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Theater & Dance

Undermain Theatre Announces 2016-2017 Season

Regional premieres and modern classics.
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The 2015 “best theater” Best of Big D winner today announced its 33rd season. The four shows include groundbreaking contemporary work making regional premieres (the drug war drama so go the ghosts of mexico) and modern classics such as Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo.

The season opens in September.

Find tickets and more info here.

Here’s the full press release:

For its 33rd season of exploring new work and revisiting seminal modern work Undermain Theatre presents the season of the truth seeker. Undermain opens the 33rd season by embarking on a trilogy of new plays exploring the US/México drug wars over the course of the next three seasons. The fall season continues with a searching, immersive regional premiere of a play that holds a mirror up to the creative process. In the New Year Undermain undertakes a rarely staged masterwork study of one of the ultimate purveyors of truth. The season closes with a regional premiere of a play examining the changing nature of truth in the eye of the beholder through the art of photography. These plays lead collectively to the realization that what one sees and what is true may be entirely different.

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so go the ghosts of méxico

A Trilogy by Matthew Paul Olmos

Part One – a brave woman in méxico

A Regional Premiere

Directed by Undermain Artistic Director Katherine Owens

Opening Night Saturday 9/17/16

Preview Performances 9/14, 9/15 and 9/16

In Performance 9/14/16-10/8/16

Wednesdays through Saturdays with two matinees on 9/24 and 10/8

A twenty-two year old woman volunteers to replace a beheaded police chief when nobody else is willing to accept the position. She sets off a chain of reactions for her husband, the Narcos, and perhaps the entire country of Mexico. “so go the ghosts of méxico, part one (a brave woman in méxico)” is the first of a three-play cycle exploring the US/México drug wars. Selected by American Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Sam Shepard as the inaugural play of the first-ever Ellen Stewart Award — named after the famed founder and director of La MaMa— Olmos’s so go the ghosts of méxico, part one is inspired by the life of Marisol Valles Garcia, who stepped up to fill the place of a decapitated chief-of-police in the northern town of Praxadis, México only to be run out of the country by the drug cartels who threatened her life. Matthew Paul Olmos has fashioned these events into a poetic, nightmare-land where the dream world and the real world intertwine and the legion of dead from the drug wars return to speak. Undermain Artistic Director Katherine Owens directs this groundbreaking work.

An incredibly moving play that successfully brings the tragedy that has happened so far away…quite literally to the main stage.” – Exeunt Magazine

Chilling…persistently haunting…audacious, almost novelistic…” The New York Times

Matthew Paul Olmos was born and raised in Los Angeles to a police officer and Labor/Delivery nurse. He is a three-time Sundance Institute Fellowship/Residency recipient (2014 Lab, 2013 UCROSS, 2009 Time Warner Storytelling Fellow), New Dramatists Resident Playwright, the 2012 Princess Grace Awardee in Playwriting and was recently named by Sam Shepard as the inaugural recipient of the La MaMa e.t.c.’s Ellen Stewart Emerging Playwright Award. Mr. Olmos is a 2013-14 Dramatists Guild Fellow, a 2012-13 New York Theatre Workshop fellow; Primary Stages Writer’s Group, Ensemble Studio Theater lifetime member; and has been a terraNOVA Groundbreaker Playwright, Rising Circle Playwright, INTAR Theater H.P.R.L Writer and Brooklyn Arts Exchange Resident Artist. Mr. Olmos was a two-time Resident Artist at Mabou Mines/Suite (mentored by Ruth Maleczech); awarded the “Top Prize of the Americas” by the BBC 2011 International Playwriting Competition for his play The Nature of Captivity. Awarded the Sundance Institute Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship for his play i put the fear of méxico in’em; produced in Chicago by Teatro Vista in 2012; it was also on the syllabus at a Rutger’s University undergraduate course. Mr. Olmos 3-play cycle so go the ghosts of méxico, focuses on the US/México drug wars. The first play in this cycle was produced by La MaMa E.T.C. in the spring of 2013 and has since premiered in México. Undermain will premiere part 2 of the trilogy in its 2017/2018 and part 3 in the following 35th season. ________________________________________

