Beginner, Ideas of Good and Evil, and an adaptation of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. He is an artistic associate at San Francisco's Theatre of Yugen, most recently writing Crazy Horse for them, which combined Noh forms with Native American music and dance. His plays have been produced in San Francisco (Intersection, Thick Description, Yugen), Seattle (Annex, Empty Space), Austin (Frontera), New York (BACA, Whitney Museum), San Diego (Sledgehammer), Chicago (Red Moon), and elsewhere; he has a longstanding collaborative relationship with the Undermain Theater in Dallas. He is co-founder of the Tenderloin Opera Company in San Francisco and Providence and the former dean of theater at CalArts, the California Institute of Arts. Today he is head of playwriting and professor of theatre and performance studies at Brown University.

VESSEL
a co-production with Passive Aggressive Novelty Company
created by Andy Russ
NOVEMBER - DECEMBER

As Artistic Director of Passive Aggressive Novelty Company, Andy Russ specializes in performances that play at the boundaries of perception and expectation. Weaving elements of dance, music, theatre and video into immersive multi-sensory experiences, the works delight in exploring the contrapuntal possibilities that arise between the interaction of actions, objects and audience. With Vessel, originally commissioned by the Wilbury Group's 2015/16 New Works program, Andy continues to push the boundaries between dance, theatre, multimedia, and experiential theatre.

Two additional productions from Studio W to be announced, along with workshop productions of Rebecca Miller's Tudor ghost-story Amaranthine; a new "hip-hopera" by Providence hip-hop artist Phoenyx Williams; and a new musical inspired by the music of Warren Zevon by Stuart Wilson.

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Founded in 2010, The Wilbury Group is an ever-evolving collaboration of artists committed to presenting adventurous audiences with the highest quality professional theatre. Founded on the belief that quality theatre should be an affordable and accessible means of enrichment to the community; The Wilburys present contemporary, experiential theatre that simultaneously engage, inspire, and provoke thought among audiences.

As the official resident theatre company in the historic Trinity Square Theater at the Southside Cultural Center, The Wilbury Theatre Group is committed to providing our diverse and evolving community with affordable access to the performing arts through our Education program, public outreach programs, and professional productions of cutting-edge theatre from around the world.

*all plays and dates are subject to change.

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