BackStage Theatre Company's 2009-2010 Season

One way to incur my wrath is to send me a news release in which there is an improper use of the word "it's." Observe below in BackStage Theatre Company's description of Edward Albee's The Play About the Baby. OUTRAGE!!

Now that I've got that out of the way, BackStage Theatre Company has indeed announced its tenth anniversary season (Seriously? Am I really this old now?), featuring three plays. At first glance, the theme seems to be fruit, but the third play does NOT have a fruit in the title, so the theme for the entire season is probably not fruit.

In the news release announcing the season, artistic director Matthew Reeder says, "“The three shows selected will provide BackStage with a real chance to produce elegantly and professionally while re-introducing ourselves and our audiences to the essence of the theatrical . . . to get back to the basics; great playwrights, challenging roles and big thematic ideas. All three shows not only fit our mission, but they have a thematic or structural ‘outrageousness’ that echoes BackStage’s history of ‘big theatre in small places.’ By embracing the theatrical mode of storytelling, and by presenting an audience with the simplicity of great acting, nuanced direction and compelling scripts, we are laying ourselves bare and saying …’Welcome to the family.’"

Nice quote. He avoids the use of profanity, which is always good in a news release. Now, am I interested in the shows? Yes. Not sure how recently these plays have been produced in Chicago. I'll have Kris Vire handle that. I think The Play About the Baby was part of the Goodman's Albee festival a number of years ago, wasn't it?

Here are the three shows, as described in BackStage's news release:

Aunt Dan and Lemon
by Wallace Shawn
Nov/Dec 2009
Directed by Artistic Director Matthew Reeder

BackStage begins its 10th Anniversary Season by asking you to step inside the bedroom of a woman called Lemon. Lemon has a story to tell. What begins as a deceptively simple coming-of-age yarn about her seemingly ordinary family soon becomes a complex meditation on the persuasive power of intimacy. Written by one of the more controversial playwrights of the contemporary American theatre, Aunt Dan and Lemon is a both a mordant comedy and a chilling cautionary tale about the subversive nature of influence.

Orange Flower Water
by Craig Wright
Early Spring 2010

After years of maintaining a close, platonic friendship, David and Beth begin an inescapable love-affair with heartbreaking consequences. Through a series of theatrical, voyeuristic scenes which all take place on or around a single bed, we see the painfully intense unraveling of both troubled marriages and, eventually, the construction of a very fragile but authentic new beginning for everyone concerned. Written by one of the most promising young playwrights of this generation, Craig Wright's "Orange Flower Water" is an unsparing but ultimately hopeful examination of the unremitting need that humans beings have for one another.

The Play About the Baby
by Edward Albee
Late Spring 2010

Two chairs stand in a private room inhabited by a gleefully naive couple whose youthful desire for each other is hardly interrupted by the coming of their first child. Soon, however, their playfully sexual exploits are bizarrely interrupted by a mysterious and nameless older couple who may (or may not) have sinister motives. Penned by one of America’s preeminent playwrights, The Play About the Baby is an absurdist black comedy, reminiscent of burlesque in it’s high spirits and banter, that grapples with such issues as reality and the games we play to define it, the ambiguity of existence, and the agonizing bonds between parents and children.