Anne Washburn, Photo: Beowolf Sheehan

10 Out Of 12

by Anne Washburn

A Regional Premiere

Directed by Undermain Company Member Blake Hackle

Opening Night Saturday 11/12/16

Preview Performances 11/9, 11/10, and 11/11

In Performance 11/9/16 – 12/3/16

Wednesdays through Saturdays with two matinees on 11/19 and 12/3.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to tech. Around you, a company of 14 is engaged in the very peculiar task of making a new play. You’ll have a seat next to the sound designer as he mixes cues. You’ll eavesdrop on backstage gossip as it happens over headset. You’ll watch the director struggle to contain the uncontainable. Anne Washburn (Mr. Burns) has examined the world of tech rehearsal and crafted a wondrous, layered and often hilarious world that examines the process of creation. An immersion into the world of the theatre directed by Undermain company member Blake Hackler. 10 Out of 12 is a wry and absorbing look at how work forms us and deforms us.

Ms. Washburn is a past master at assembling art out of shards. And “10 out of 12” is steeped in a doubt-tinged religious wonder” – The New York Times

Anne Washburn’s odd and often hilarious new comedy…takes on the perverse challenge of making theater…exceptionally funny and moving, the more so for the mystery of how either reaction was produced”.Jesse Green, Vulture

“Washburn finds the beauty and strangeness of playmaking, the nobility of an often futile pursuit.” – David Cote, Time Out, NY

  • Anne Washburn’s play, Burns, was produced by Playwrights Horizons, Woolly Mammoth (DC), and The Almeida (London). Other plays include 10 Out of 12, The Internationalist, A Devil at Noon, Apparition, The Communist Dracula Pageant, I Have Loved Strangers, The Ladies, The Small, and a transadaptation of Euripides’ Orestes. Awards include 2015 Whiting Award, 2015 PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation Theater Award, the Guggenheim, a NYFA Fellowship, a Time Warner Fellowship, Susan Smith Blackburn finalist, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. She is an associated artist with The Civilians, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Chochiqq, and is an alumna of New Dramatists and 13P. Currently commissioned by MTC, Yale Rep, and CSC. Her play Antilia Pneumatica premiered in March 2016 (Playwrights Horizons) in NYC. _________________________________________

Galileo

by Bertolt Brecht

Directed by Undermain Artistic Director Katherine Owens

With Bruce DuBose as Galileo

Opening Night Saturday 2/11/17

Preview Performances 2/8, 2/9, and 2/10

In Performance 2/8/17 – 3/5/17

Wednesday through Saturday evenings with Sunday matinees.

The setting is the dawn of the age of reason in the early 17th century when Galileo was teaching young students the incredible account of how the earth moves around the sun, rather than the other way around. His heretical announcement, that both the moon and Jupiter only reflect the sun’s light, is brought to the attention of the church and Galileo is summoned to the Vatican. His friends abandon him and his appeal to the Pope is intercepted by the inquisitor. Galileo recants, but even while imprisoned continues his writings surreptitiously. Throughout his life Galileo is pitted against an institution that claims the truth as its own commodity and threatens torture and death to those who would offer an opposing vision.

After emigrating to the United States from Hitler’s Germany, Brecht translated and re-worked the first version of his play in collaboration with the actor Charles Laughton. The result of their efforts was the second ‘American version’ of the play, which to this day remains the most widely-staged version in the English-speaking world. The original Broadway production in 1947 was directed by soon-to-be blacklisted stage and film director Joseph Losey. Undermain will offer a rare opportunity to see this masterwork, last produced in North Texas in 1984, in its unique and intimate performance venue. Undermain Artistic Director Katherine Owens directs Galileo with Undermain co-founder Bruce DuBose in the title role.

“Unquestionably Brecht’s masterpiece.”New York Daily News

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), playwright, poet and director, was born in Augsburg, Germany in February 1898. He established himself as a playwright during the 1920s and early 1930s with plays such as Baal, Man is Man, The Threepenny Opera, and The Mother. In 1933, as Hitler came to power in Germany, Mr. Brecht fled to Scandinavia before eventually settling in the USA where he remained until 1947. During the war years, he wrote many of his best known plays, including The Life of Galileo, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Mother Courage and Her Children, and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. He returned to Europe in 1947 and shortly after his arrival formed the Berliner Ensemble. He died in Berlin on August 14th, 1956 but remains a hugely influential theatre practitioner.

