SPEECH AND DEBATE And THE MARRIAGE BED Among Diversionary Theatre 2009/10 Season

Diversionary Theatre's 2009-2010 season of two gender-bending musicals and four provocative plays includes two West Coast Premieres, dynamic local actors and directors, and a reading of a new queer opera. The six-show mainstage season includes: the new musical Twist by Gila Sand and Paul Leschen, based on Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, directed by James Vasquez; Bent, the seminal play by Martin Sherman, in a co-production with ion theatre company; Paul Rudnick's big gay comedy The New Century, directed by Igor Goldin; same-sex marriage gets a comic nod with The Marriage Bed by Nona Shepphard, directed by Rosina Reynolds; laugh out loud with teenage angst in Speech and Debate by Steven Karam, directed by Jason Southerland; and filled with melancholy and lust, the musical play Moscow, by Nick Salamone and Maury R. McIntyre, rounds out the season.

Diversionary's Queer Theatre program continues with a second Dance/Theatre event, and readings of a new queer opera by Nicolas Reveles and plays by David Zellnik and Madeleine George.

"We are very excited to welcome back Tom Zohar, David McBean, Rosina Reynolds and other favorite performers and directors back to Diversionary," said Dan Kirsch, Executive & Artistic Director of Diversionary Theatre, as he announced the 2009-2010 season. "We're thrilled to partner with ion theatre company. We love to encourage new work from local artists. We're very proud of our unique mission – to tell lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) stories."

Mainstage Season

Twist!
July 9-August 9, 2009

Book, lyrics and additional music by Gila Sand. Music by Paul Leschen. Additional music by Garret Guadan. James Vasquez will direct; musical direction by Tim McKnight. Diversionary's cast will feature Jacob Caltrider as Twist, Tom Zohar as The Artful Dodger and David McBean as Fagin, with Jackie Cuccaro, Andy Collins, Tony Houck, Jimmy Latimer Jr., Benjamin Lopez and Amy Northcutt. An official event of San Diego LGBT Pride.

Music. Dickens. Bondage. Dickens' famous tale re-imagines Oliver as an attractive young man searching for love. A gender-bending dark comedy with Victorian erotica! By turns outrageous and provocative, this unique retelling entertains with exquisite drag, arch wit, a bit of kink and A Catchy set of new contemporary songs. Yet the show remains surprisingly true to Oliver Twist, a coming-of-age tale of loneliness, craving, adventure, and finally, redemption.

Twist was created by Gila Sand and composer Paul Leschen. For the Diversionary production, Gila and Paul are excited to premiere new songs to Twist's award nominated score. Twist's Drama Desk nomination came after nine performances off-off Broadway, in company with Broadway nominees Spring Awakening and Legally Blonde. The following workshop of Twist, at New York's Midtown InterNational Theatre Festival, garnered awards for Best Book, Lyrics & Music. Visit www.themusicaltwist.com for more background and history of the show.

Bent
A co-production with ion theatre company.
October 29-November 22, 2009

This co-production commemorates the 30th anniversary of the seminal play by Martin Sherman. Directed by Glenn Paris.

Yellow stars. Pink triangles. Dignity. Courage. Comfort. Survival. A riveting story of love in the midst of the Holocaust. This 1979 play about gays under persecution by the Nazis took the world stage by storm. Profoundly universal and provocatively theatrical.

Ion's mission (www.iontheatre.com) is to ignite community change through the staging of bold, re-imagined classics, and part of Diversionary's mission is share the complexity of our LGBT history.

Prior to Bent, there had been virtually no inclusion of gays in discussions about the Holocaust. It had a groundbreaking impact when it was first staged off-Broadway in 1978; an impact that continued when the play was performed in London the next year and then finally brought to Broadway. The uniqueness of the story line and the strength of its message about tolerance, love, and human dignity made the play successful. It was nominated for both a Pulitzer and a Tony in 1980.

The New Century
West Coast Premiere!
December 3, 2009-January 2, 2010

A big gay comedy from Paul Rudnick. Directed by Igor Goldin.

Gratuitous nudity and snappy one-liners! A Jewish matron, a flamboyant aging homosexual and a Midwestern craftswoman collide in this outrageous and poignant comedy. Rudnick is the playwright of Jeffrey, Valhalla and The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told. Goldin directed last summer's smash hit Yank! For the first time, the show will run over both the Christmas and New Year weekends.

The Marriage Bed
West Coast Premiere!
February 11-28, 2010

By Nona Shepphard. Directed by Rosina Reynolds.

