Announcing our 2019-2020 Season

Excited to announce our entire lineup for our 2019-2020 Season. We welcome back 2 directors who have worked with us before along with 3 new directors to our stage.

Susan O’Connell starts off the season with the dramatic comedy “Outward Bound” by Sutton Vane. An odd assortment of characters are passengers on an ocean liner, but no one can remember where they’re headed. The lovers have a secret that no one can know; the society lady can’t accept that there is only one class on board and she has to share a table with a low-brow charwoman for dinner; the young man drinks too much but sees through everything, and the mysterious ship steward seems to be the only crew member. When it’s revealed that the ocean liner is headed for Judgment Day, each person plots to ensure a heavenly afterlife. But the Examiner who decides their fate is not willing to bargain. Outward Bound explores mortality and morality with light touches of social commentary and gallows humor.

Kami R. Martin then brings us the comedy “The Miss Fire Cracker Contest” by Beth Henley. The place is the small Mississippi town of Brookhaven, the time a few days before the Fourth of July. Carnelle Scott (known locally as “Miss Hot Tamale”) is rehearsing furiously for the Miss Firecracker Contest—hoping that a victory will salvage her tarnished reputation and allow her to leave town in a blaze of glory. The unexpected arrival of her cousin Elain, a former Miss Firecracker winner, (who has walked out on her rich but boring husband and her two small children) complicates matters a bit, as does the repeated threat of Elain’s eccentric brother, Delmount, (recently released from a mental institution) to sell the family homestead and decamp for New Orleans. But, aided by a touchingly awkward seamstress named Popeye (who is hopelessly smitten by Delmount) and several other cheerfully nutty characters, Carnelle perseveres—leading to a denouement of unparalleled hilarity, compassion and moving lyricism as all concerned finally escape their unhappy pasts and turn hopefully toward what must surely be a better future.

Next up, CA Conn will direct the musical comedy “One Bad Apple”. Book and lyrics by Raphe Beck and Christopher La Puma. Music by Deborah Wicks La Puma. In the beginning, God created man; that was her first mistake. Thus begins One Bad Apple, a musical comedy that turns the Book of Genesis into the first battle of the sexes. In a very corporate world of Creation, two competitive angels pit Adam and Eve against each other to see which prototype will be the more successful model for the human race. When their experiment takes on a life of its own, God kicks the humans out of Eden and considers scrapping the whole thing and starting over. Unless Adam and Eve can prove their worth before the end of the sixth day, they are doomed. And yes, there’s a nervous snake, a resentful devil, and a juicy red piece of fruit. One Bad Apple was commissioned by and premiered at Stanford University.

Matt Riggle will then give us “Come Blow Your Horn”. Neil Simon’s first Broadway comedy smash. What does it mean to “grow up?” When does it happen? And, does everyone have the same experience? Neil Simon’s semi-autobiographical play, Come Blow Your Horn examines all of these questions through the lens of the Baker Family. There is Mr. Baker, who began working at age eleven and was married at twenty-one; Alan, his eldest son, is a thirty-three-year-old confirmed bachelor and womanizer; Buddy, the youngest, is Alan’s opposite — hard-working, obedient, reserved, and unsure; Mrs. Baker is adept at the art of emotional manipulation and is prone to hysterics. Throughout the course of the play, the family struggles to understand and adjust to one another, as the two sons begin to grow up, and the parents realize that they are growing old.

Finally, Sarah Kristen Gibbon will close out the season, while making her directorial debut, with “Leading Ladies” by Ken Ludwig. In this hilarious comedy by the author of Lend Me A Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo, two English Shakespearean actors, Jack and Leo, find themselves so down on their luck that they are performing “Scenes from Shakespeare” on the Moose Lodge circuit in the Amish country of Pennsylvania. When they hear that an old lady in York, PA is about to die and leave her fortune to her two long lost English nephews, they resolve to pass themselves off as her beloved relatives and get the cash. The trouble is, when they get to York, they find out that the relatives aren’t nephews, but nieces! Romantic entanglements abound, especially when Leo falls head-over-petticoat in love with the old lady’s vivacious niece, Meg, who’s engaged to the local minister. Meg knows that there’s a wide world out there, but it’s not until she meets “Maxine and Stephanie” that she finally gets a taste of it.