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Dallas Theater Center Announces 2010-11 Season


by Stephen Becker 9 Apr 2010 11:58 AM

Artistic Director Kevin Moriarty announced the Dallas Theater Center’s 2010-11 season this morning at a gathering on the 10th floor patio atop the Wyly Theatre. We’ll get to that in a second, but first, a couple of newsy bits:

CTA TBD

Artistic Director Kevin Moriarty announced the Dallas Theater Center’s 2010-11 season this morning at a gathering on the 10th floor patio atop the Wyly Theatre. We’ll get to that in a second, but first, a couple of newsy bits:

  • Next year’s subscription series will include six shows, one more than the current season. When I talked to Moriarty after the announcement, he told me that the sixth show was added because DTC has a certain number of points in its mission that he wants to hit each season, and it was getting difficult to hit all of those points in just five shows. He says in the next five years, the plan is to expand that number to seven.
  • DTC will expand its resident acting company by one to 10 actors. Moriarty says we can expect an announcement on that in about six weeks or so but was pretty tight-lipped about what he was looking for in the new member.
  • Moriarty also spoke excitedly about just the sheer number of actors being employed by DTC. This year, 92 actors will take the stage, and next year 116 will be used. That’s nearly double the 60 actors who filled all the roles in the 2007 season. More than 80 percent of those actors live in North Texas.

OK – now I’ll let the press release handle the season announcement. Of special note is the world premiere of Dallas native Regina Taylor’s new play, Rain. It’s the first of a planned trilogy of plays all set in Oak Cliff.

Check back here later for my Q&A with Moriarty:

2010-2011 Season Lineup

Henry IV Sept. 10 – Oct. 10

by William Shakespeare

directed by Kevin Moriarty

Potter Rose Performance Hall, Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre

Shakespeare’s most popular play during his lifetime, and one of his greatest achievements as a writer, comes to life on stage for the first time in DTC’s history. Featuring Shakespeare’s most beloved comic character, Sir John Falstaff, Henry IV is filled with riotous comedy, battlefield action, and a moving story of a profligate boy who must learn to become a man and a king.

Set in England in the 1400’s, Henry IV tells the story of a country in the midst of a bloody civil war, led by the ailing King Henry IV, who is desperately struggling to fight off rebel armies. Meanwhile, his son, Prince Hal, is found drinking in bars with lowlifes, highwaymen and other members of the London underworld, including Sir John Falstaff (played by former DTC company member Randy Moore), a charming, drunken and obese knight who has befriended him as a second father. Unwilling to accept his responsibility as heir to the throne, the young prince must finally reconcile with his dying father, abandon his dissolute lifestyle, and change from a prodigal son to one of the most powerful leaders in English history.

Rain Nov. 5 – Dec. 5

by Regina Taylor

directed by Ethan McSweeny

World Premiere

Co-Production with the Goodman Theatre

Potter Rose Performance Hall, Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre

After her marriage falls apart, Iris makes her annual trip home to Dallas for her mother Rose’s birthday. For Iris, home is a place where nothing ever changes, a refuge from the storm. But change is afoot in her mother’s house, and Iris and Rose must learn to weather the storm together. Laced with humor, Rain is a moving portrait of family, motherhood and the ties that bind one generation to the next.

From Regina Taylor, author of the critically-acclaimed Crowns and Drowning Crow, Rain will have its world premiere in Dallas before going onto performances at Chicago’s Tony Award-winning Goodman Theatre.

A Christmas Carol Nov. 26 – Dec. 24

by Charles Dickens

adapted by Richard Hellesen

music by David de Berry

directed by Matthew Gray

Kalita Humphreys Theater

No holiday story compares with A Christmas Carol, and no production has more humor and humanity than DTC’s staging of this heart-warming classic. Filled with traditional and original songs of the season, A Christmas Carol is DTC’s most popular production and appeals to a broad family audience every year.

