In picking out the recurring themes of Undermain Theatre’s upcoming season, announced today, we came up again and again with both “women” and “ghosts.”
With the season-opening world premiere of so go the ghosts of mexico, part two, the second part of a trilogy about the bloody psychic cost of the U.S.-Mexico drug wars, we have a story of gang violence, with the swaggering macho narcos portrayed by a cast of women. (The first part of the trilogy ran at the independent Deep Ellum theater last year, and the third is coming next year.) In John, a great play by the young, Pulitzer-winning Annie Baker (The Flick), we have something of a ghost story set at a bed and breakfast at Gettysburg. And with Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, a classic getting its first professional production in these parts in more than three decades, the story of three women dealing with life’s crushingly immediate disappointments and achingly distant hopes in a small Russian town.
A reading series of new plays “examining the current American Landscape” and the terrifying, wonderful new places this country may or may not be heading in, just sweetens the deal for the company’s 2017-2018 season, its 34th. Things kick off in September. Season tickets will run you about $100 a pop. For more info, visit Undermain online. Keep reading for more info on each of this season’s shows, as copied from a press release:
so go the ghosts of méxico, part two
The second of a trilogy by Matthew Paul Olmos
A World Premiere
Directed by Undermain Artistic Director Katherine Owens
Preview Performances 9/6, 9/7, and 9/8
Opening Night Saturday 9/9/17
In Performance 9/6/17-10/1/17
Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm with two Sunday 2:00 matinees on 9/17 and 10/1
Two warring gangs in which the reins of power shift, a drug trade economy relying on Los Estados Unidos as its best customer, the method of delivery is ever ‘changing,’ and loyalty exists nowhere; the second play in this 3-play cycle about the U.S./Mexico drug wars explores the extreme machismo of narco culture as shown through a cast of all women.
*Developed in part by Sundance Institute’s Theater Lab and New York Theatre Workshop’s Emerging Artists of Color Fellowship.
*Developed as part of Baryshnikov Arts Center’s 2015 Artist in Residence Program.
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’s 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 produced the first part of the trilogy in its 2016/2017 season and will premiere part three next season.
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John
by Annie Baker
A Dallas Premiere
Directed by Undermain Company Member Bruce DuBose
Preview Performances 11/8, 11/9, and 11/10
Opening Night Saturday 11/11/17
In Performance 11/8/17 – 12/3/17
Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm with two Sunday 2:00 matinees on 11/21 and 12/3.
The week after Thanksgiving. A Bed & Breakfast in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A cheerfully eccentric innkeeper. A young couple struggling to stay together. Thousands of inanimate objects, watching. A haunting and haunted meditation by Annie Baker, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Flick, which Undermain Theatre produced in their 31st season, set near the site of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, where a young couple are welcomed to an eerie bed and breakfast by an eccentric inn keeper.
“Annie Baker’s “John” is so good on so many levels that it casts a unique and brilliant light.” -The New Yorker
“Baker does not merely tell a scary story. She shows them, piling up like ghosts of amputated limbs from the war wounded, and makes them riveting, unpredictable, altogether human theater.” – Newsday
Annie Baker grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her full-length plays include The Flick (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Obie Award for Playwriting), Circle Mirror Transformation (Playwrights Horizons, Obie Award for Best New American Play, Drama Desk nomination for Best New American Play), The Aliens (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Obie Award for Best New American Play), Body Awareness (Atlantic Theater Company, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play/Emerging Playwright), and an adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (Soho Rep, Drama Desk nomination for Best Revival), for which she also designed the costumes. Her plays have been produced at over 150 theaters throughout the U.S. and have been produced internationally in over a dozen countries. Other recent honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, New York Drama Critics Circle Award, Lilly Award, and Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship. A published anthology of her work, The Vermont Plays, is available from TCG.
