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PTTP's 2006-07 season
3:22 p.m., Oct. 16, 2006--UD's Professional Theatre Training Program (PTTP) opens its 2006-07 season at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 26, in the Thompson Theatre of the new Center for the Arts (CFA) with J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac premieres Oct. 27 and George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance opens Nov. 29 in CFA's Studio Theatre. The second part of the season opens Friday, Feb. 2, in Hartshorn Theatre with Adrian Hall's Savages, Christians and Other Homo Sapiens. Jewel Walker's Tuesday premieres March 1 in the Studio Theatre and performances of Bertold Brecht's The Life of Galileo begin March 3 in the Hartshorn Theatre. The plays will mark the third year of performances by the 24 actors, 10 technical directors and six stage managers who are enrolled at PTTP for three years of concentrated training. Peter Pan is an enduring magical fantasy of fiendish pirates, ingenious lost boys, three wide-eyed Darlings, Tinker Bell, and the boy who never wants to grow up. This tale has become a timeless, action-packed adventure that appeals to both the young and the young-at heart for its joyous spectacle of fairies, crocodiles and exhilarating flights of imagination. Cyrano de Bergerac is a master swordsman and a gallant poet with a pronounced nose and an undying, yet unrevealed, love for his cousin Roxane. When Roxane falls for Christian, a handsome cadet, Cyrano, one of the theatre's most memorable figures, sacrifices his own happiness and bequeaths to his rival the words to woo the lady they both love. This is an elegant tale of unrequited love complete with brilliant swordplay and sparkling wordplay. Misalliance is a comedy which finds John Tarleton, the underwear king, and his independent-minded daughter, Hypatia, tangling with a passel of guests, both invited and uninvited, and with a parade of hilarious debates revolving around the superiority of the female sex, the state of social class and the madness of love and lust. Feisty disagreements between parents and children are inevitable, particularly when discussing mating, marriage, morality or the proper care of guests who literally crash through the conservatory ceiling. A Flea in Her Ear is a French bedroom farce full of misunderstandings. Due to a lack of amorous activity with her husband Victor, Raymonde suspects him of having an affair. To prove her suspicion, she enlists a friend to create an entrapping rendezvous of promised passion. The rendezvous turns into a madcap romp of misunderstanding between spouses, servants and a soused hotel porter with an uncanny resemblance to poor, extremely confused Victor. Mary Stuart is a commanding interpretation of two political powerhouses, Queen Elizabeth I and her cousin and mortal enemy, Mary Queen of Scots. This powerful play provides a chillingly relevant view of the personal and political devastation visited on a land divided by the turmoil of conflicting religious ideologies. Savages, Christians and Other Homo Sapiens is an ensemble piece created with discussions and improvisations by the acting company at PTTP and historical and archeological documentation. It concerns the clash of two cultures and the role that religion and sexual orientation play when the first group of anthropologists is sent west by the Smithsonian Institute in 1879. Their goal is to document the pueblo people of Zuni, believed at the time to be a vanishing race. The parallel with today is clear when these five scientists of this young nation barely a century old confront aborigines of a culture dating back millennia. The production will include some humor, some nudity and some horror as men and women struggle to understand and overcome their differences. Tuesday is a charming and imaginative music and movement play about a typical day on a typical street with typical neighborhood suspects: klutzy construction workers, rowdy school children, a dancing traffic cop and an increasingly incontinent puppy. The Life of Galileo is a timeless epic that captures the enduring struggle between reason and faith through the complex life of Galileo, the teacher and scientist charged with heresy and forced to stand trial before the dreaded Inquisition. This play illustrates the passionate convictions on both sides of the science versus religion debate that has raged for centuries. Topdog/Underdog is a Pulitzer Prize-winning play with mesmerizing dialog, tantalizing rhythms and the disturbing use of cultural icons. Brotherly love and hatred take center stage with the sardonically named Lincoln and Booth, siblings trapped in society's racial and gender pigeonholes. Lincoln, a former con man and three-card Monte sharp, gave up the card con and now works at a carnival, dressing up in whiteface as Abraham Lincoln, primed for fake assassinations. Booth has taken up his brother's old vice and is attempting to lure Lincoln back to the street. This play is both frightening and funny, with unsettling allegory and brilliant wordplay. A Streetcar Named Desire is a disquieting yet engrossing classic set in sultry New Orleans. When fragile, fading beauty Blanche comes to stay with her sister, Stella, and Stella's hard-drinking, hard-living husband Stanley, the worlds of invented gentility and savage reality burst into a raging fire of brutal sexuality in Tennessee William's Pulitzer Prize-winning theatrical masterpiece. In Tartuffe, Moliere's highly controversial and classic caveat of religious hypocrisy opens with an apparently devout and pious stranger, going by the name of Tartuffe, worming his way into the wealthy home of Orgon. While other family members see the interloper for the con man he is, Orgon becomes so enamored with this false saint that he plans to force his daughter to marry the man and disinherit his son in order to make Tartuffe the sole heir to his fortune. This vastly entertaining satire is a dazzling example of “Pray as I say, not as I do.” In Taming of the Shrew, a girl can't marry boy until her spirited and verbally castigating sister is married off. A fortune hunting bachelor is enticed into the scenario, and then all hell breaks loose. Shakespeare's original battle of the sexes reaches a riotous, fevered pitch when this newlywed husband and wife romp and wrestle for the martial upper hand--a hand that, in the end, surprises and delights them both. The opening performances are scheduled as follows:
PTTP students are selected once every four years to pursue master's degrees in fine arts. The group is chosen through an extensive search throughout the United States in the year between the graduation of one class and the beginning of the next class. Training is focused on plays from the classic repertoire and the program seeks students who are particularly interested in the classics. Season subscriptions are now available. Single tickets range from $8-$18. For more information on show times and to order tickets, visit [www.pttp.udel.edu/season.html], call (302) 831-2204, e-mail [pttp-boxoffice@udel.edu] or stop by the Hartshorn Hall box office. Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson |
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