*Community Partner: North Texas Food Bank

Arsenic and Old Lace Feb. 4 – March 13

by Joseph Kesselring

directed by Scott Schwartz

Kalita Humphreys Theater

First produced on Broadway in 1941 and as a Hollywood film in 1944, Arsenic and Old Lace is one of the funniest and most often performed plays of the American theater. This farcical black comedy revolves around two spinster aunts who have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with a glass of homemade elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and “just a pinch” of cyanide; their brother who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt and digs locks for the Panama Canal in the cellar of their home (which then serve as graves for the aunts’ victims); and their other brother, a murderer who has received plastic surgery performed by an alcoholic accomplice, Dr. Einstein, to conceal his identity and now looks like the famous horror film actor, Boris Karloff.

Legendary Broadway actors Betty Buckley and Tovah Feldshuh join forces to create a fresh, new production of this hilarious comedy.

*Associate Producing Partner: Charles Schwab

*Assistant Producing Sponsor: Gardere Wynne Sewell

Dividing the Estate March 11 – April 9

by Horton Foote

directed by Joel Ferrell

Potter Rose Performance Hall, Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre

Part of the DFW Foote Festival

In this human comedy about a family that must confront its past as it prepares for its future, matriarch Stella Gordon is dead set against the parceling out of her Texas family’s land despite the financial woes brought on by the oil bust of the 1980s. An award-winning Broadway hit comedy in 2009, Dividing the Estate is filled with sharply but affectionately drawn characters acting with foxy cunning and hypocritical virtue.

The great Texas playwright, Horton Foote, was known for his rich characterizations and wry humor, deftly combining the claustrophobia of Tennessee Williams’ southern families, the physical and psychological dysfunctions of Eugene O’Neill’s clans, and the humor and pathos of small town Southern life portrayed by Flannery O’Connor. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his play, The Young Man from Atlanta, and two Academy Awards for his screenplays of To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies, Horton Foote was one of America’s most observant playwrights and a Texas treasure. DTC is partnering with theaters and arts organizations throughout the Metroplex to produce the region-wide Foote Festival from March 14 – May 1, 2011.

*Assistant Producing Partner: Jackson Walker

Cabaret April 22 – May 22

music by John Kander

lyrics by Fred Ebb

book by Joe Masteroff

directed and choreographed by Joel Ferrell

Potter Rose Performance Hall, Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre

Since its Broadway premiere in 1966, Cabaret has won a staggering number of stage and screen awards, including 8 Oscars and 13 Tony Awards. Set in pre-war Weimer Berlin at the infamously decadent Kit Kat Klub, the show follows the fortunes of the club’s star, Sally Bowles, and an impish emcee, who sound the clarion call to decadent fun, while outside the footsteps of Hitler’s stormtroopers grow louder and louder. The entire Wyly Theatre will be transformed into the Kit Kat Klub in a fully immersive, fresh new production of this sexy and provocative musical classic.

The Wiz July 8 – Aug. 14

book by William F. Brown

music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls

directed by Kevin Moriarty

Co-production with Dallas Black Dance Theatre

Potter Rose Performance Hall, Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre

A high-energy and thoroughly delightful reimagining of The Wizard of Oz with an African American cast, this joyful family musical won seven Tony Awards when it opened on Broadway, including Best Musical and Best Score. With a score filled with a dazzling, lively mixture of rock, gospel and soul music, The Wiz starts with a tornado and keeps lifting from there, as young Dorothy, the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion become friends, “Ease on Down the Road,” and come face to face with the great Wiz himself, ultimately learning that there’s no place like home.

In a unique collaboration, DTC – Dallas’ oldest, continuously operating professional theater – joins forces with Dallas Black Dance Theatre – Dallas’ oldest, continuously operating professional dance company – to dance, sing, laugh and celebrate in this boisterous and exuberant musical.

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  • Topham Beauclerk

    I winced when I saw “The Wiz” on the schedule. But then I remembered how exciting the Dallas Black Dance Theatre has been the couple of times I’ve seen them, so it could be ok. But Arsenic & Old Lace with Betty Buckley and Tovah Feldshuh? That has the potential to be cringe-worthy indeed.

  • Bill Ansley

    With the exception of “Dividing the Estate”, does not look like a very exciting season.

  • How can the season not be extraordinary with Henry IV (and my all- time favorite Shakespearean character, Falstaff), a Horton Foote play, and Cabaret? The others? No clue. . .but an open mind.