University Of Washington School Of Drama Announces 2021 – 2022 Public Season

The University of Washington School of Drama has announce its 2021-2022 public season, a season that will happen live and in-person in the beautiful Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse at UW.

The University of Washington has announced a full return to in-person teaching and learning for fall quarter, 2021. The School of Drama will welcome students back to its classrooms, studios, and production laboratories, and to be able to safely welcome audiences back to its theatres.

UW School of Drama 2021-2022 Public Season

FALL QUARTER

The Importance of Being Earnest

By Oscar Wilde
Directed by Kelly Kitchens (UW Drama faculty member)
Nov 12 - 21, 2021
Previews November 6 & 9
Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!"

Oscar Wilde's wildly entertaining comedy sparkles with dazzling wordplay and hilariously unlikely situations. This ahead-of-its-time satire of Victorian morality features two carefree bachelors, Jack and Algernon, each with a carefully hidden double life. But when Algernon discovers that Jack has been posing as someone named Ernest to escape to the city, he promptly travels to Jack's country estate to pose as the fictional figure himself, and silliness ensues. Director Kelly Kitchens (Incident at Vichy) calls this play "an exquisite glass of champagne--deliciously bubbly and slightly intoxicating, but the result of a complex alchemy--a deft blend of craftmanship and artistry. You can just down it," she says, "but it's worth investigating more deeply."

WINTER QUARTER

Photograph 51

By Anna Zeigler
Directed by Amanda Rountree
January 27 - Feb 6, 2022
Previews Jan 22 & 25
Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse

"We were so powerful. Our instruments felt like extensions of our own bodies. We could see everything, really see it-except, sometimes, what was right in front of us."

In 1951, chemist Rosalind Franklin works relentlessly in her King's College London lab, closing in on a major discovery that could unlock the mysteries of the DNA molecule. Undermined by her colleague Maurice Wilkins, she struggles to compete with rival team Watson and Crick as pressure intensifies to produce results. Anna Zeigler's "rich, complex, and moving" (The Chicago Tribune) play honors the monumental contribution of one scientist with two X chromosomes whom history nearly left behind. Second-year MFA director Amanda Rountree makes her UW Drama mainstage debut.

Father Comes Home From the Wars Parts 1, 2 & 3

By Suzan-Lori Parks
Directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton
March 10 - 20, 2022
Previews March 5 & 8
Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse

"Cause both choices, Hero,
To stay here and work the field
To go there and fight in the field
Both choices are
Nothing more than the same coin
Flipped over and over
Two sides of the same coin
And the coin ain't even in your pocket."

Offered his freedom if he joins his enslaver in the ranks of the Confederacy, Hero must choose whether to leave the woman and people he loves for what may be yet another empty promise. As his decision brings him face-to-face with a nation at war with itself, the loved ones Hero left behind debate whether to escape or wait for his return, only to discover that for Hero, free will may have come at a great spiritual cost. Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winner Suzan-Lori Parks' Father Comes Home From the Wars is an explosively powerful drama about the mess of war, the cost of freedom, and the heartbreak of love, with all three parts seen in one night. Part 1 introduces us to Hero. In Part 2, a band of rebel soldiers test Hero's loyalty as the cannons approach. Part 3 finds Hero's loved ones anxiously awaiting his return. Faculty member Valerie Curtis-Newton (Fefu and Her Friends, The Best of Everything), 2021 recipient of the University of Washington Faculty Lecture Award, directs.

SPRING QUARTER

Passage

By Christopher Chen
Directed by Adrienne Mackey
May 19 - 20, 2022
Previews May 14 & 17
Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse

"When I think of Country X, the thinking starts from darkness. And by that I mean the same darkness as the blank space in your mind, before a thought forms. Does that make sense? Do you know what I'm talking about? Because all thoughts, and hence all universes really start--
because they have to, right?-- from nothing. In the beginning. Right? That's all I'm saying. So when I think of Country X, it starts, because it has to... with my eyes closed."

Obie Award-winner Christopher Chen's provocative fantasia, Passage, gently lifts us from our own reality and sets us down in a new place: Country X. Country X has been occupied by Country Y. Country X is allowed its own laws and leaders, but Country Y controls both and has been unfairly abusing its power to mistreat native-born citizens. Chen deftly deploys theatre's primal evocative powers to "raise questions that make the audience profoundly uncomfortable, but simultaneously creates a welcoming space to which everyone is invited." (Time Out New York). New Drama faculty member Adrienne Mackey, Artistic Director of Philadelphia's Swim Pony, makes her UW Drama directorial debut.

Season memberships and single tickets will go on sale September 15, 2021. All memberships and single ticket sales are handled through the ArtsUW ticket office. Patrons who would like to be notified when memberships and single tickets go on sale can sign up at https://www.uwdramalabs.com/2122-season-notification

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