Wednesday evening, Jac Alder, Theatre 3‘s executive producer, announced the company’s 49th season. It comprises a dozen shows, whose productions represent 939 work-weeks for actors, a considerable increase over this season’s 588 weeks. Alder proudly noted that with some 329 performances this season (in both Theatre 3 and Theatre Too), the Quadrangle facility may well be the busiest performing arts venue in North Texas.

As for the ambitious offerings, they include Theatre 3’s contribution to the city-wide Horton Foote Festival next year — in this case, the trio of one–acts, The Roads to Home, that Foote wrote in 1982.  There are also several first-time-local productions of recent Broadway hits — notably, the Tony Award-winning musical, The Drowsy Chaperone, and Moises Kaufman’s 33 Variations, which concerns the mystery behind 33 versions of a waltz written by Ludwig van Beethoven. There is also the stellar (and difficult) Tom Stoppard comedy, Travesties — which I’ve never seen done in North Texas. Interestingly enough, Stoppard’s original script, plus a deal of related correspondence, is now held in the Humanities Research Center in Austin.

The basement studio space, Theatre Too, will also host new works and area debuts, including Tales from Mount Olympus, a  Bunraku puppet show created by Theatre 3’s resident artist Bruce Coleman, as well as Christoper Durang’s wild political satire, Why Torture is  Wrong and the People Who Love  Them, and Naomi Iizuka’s small-town North Carolina ghost tale, Language of Angels.

A full accounting, below the fold.

Theatre Three’s Limited Engagement Summer Spectacular:

Beehive, The 60’s Musical

A high energy musical tribute by Larry Gallagher

June 17 – July 4, 2010

Some of Theatre Three’s great summer attractions of the past included original composer salutes: S’Wonderful, highlighting George and Ira Gershwin; Jeepers Creepers, Here’s Harry, saluting the movie musicals of Harry Warren, Side by Side by Sondheim, the first of three revues of Sondheim, and several others. Beehive, The 60’s Musical returns Theatre Three to that musical celebration mode, this time with the exciting and colorful salute to the women who made the music of the 1960’s so special: from Lesley Gore to Janis Joplin, from the Shirelles to Aretha Franklin and everyone in between. The summer spectacular will play on a special four performances a week schedule; a three week journey through the look, the sounds, and the feel of those amazing times. Tickets for this limited engagement will range from $15 – $35.

Theatre Three’s Subscription Season:

Sherlock Holmes in The Crucifer of Blood

A spectacular mystery by Paul Giovanni

August 5 – September 5, 2010

The first show of the Theatre Three season is a grand spectacle of the bloody curse; a curse sprung from nefarious thievery that takes us from India’s Red Fort, into an opium den in London’s Limehouse district, across a dark and foggy Thames and, of course, into the fabled Baker Street detective’s study and even into the cunning mind of Sherlock Holmes himself. Holmes’ powers of deduction and his uncanny ability to comprehend the criminal mind yield unsurpassed theatrical thrills.

33 Variations

A play in variation form by Moisés Kaufman

September 30 – October 31, 2010

This recent Broadway sensation is a stunning inquiry into the creative mind and its mysteries. Katherine Brant, a brilliant musicologist is driven – even at the expense of her adult daughter’s happiness – to unlock the puzzle of why Beethoven spent the last years of his life writing thirty-three variations on a simple waltz by an insignificant musical hack. This inspiring drama shows both Katherine Brant and Beethoven in a titanic struggle against time and task; each divinely tortured but divinely triumphant.

The Drowsy Chaperone

A musical within a comedy with music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar

December 2, 2010 – January 9, 2011

It all begins when a die-hard musical fan plays his favorite cast album, a 1928 smash hit called The Drowsy Chaperone, and the high-spirited show magically bursts to life in his living room. We are instantly immersed in the glamorous, hilarious tale of a celebrity bride and her uproarious wedding day, complete with thrills, surprises, tap dancing and tons of laughs. Devised originally by a madcap Toronto improvisational troupe, this musical show went on to garner five of Broadway’s Tony Awards.

Travesties

A fireworks comedy by Tom Stoppard

February 10 – March 13, 2011

In 1917 three of the twentieth century’s most crucial revolutionaries – author James Joyce, Tristan Tzara, the founder of the Dada art movement, and political revolutionary Lenin – were all living in Zurich. Stoppard spins this historical coincidence into a hysterically madcap speculative portrait of what their meeting might have engendered in this knockout comedy, tumbling from Stoppard’s comic-imagination-on-steriod intellect.