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Three Sisters
by Anton Chekhov, English version by Sarah Ruhl
Directed by Undermain Artistic Director Katherine Owens
Preview Performances 2/7, 2/8, and 2/9
Opening Night Saturday 2/10/18
In Performance 2/7/18 – 3/4/18
Wednesday through Saturday evenings at 7:30 pm with Sunday 2:00 matinees on 2/11, 2/18, 2/25,and 3/4.
Discover the humor and heartbreak of one of the world’s greatest plays by Anton Chekhov, revealed through the lyricism of one of the leading voices in contemporary theatre: two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Sarah Ruhl. Three Sisters, Chekhov’s great tragicomic is the story of women contending with disillusioned life in a small Russian town. The Prozorov sisters, Olga, Masha, and Irina, dream of freedom, sex, romance, and Moscow. Two figures appear in their lives. Vershinin, the new battery commander, has hopes of a better future for mankind. Natasha, a local woman, has hopes of a better future for herself. Each will transform the Prozorov family. A complex lattice of stories works itself out in this classic of world drama by the visionary Anton Chekhov. This production will offer the rare treat of experiencing this great work in the Undermain’s intimate performance space.
“Sarah Ruhl has a taste for and a way with the classics.” – New York Times
“Luminous!…A crisp, breezy new English version by Sarah Ruhl. Its fierce beauty suffuses every moment and reaches for immortality.” – San Francisco Chronicle
“Exhilarating! Ruhl doesn’t call attention to herself here. Instead she lets the play breathe with a simple, unmannered approach to the drama that makes it seem shockingly contemporary…There’s a naturalness to the way the drama unfolds, the ebb and flow of the emotional outbursts, that leaves you breathless.” – San Jose Mercury News
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: “Medicine is my lawful wife”, he once said, “and literature is my mistress.” Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a “theatre of mood” and a “submerged life in the text”. Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.
Sarah Ruhl (born 1974) is an American playwright. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for a distinguished American playwright in mid-career. Two of her plays have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama — The Clean House (2004) and In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) (2009).]
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Whither Goest Thou America?
Readings of new American Plays
“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”
-Jack Kerouac, from On the Road
The Reading Series runs from April 11, 2018 through May 6, 2018
All tickets $15
Undermain presents a series of readings of new plays examining the current American Landscape. Each week of the series will focus on a different playwright and play with staged readings by an ensemble cast. Audiences will have the opportunity to return each week of the series to experience a new work examining the American experience and asking the question, “Where are we going?”
Play titles will be announced during the season.
Priority reservations for the series for Undermain season pass holders.
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Undermain Theatre’s 34th Season Summary – 2017/2018
so go the ghosts of méxico, part two – A trilogy by Matthew Paul Olmos
Directed by Undermain Artistic Director Katherine Owens
A World Premiere
In Performance 9/6/17-10/1/17, Wed. through Sat. evenings, with two Sunday matinees 9/17 and 10/1
Preview Performances 9/6, 9/7, and 9/8
Opening Night Saturday 9/9/17
John by Annie Baker
Directed by Undermain Company Member Bruce DuBose
A Dallas Premiere
In Performance 11/8/17 – 12/3/17, Wed. through Sat. evenings, with two Sunday matinees on 11/19 and 12/3
Preview Performances 11/8, 11/9, and 11/10
Opening Night Saturday 11/11/17
Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, English Version by Sarah Ruhl
Directed by Undermain Artistic Director Katherine Owens
In Performance 2/7/18 – 3/4/18, Wed. through Sat. evenings with weekly Sunday matinees
Preview Performances 2/7, 2/8, and 2/9
Opening Night Saturday 2/10/18
Whither Goest Thou America? – Readings of new American Plays
In Performance 4/11/18 – 5/6/18
All tickets $15
Curtain times and ticket pricing
Undermain Theatre performances are Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.
Matinee performances will be Sundays at 2:00 p.m.
Ticket prices are:
All preview performances are $15
All first Wednesdays (the first Wed. after opening) are also $15
Wednesdays and Thursdays $20
Fridays $25
Saturdays $30
All matinee performances are $20
All Reading Series Tickets are $15
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. Free parking at 3300 Commerce St.