Jeni loves Val and Val loves Jeni. But is that enough reason to get married, especially when you're not sure your girlfriend is over her ex, and one of you is not out to your family. Once the United Kingdom approved civil partnerships in 2005, same-sex couples had to ask themselves: "Do I want to make a commitment? Do we want to make a big splash? If so, what sort of splash? Shall it be the pink limousines, or shall we walk? Shall we invite my mother? (If she says no, it will make me feel really awful and spoil the day.) Do I want to be formally tied to another person?" All this and a fourposter bed! Funny, touching, timely and ingenious. Underwritten by JoAnn Clark.

Speech and Debate
March 25-April 11, 2010

By Steven Karam. Directed by Jason Southerland.

Sex. Secrets. Performance-art blogs and blackmail. A typical day when you're a teenager in Salem, Oregon. Three teenage misfits discover they are linked by a sex scandal that's rocked their town. When one of them sets out to expose the truth, secrets become currency, the stakes get higher, and the trio's connection grows deeper in this searching, fiercely funny dark comedy with music.

Written by Karam when he was 25 (he's 28 now), he took the transcript of an online chat between the former mayor of Spokane, Washington and a gay teenager as the basis for this fiercely funny and edgy new play. The play received a GLAAD Media nomination upon its premiere. Jason Southerland, now Artistic Director of Next Theatre in Chicago, co-directed the MOXIE/Diversionary musical play Pulp!

Moscow
May 6-30, 2010

Book and lyrics by Nick Salamone. Music by Maury R. McIntyre. Director to be announced.

Trapped in limbo, three gay men stage a musical production of Chekhov's The Three Sisters. A compelling fusion of music, emotion, melancholy and lust.

Moscow was first produced in Los Angeles in 1998 and went on to win the top honor at that year's Edinburgh Festival. The men are: Jon, a scholarly playwright who has lost many loved ones to AIDS and has retreated into cerebral celibacy; Luke, a sexually needy male hustler who lives solely for the next fleshly encounter; and Matt, a shy virgin, who struggles to balance the conflicting urges of love and lust. Trapped, uncertain if they are alive or dead, the men soon become emotionally embroiled. Naturally, romance is rocky in this limbo. Unlike the tormented trio in No Exit, the characters in Moscow rally, recoup and bond.

Queer Theatre Program

Diversionary's Queer Theatre program gives voice to the stories of LGBT people, and is supported by a grant from The James Irvine Foundation New Connections Fund. The program honors the ideas, the energy and commitment people have made to write LGBT stories. More than 70 new plays with LGBT themes get submitted to the program each year.

Dance/Theatre. April 22-25, 2010. Inspired by Theatre/Created through Dance. Peter G. Kalivas, project artistic director, engages local choreographers to bring past Diversionary productions to life through new dance pieces. Underwritten by California Institute for Contemporary Arts.

Sextet. Date TBA. A Queer Opera in Six Scenes. Composed by Nicolas Reveles. Directed by J. Sherwood Montgomery. What do Walt Whitman, the rapture, and a gay bath house all have in common? Those are among the unusual subjects explored in Sextet, shedding light on various aspects of gay desire: for community, for power, for acceptance, for family, for sex and for love. Reveles is The Geisel Director of Education and Outreach for the San Diego Opera.

Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom. By David Zellnik. Date TBA. Set in New York in 1996, this comedy is about (variously): disability, gay porn, the pharmaceutical revolutions of the 90s, Chairman Mao, and the rise and fall of post-AIDS euphoria. At turns funny and serious, part comic fantasy, part love story, the play explores how to construct a life, a sex life, and a friendship after ten years of believing you would die very soon.

The Zero Hour. by Madeleine George. Date TBA. O and Rebecca want love to be all they need, but the fact that Rebecca has not yet come out to her mother is threatening their happiness. Meanwhile, Rebecca's classroom teachings of the Holocaust are seeping into her evening subway rides, in this tour-de-force with two actresses playing all the roles. Developed at PlayLabs, New Dramatists, New York Theatre Workshop and O'Neill Playwrights Conference.

Mainstage productions will have three to five week runs, with 16 or more performances per run. Each show will preview on Thursday and Friday night, with openings on Saturday nights. Performance schedule for the year is Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday and Saturday at 8:00pm, Sunday at 2:00 and 7:00pm, and selected Monday's and Wednesday's at 7:30pm.

Discounted six-show subscription packages ranging from $98 to $216 are now available through May 31 (prices go up on June 1). The early bird discounts include a package with a 45% discount. There are no handling/service charges for tickets purchased through Diversionary's box office.

Single tickets go on sale six weeks before the opening date of each show. Group sales for any show during the season can be arranged now by calling the box office. More information about all the shows and season subscriptions are available through the Box Office at 619.220.0097 or at www.diversionary.org.

Diversionary's mission is to produce plays with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender themes that portray characters in their complexity and diversity both historically and contemporarily.

Financial support for Diversionary Theatre is provided in part by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.

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