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Really

by Jackie Sibblies Drury

Directed by TBA

Opening Night Saturday 4/15/17

Preview Performances 4/12, 4/13, and 4/14

In Performance 4/12/17 – 5/6/17

Wednesdays through Saturdays with two matinees on 4/22 and 5/6

Undermain returns to the work of award winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury, whose provocative and exciting play We Are Proud to Present a Presentation… was staged in its 30th season. In Ms. Drury’s latest play, Really, three people’s lives intertwine, through the art of photography as they search for the truth of their common history in this tense and telling play about artists, legacy, and the ephemeral nature of time. Really asks what do we try to leave behind, what do we actually leave behind, and how do we deal with being left.

Premiered with The New York City Players at Abrons Arts Center (March 2016). Developed at Sundance Theatre Lab, Van Lier Residency at New Dramatists, and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab (2012).

”an unnerving study of art as pollution, distraction from a world fast evolving beyond aesthetics.” – Time Out New York CRITICS’ PICK

“stylishly contemplative…[Ms. Drury] asks provocative questions about the value of what is seen in pictures that freeze fleeting moments for posterity…Magic has happened, and it’s as unsettling as it is irrefutable. Does any photograph do justice to the reality it tries to capture?” – The New York Times

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn based playwright. Her plays include We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915, Social Creatures, and Really. Jackie’s plays have been presented by Soho Rep, Victory Gardens, Trinity Rep, Matrix Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Undermain Theatre, InterAct Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, Available Light, Company One, and The Bush Theatre in London. Her work has been developed at Sundance, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, A.C.T., The Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, PRELUDE.11&14, The Civilians, The Bushwick Starr, The LARK, The Magic Theatre, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival and The MacDowell Colony. Jackie was a dramaturg for Zero Cost House by Pig Iron Theatre Company & Toshiki Okada and The Garden by Nichole Canuso Dance Company. She received the 2012-2013 Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists, and was the inaugural recipient of the 2012-2014 Jerome Fellowship at The LARK. Jackie is a NYTW Usual Suspect and is currently a member of The Writer’s Room at Manhattan Theatre Club and Ars Nova.

Undermain Theatre’s 33rd Season Summary – 2016/2017

so go the ghosts of méxico A Trilogy by Matthew Paul Olmos

part one – a brave woman in méxico

Directed by Undermain Artistic Director Katherine Owens

A Regional Premiere

In Performance 9/14/16-10/8/16, Wed. through Sat, two Sat. matinees 9/24 and 10/8

Preview Performances 9/14, 9/15 and 9/16

Opening Night Saturday 9/17/16

10 out of 12 by Anne Washburn

Directed by Undermain Company Member Blake Hackler

A Regional Premiere

In Performance 11/9/16 – 12/3/16, Wed. through Sat. with two Sat. matinees on 11/19 and 12/3

Preview Performances 11/9, 11/10, and 11/11

Opening Night Saturday 11/12/16

Galileo by Bertolt Brecht

Directed by Undermain Artistic Director Katherine Owens

With Bruce DuBose as Galileo

In Performance 2/8/17 – 3/5/17, Wed. through Sat. evenings with weekly Sunday matinees

Preview Performances 2/8, 2/9, and 2/10

Opening Night Saturday 2/11/17

Really by Jackie Sibblies Drury

A Regional Premiere

In Performance 4/12/17 – 5/6/17, Wed. through Sat. with two matinees on 4/22 and 5/6

Preview Performances 4/12, 4/13,and 4/14

Opening Night Saturday 4/15/17

Curtain times and ticket pricing

Undermain Theatre performances are Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.,

Fridays and Saturdays at 8:15 p.m. with Saturday matinees at 2 p.m.

10 out of 12 and Galileo performances will be 7:30 Wednesdays through Saturdays

Matinee performances for Galileo will be Sundays at 2 p.m.

Ticket prices are:

All preview performances are $15

Wednesdays and Thursdays $20, Fridays $25 and Saturdays $30

All first Wednesdays (the first Wed. after opening) are also $15

All matinee performances are $20

Visit www.undermain.org to purchase tickets online or call the box office at 214-747-5515.

Discounts are available for seniors, students, KERA members, and groups. You must call 214-747-5515 for your discount. Undermain is located at 3200 Main Street at the corner of Murray Street in Deep Ellum. With free parking at 3300 Commerce St.

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