New Line Theatre Announces Their 20th Anniversary Season

The artists of New Line Theatre, "The Bad Boy of Musical Theatre," are very proud to announce the company's Twentieth Anniversary Season of provocative, adult, alternative musical theatre. The season opens with the St. Louis premiere of the 70s-era Sexual Revolution jazz musical, I LOVE MY WIFE, running Sept. 30-October 23, 2010. Next up is the rock and roll, Shakespearean sex farce TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, running March 3-26, 2011. And the season closes with the regional premiere of a massive cult hit throughout the country, BARE, running June 2-25, 2011. All three shows will be presented at the Washington University South Campus Theatre (formerly CBC High School), 6501 Clayton Road, just east of Big Bend.

New Line Theatre's 20th Anniversary Season opens Sept. 30-Oct. 23, 2010 with the St. Louis premiere of I LOVE MY WIFE, the Sexual Revolution jazz musical from Cy Coleman, the composer of City of Angels and Sweet Charity. This intimate, little four-character concept musical is a sparkling jazz poem about 70s-era sex, love, romance, and wife-swapping, all set to a cool jazz score with songs like "Married Couple Seeks Married Couple," "Sexually Free," "By Threes," and the unashamedly romantic "I Love My Wife."

I Love My Wife is a snapshot of two couples in 1977 at the end of the Sexual Revolution, but it's also a character study of our country and our ongoing love-hate relationship with all things carnal. Hair announced the Sexual Revolution in full swing, and The Rocky Horror Show exposed its warts (no pun intended), but I Love My Wife shows us how it ended, not with a bang but with a whimper. As great as Free Love sounded, it really wasn't what most Americans wanted. The show explores the confusion of the Eisenhower generation -- too old to be hippies and too young to be old fogies, these would-be swingers sincerely attempt to try on the counterculture lifestyle, eventually leading all four into the same bed. But I Love My Wife is also a character study of marriage itself -- its weaknesses, its contradictions, its unnatural expectations, and its unparalleled joys. Yes, these married men would have their freedom if they were single, but what would they be missing...?

In these times of "Culture Wars" and of "social conservatives" always eager to legislate issues of morality and sexuality -- gay marriage, sex education, contraception, abortion, gays in the military, and much more -- I Love My Wife reminds us that sex is as primal a human need as any other and that Americans are by nature curious and adventurous creatures, despite our American Puritanism, always fascinated by the forbidden yet often unable to handle it once we uncover it.

I Love My Wife boasts a real jazz score by Cy Coleman (Sweet Charity, City of Angels, Barnum, The Will Rogers Follies, The Life), and a smart, sophisticated book and lyrics by Michael Stewart (Hello, Dolly, Barnum, Mack and Mabel), "officially" based on the French play Viens Chez-moi, J'Habite Chez une Copine (Come to My Place, I Live with My Girlfriend) by Luis Regio and Didier Kaminka, but the show really takes more (uncredited) inspiration from the iconic 1969 film Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. For more info about the show, visit http://www.newlinetheatre.com/wifepage.html

New Line's 20th season continues March 3-26, 2011 with the hilarious rock musical TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. With a Latin pop-rock score from the composer of Hair, lyrics by the author of Six Degrees of Separation, and a book (more or less) by the guy who brought us Hamlet, here comes the rowdy, sexy, thoroughly subversive Two Gentlemen of Verona. Set in Renaissance Verona and Milan -- or maybe it's New York in 1971 -- composer Galt MacDermot, playwright John Guare, and writer-director Mel Shapiro have taken one of Shakespeare's least produced plays and breathed outrageous, new, cross-dressing life into it.

Clive Barnes wrote of the original Broadway production in The New York Times, "It has a surge of youth to it, at times an almost carnal intimation of sexuality, and a boisterous sense of love. It is precisely this that the new musical catches and makes its own. The musical also has a strange New York feel to it -- in the music, a mixture of rock, lyricism and Caribbean patter, in Mr. Guare's spare, at times even abrasive lyrics, in the story itself of small-town kids and big-town love. It also has a very New York sense of irreverence. It is a graffito written across a classic play, but the graffito has an insolent sense of style, and the classic play can still be clearly glimpsed underneath."

Two Gents is a romantic comedy that explores issues of race, gender roles, the politics of war, and the sad reality that most men are pigs. The story tells of lifelong friends Proteus and Valentine who leave their rural hometown of Verona to experience life in the big city of Milan. But the course of true love -- or is it just lust? -- never did run smooth...

