Gamm Announces Debut Season In Warwick

Tony Estrella, artistic director of The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm), is delighted to announce the theater's debut season in its new Warwick home. Season 34 opens in September at 1245 Jefferson Boulevard with a slate of provocative stories that resonate boldly with our lives today. They include a U.S. premiere, a New England premiere, a recent Pulitzer Prize finalist, and two landmark works of the modern American theater. The 2018-2019 season will also deliver an enhanced audience experience, from free parking in our private lot, to a spacious lobby and a newly renovated, flexible performance space.

"Over 15 wonderful years in Pawtucket, we created only the second year-round professional theater in Rhode Island. We boldly established our vision for challenging, epic work in a dynamic, up-close and personal setting," said Gamm Artistic Director Tony Estrella. "This exciting move to the center of the state is an opportunity to solidify our reputation as a regional destination for serious and thrilling theater, and our inaugural season in Warwick promises to do just that!

"The 5-play lineup includes a contemporary Cain and Abel story about two distinctly different Americas, an oft-overlooked masterpiece exploring the complexity of human desire, and a shocking dark comedy tackling the terror lurking just beneath the banality of everyday life. Rounding out the season are a contemporary tale of old friends, new dangers and the unsettling velocity of change, and a gorgeous story of love and resistance in wartime England. Each play stands resolutely on its own. Together they speak powerfully to the collective American moment," Estrella added.
Subscriptions to The Gamm's 2018-19 Season are $155-$250. Information at 401-723-4266 or gammtheatre.org.

THE GAMM THEATRE SEASON 34 (2018-2019)
THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA by Tennessee Williams (Sep-Oct)Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon, defrocked for blasphemy and fornication, is at the end of his rope. Working as a cut-rate tour guide in Mexico, he arrives at a ramshackle hotel owned by his recently widowed friend, Maxine, with a group of mutinous Baptist ladies in tow. Will the alcoholic Shannon come to terms with his personal failures among the misfit guests including a penniless portrait artist and her rickety poet-grandfather? Or will he spiral out of control? This rarely performed masterpiece from the author of A Streetcar Named Desire (Gamm 2015) is an unforgettable tale of desire, love, and personal redemption.

GLORIA by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Nov-Dec)This razor-sharp comic drama follows a group of ruthless editorial assistants at a notorious Manhattan magazine-all vying for their bosses' jobs and a book deal before they turn 30. When a mundane workday of cubicles and Starbucks becomes anything but, the stakes for who will get to tell their story become higher than ever. Obie Award-winner Jacobs-Jenkins (Appropriate, An Octoroon) makes another theatrical splash with this spot-on, bitingly funny commentary on American society, personal tragedy, and the ever-ravenous media machine.

U.S. PREMIERE! THE NIGHT WATCH by Sarah Waters, adapted by Hattie Naylor (Jan-Feb)I thought everything would change, after the war. And now, no one even mentions it. It is as if we all got together in private and said whatever you do don't mention that, like it never happened.

In the late 1940s, calm has returned to London and people are recovering from the chaos of war. In a quiet dating agency, a bombed-out church and a prison cell, the stories of three women and a young man unfold backward to the heart of the Blitz, and the secret desires and regrets that bind them together. Olivier-nominated playwright Hattie Naylor has created a thrilling, inventive adaptation of the best-selling novel by Sarah Waters ("Tipping the Velvet," "Fingersmith"). Don't miss this U.S. premiere!

NEW ENGLAND PREMIERE! ESCAPED ALONE by Caryl Churchill (Mar-Apr)Over a summer of afternoons in a suburban backyard, four 70-something women chat amiably about topics big and small: grandchildren and lost keys, insomnia and a crippling fear of cats, chemical leaks and famine. By turns hilarious and unsettling, Churchill's newest play explores the solace of community amid everyday fear and looming catastrophe. Don't miss what The Observer calls "a light-on-its-feet, elliptical view of apocalypse" by one of Britain's most innovative living playwrights.

...plus a special pairing with Samuel Beckett's COME AND GO in which three women of an "age undeterminable" meet on a bench after years apart. Fond schoolgirl memories devolve into foreboding gossip as, ghostlike, the old friends enter and exit one by one. In less than 10 minutes, this beautiful, cryptic capsule of a play will leave you smiling and also haunted.

TRUE WEST by Sam Shepard (Apr-May)In suburban California, estranged brothers Austin and Lee reunite unexpectedly in their mother's home. Austin, a family man and budding screenwriter, is house-sitting and at work on a new script. Lee, a drifter with a plan to rob the neighborhood of household appliances, drops in and stays. Soon he is pitching his own idea for a trashy Western to Austin's Hollywood agent...and the battle is on. Challenges are issued, drinks are downed, and the seemingly opposite brothers find they are more alike than they want to admit. Brutally and hilariously, this modern day Cain and Abel story tackles the absurdity of archetypal America head on.

Founded in 1984 as Alias Stage, the non-profit Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre creates the finest of live theater, engaging the audience intensely in current and recurrent issues of consequence. The Gamm further serves the public with educational outreach programming designed to support the theatrical experience, and help sustain and enhance the intellectual and cultural life of its community. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Tony Estrella and Managing Director Oliver Dow, The Gamm is a regionally recognized, award-winning theater and a proud member of New England Area Theatre (NEAT), a bargaining unit of the Actors' Equity Association.

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