The Roads to Home

Theatre Three’s contribution to the city-wide Foote Festival

April 7 – May 8, 2011

Foote was the master of the one-act, and in the 50’s and 60’s made regular contributions of Texas stories in the format which were always enthusiastically reviewed and enjoyed in New York. In 1982, he wrote The Roads to Home, which is a set of three one-acts written to be performed together in one performance, and centered on three women whose small Texas town values ill-equip them for the tough city lives they are now leading. Foote’s masterful storytelling is full of unblinking honesty and laced with humor. In The Roads to Home, he reveals that the women’s small town ways, built on kindness and discretion, have no system for dealing with less well-behaved feelings like terror, anguish, and passion that loom in their big city lives.

Pippin

Music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz; book by Roger O. Hirson and Bob Fosse

June 2 – July 3, 2011

This landmark musical won the Theatre World award plus five Tony Awards and five Drama Desk Awards for its once-upon-a-time-style telling of Pippin, son of Charlemagne. Its coming-of-age story takes Pippin from being a naïve young prince to his kingship, where he struggles to rule a kingdom without warfare. The memorable songs of the show have been recorded by scores of recording artists, and its concepts and choreography made a Broadway legend of Bob Fosse.

Theatre Too Season:

Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage

A rip snorting comedy by Jane Martin

July 9 – August 8, 2010

A beer guzzling, middle-aged rancher woman (Big 8) is having a grand time nursing a good looking cowboy through his rodeo injuries. The unconventional pair’s idyll is threatened by Big 8’s financial woes (her ranch is about to be foreclosed on) but most of all by the invasion of a floozy (with a pretty plastic hand) on the run from her Hell’s Angel biker pursuer. Add the return of Big 8’s prodigal son, her unhelpful sister and gun violence to the mix, and this comedy breaks every code of the wild, wild West.

Songs from an Unmade Bed

A sensational new song cycle by Mark Campbell

September 3 – October 3, 2010

An off-Broadway sensation, this is an exciting new cabaret styled theatre piece. Lyricist Campbell collaborated with eighteen cabaret composers to create sung narratives of the passions, pitfalls and puzzles of modern romantic relationships. The result is an intimate behind-the-scenes exploration of what it means to have a heart filled with meanings the mind still tries to grasp. Simple, powerful and unforgettable, the singers are supported by piano and cello.

Tales from Mount Olympus

A Bunraku puppet show for all the family by Theatre Three’s Bruce R. Coleman

October 29 – November 28, 2010

All dramatic plotting and, for that matter, all modern psychology flows from the tales of gods, demi-gods and humans devised by the Greeks in ancient times. Using Bunraku puppetry techniques (where the large puppets are manipulated by puppeteers dressed in black) and developing this design with special black lighting, Coleman and his performers will create a magical and mysterious look into enduring legends and stories that continue to be a reference for today’s modern thinkers.

I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change

The annual bring-back smash hit revue for all romantics by Jimmy Roberts & Joe DiPietro

January 14 – February 14, 2011

It’s a hugely entertaining show that Theatre Three revives every year around Valentine’s Day — and it sells out! It’s the perfect revue of courtship and marriage that has earned its place as a signature piece by Theatre Three, and featuring gifted sketch comedy players who sing and dance their way through all the phases of romance and marriage.

Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them

A new comedy by Christopher Durang

March 11 – April 10, 2011

This latest comedy by Durang (author of such previous Theatre Three hits as Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, Beyond Therapy, and For Whom the Southern Bell Tolls) dives headfirst into a world of drug-induced marriage, political instabilities, and preacher-produced porn. Durang’s comedies hilariously (and provocatively) expose the hypocrisy of just about every strongly-held belief system on which American culture is based. A nice girl from a conventional family marries Zamir, a charismatic but mysterious man of indeterminate ethnicity. What could go wrong? Uh…lots.

Language of Angels

A memorable drama by Naomi Iizuka

May 6 – June 5, 2011

With language used like a loaded weapon, Naomi Iizuka’s splendidly realized drama about a small town tragedy of working-class people is an eerie and powerful narration; a kind of ghost story set in the cave country of North Carolina. The disappearance of a young girl lost, in the cave at the edge of town, gathers the community to puzzle out the meaning and the circumstances of the mysterious loss.

For tickets and subscriptions: 214-871-3300 or www.theatre3dallas.com