Circle Mirror Transformation

by Annie Baker
directed by Dr. Dawn Larsen

October 16-18, 2014
7:30 pm Thur-Sat
Fine Arts Theatre, Hyman Fine Arts Center

THE STORY:

When four lost New Englanders who enroll in Marty’s six-week-long community-center drama class begin to experiment with harmless games, hearts are quietly torn apart, and tiny wars of epic proportions are waged and won. A beautifully crafted diorama, a petri dish in which we see, with hilarious detail and clarity, the antic sadness of a motley quintet.

“Annie Baker’s play is an absolute feast. CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION is the kind of unheralded gem that sends people into the streets babbling and bright-eyed with the desire to spread the word. The play traces the lives of a handful of small-town Vermont residents who gather each week for an acting class taught at the local community center. By the play’s end we seem to see to the very bottom of these souls, and feel how the artificial intimacy of the acting class has shaped their lives in substantial ways.” — NY Times.

“…orchestrated with a subtlety and unfailing naturalness that make the play’s small revelations disarming and unexpected. The characterizations display a miniaturist attention to detail that goes down to the bone…Baker is never blind to their weaknesses and faults, yet regards them all with a warm, empathetic eye.” — Variety.

“Smartly, sneakily, Baker gives us the rare theatercentric play that’s not self-obsessed. [CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION] is about real people exploring their lives through tiny leaps of faith and creativity.” — BackStage.

“Baker develops her characters slowly through their interactions each week in class, which is the only place we see them. Naturally, their real, offstage lives gradually infiltrate the classroom, revealing insights and transformations both humorous and heartbreaking.” — Associated Press.

“Reverberates with seduction and sorrow…the play’s final scene is devastatingly gentle.” — Village Voice.

The Fantasticks

by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt
directed by Keith Best

February 18-22, 2015
7:30 pm Wed – Fri;
2:00 pm & 7:30 pm Sat;
3:00 pm Sun

Performing Arts Center, Downtown Florence

THE STORY:

The Fantasticks by Tom Jones & Harvey Schmidt is the world’s longest running musical – running for over 50 years in Manhattan and entrancing generations of audiences the world over.

The Fantasticks is a funny and romantic musical about a boy, a girl, two fathers and a wall. The narrator, El Gallo, asks the audience to use their imagination and follow him into a world of moonlight and magic. The boy and the girl fall in love, grow apart, and finally find their way back to each other after realizing the truth in El Gallo’s words that “without a hurt, the heart is hollow”.

The famous score, which includes the classics “Try To Remember,” “They Were You,” and “Soon It’s Gonna Rain,” is as timeless as the story itself.

THE CAST:

El Gallo: Kevin Holloway
Matt: Jamel Randle
Luisa: Caroline Spearman
Hucklebee: Malcolm Parker
Bellomy: Zachary Greenwood
Henry: Treshawn Simmons
Mortimer: Ilia Campbell
The Mute: Jordan Watson

‘night, Mother

by Marsha Norman
directed by Glen Gourley

April 16-18, 2015
7:30 pm Thursday – Saturday

Fine Arts Theatre, Hyman Fine Arts Center

THE STORY:

The scene is the living room/kitchen of a small house on an isolated country road, which is shared by Jessie and her mother. Jessie’s father is dead; her loveless marriage ended in divorce; her absent son is a petty thief and ne’er-do-well; her last job didn’t work out and, in general, her life is stale and unprofitable. As the play begins Jessie asks for her father’s service revolver and calmly announces that she intends to kill herself. At first her mother refuses to take her seriously, but as Jessie sets about tidying the house and making lists of things to be looked after, her sense of desperate helplessness begins to build. In the end, with the inexorability of genuine tragedy, she can only stand by, stunned and unbelieving, as Jessie quietly closes and locks her bedroom door and ends her profound unhappiness in one fatal, stunning and deeply disturbing moment—a moment never to be forgotten by those who have witnessed, and come to understand, her plight.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, this eloquent, enthralling and ultimately shattering play explores the final hour in the life of a young woman who has decided that life is no longer worth living.

“…honest, uncompromising, lucid, penetrating, well-written, dramatic, and…unmanipulatively moving…” — NY Magazine.

“It is sparse and concise, introspective and penetrating, powerful and uncompromising, intense and intelligent, warm and theatrical. It is THE American tragedy.” — New England Entertainment Digest.

“Something I hadn’t seen in a long time happened at ‘NIGHT, MOTHER: The audience still sat applauding after the house lights came up, as if waiting for the cast to come round and join them.” — Village Voice.

“…a shattering evening…” —NY Times.