Two Gentlemen of Verona won Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Book and also won the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Musical, and the Drama Desk Awards for Best Book, Best Lyrics, and Best Music. Auditions for Two Gents will be held October 11 and 18, 2010. For more info about the show,visit http://www.newlinetheatre.com/twogentspage.html

New Line's 20th season closes June 2-25, 2011 with the regional premiere of the cult phenomenon BARE, a pop opera by up-and-coming theatre writers Jon Hartmere & Damon Intrabartolo, a new Rent for a new millennium. First produced in Los Angeles in 2000 and then off Broadway in 2004, this show has attracted a fierce cult following across the country and around the world. The New Liners are thrilled to bring it to St. Louis audiences for the first time.

Bare follows the love story of Jason and Peter, seniors at a Catholic boarding school, who are forced to deal with their mutual romantic attraction while trying to live up to the standards of their parents and the Catholic Church. The show explores the range of problems facing American youth today, from body image to teen pregnancy, from drug culture to adult expectations.

New Line Theatre will be one of the first companies in America to produce this exciting and powerful new pop musical. The New York Times wrote, "Bare has youthful promise written all over it." The Associated Press called the show an "ambitious and original creation." The Los Angeles Times said, "This world premiere focuses on raw emotion and soul baring." TalkinBroadway.com said, "The show is breathlessly energetic, and an obvious labor of love crafted with care down to its smallest details."

Auditions will be held March 14 and 21, 2011. Twelve of the fifteen characters are high school students, so New Line will be looking for a younger cast, but will not cast anyone under 17. For more info about the show, visit http://www.newlinetheatre.com/barepage.html

New Line Theatre is a professional company dedicated to involving the people of the St. Louis region in the exploration and creation of daring, provocative, socially and politically relevant works of musical theatre. New Line's current season closes with EVITA, running now through July 31.

New Line Theatre was created in 1991 at the vanguard of a new wave of nonprofit musical theatre just starting to take hold across the country. Miranda Lundskaer-Nielsen writes in her book Directors and the New Musical Drama, "After the pioneering efforts of theatre such as The Public Theater and Playwrights Horizons in New York, the idea of the serious nonprofit musical spread to theatres across America during the 1990s. While these shows met with varying levels of economic and critical success, the very existence of this alternative home for the art form began to redefine the musical, offering an alternative to both the traditional Broadway musical and the new West End shows. As the economics of the commercial theatre became increasingly forbidding, the nonprofit theatre became vital incubators for musical drama and nurtured a new generation of musical theatre writers."

New Line has given birth to several world premiere musicals over the years and has brought back to life many shows that did not do well in their original New York productions. Altogether, New Line has produced 58 musicals and 5 concerts of theatre songs since 1991. New Line Theatre was recently given its own entry in the latest edition of the prestigious Cambridge Guide to American Theatre. New Line receives funding from the Regional Arts Commission, the Fox Performing Arts Charitable Foundation, and the Missouri Arts Council. For more about New Line, go to www.newlinetheatre.com/contact.html

All three shows in the season run four weeks each, Thursday through Saturday evenings, at 8:00 p.m. The first date of each show is a preview. All three shows will be presented at the Washington University South Campus Theatre (formerly CBC High School), 6501 Clayton Road, just east of Big Bend. Tickets will go on sale in August through all Metrotix outlets, including Macy's stores, the Fox Theatre, the Edison Theatre at Washington University, and select Schnucks stores, or by calling 314-534-1111. All three shows contain adult content.

HIGH SCHOOL DISCOUNT: New Line has created a new ticket discount for high school students. Any student with a valid school ID can get a $10 ticket at any performance, with the code word for that show, which will be posted on New Line's Facebook page, at http://www.facebook.com/NewLineTheatre

EDUCATORS DISCOUNT: New Line now offers all currently employed educators half price tickets on any Thursday night, with work ID or other proof of employment. Not valid in connection with other discounts or offers, available only at the door, and subject to availability.

MILITARY DISCOUNT: New Line now offers all active duty military personnel half price tickets on any Thursday night, with ID or other proof of active duty status. Not valid in connection with other discounts or offers, available only at the door, and subject to availability.

New Line also continues to offer the COLLEGE FREE SEATS, ten seats put aside for every performance, free to anyone with a valid college student ID, one ticket per ID. The Free Seats will be available at the theatre box office, from 7:00 p.m. to 7:55 p.m. on performance nights only.

For other information, visit New Line Theatre's full-service website at www.newlinetheatre.com. All programs are subject to change.

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