The plays being offered include a life of Mary, the mother of Jesus — as written by an Irish novelist — a modern Russian fairytale, a world-premiere look at the future by a steampunk author and a Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about the ‘last picture show’ in Massachusetts.

In short, a typical Undermain Theatre season.

Here’s the fine print:

Undermain Theatre Announces 2014/2015 Season:

One World Premiere, Three Regional Premieres including

2014 Pulitzer-prize winning The Flick

Subscriptions available now!

 

DALLAS, TX—(May 18, 2014) Katherine Owens, Artistic Director of Undermain Theatre has released the season line-up for 2014-2015 saying, “Undermain’s 31st season examines worlds on the brink of change. Each of these four groundbreaking playwrights has given us stories of cultural shifts and the way humanity deals with being at the center of a world hurtling into the future. This wealth of writing talent brings us a world premiere sci-fi drama by a celebrated novelist and three regional premieres; one is a timely new comedy by a promising young talent, another is the 2014 Pulitzer Prize winner for Best Play and last, but not least, we close our season with a prize-winning Irish novelist’s solo drama about Mary of Nazareth.”

 

Season subscriptions are available now online at www.undermain.org or by calling the box office at 214.747.5515.

 

Tomorrow Come Today

By Gordon Dahlquist

Directed by Katherine Owens

Previews September 16th, 17th, 18th, & 19th

Press Opening: September 20th

Runs September 20th—October 11th, 2014 by Katherine Owens

 

Tomorrow Come Today is a world premiere Science-Fiction drama set in a not-too-distant future where technological advances have enabled the wealthy to cheat death, the members of the elite have the ability to switch from one body to a newer, healthier, sexier body at will, living for hundreds of years. But the planet’s climate clock is running out. Dahlquist’s futuristic thriller takes us on a shape-shifting ride into a world all-too familiar to our own.

“[Dahlquist’s work] is sweeping, highly original and absorbing…defies categorization” ~The Dallas Morning News

Gordon Dahlquist is widely known as a novelist of steampunk and futurist works like The Different Girl and The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters. A native of the Pacific Northwest, he has resided in New York City since 1988. He’s a former member of New Dramatists, is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect, and a founding member of the CiNE. His works include Messalina (Evidence Room, Los Angeles: SPF, New York), text for Babylon Is Everywhere: A Court Masque (CiNE, Schaeberle Theatre; Theatre Magazine), Delirium Palace (Evidence Room, Los Angeles; published in Breaking Ground), The Secret Machine (Twilight Theatre Company at Solo Rep).

 

The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls

By Meg Miroshnik

Directed by Dylan Key

Previews November 11th, 12th, 13th, & 14th

Press Opening: November 15th

Runs November 15th—December 6th, 2014

Once upon a time (2005), in a faraway land (Russia), 20 year-old Annie knocks on the door of a distant family relation to take some business classes (and lose her American accent). What she discovers are three friends who introduce her to the glitz and corruption of modern Russia, as Soviet echoes linger just under the surface. In Meg Miroshnik’s darkly funny fairytale, the girls must combat evil potatoes, a ferocious bear, and a wicked witch, armed with only their wits, an axe, and a kick-ass closet of stilettos.

“A dizzying mix of realism, fantasy and musical comedy…not to be missed by adventurous theatergoers.” ~Connecticut Post

Meg Miroshnik’s plays include The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls (A Stage Play about the END of Theatre), The Tall Girls, and an adaptation of the libretto for Shostakovich’s Moscow, Cheryomushki. She is the recipient of a 2012 Whiting Award. Her work has been developed or produced by the La Jolla Playhouse, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Center Theatre Group, Pacific Playwrights Festival at South Coast Rep, the Sallie B. Goodman fellowship at the McCarter Theatre Center, Alliance Theatre, the Kennedy Center, Lark New Play Development Center, Chicago Opera Theater, the Moscow Playwright and Director Center, Washington Ensemble Theatre, Yale Cabaret, Perishable Theatre, WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory, One Coast Collaboration, and published in Best American Short Plays, 2008-2009 (Applause, 2010). The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls was a finalist for the 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn prize and winner of the 2011-2012 Alliance/Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Award. Recent projects include productions of The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls at Yale Rep (directed by Rachel Chavkin, February 2014) and The Tall Girls at Alliance Theatre (directed by Susan V. Booth, March 2014) and commissions for new plays for South Coast Rep, Steppenwolf, and Yale Rep. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama where she studied with Paula Vogel. Meg hails from Minneapolis and currently lives in Los Angeles, where she is a member of the Playwrights Union.

 

The Flick

By Annie Baker

Directed by Blake Hackler

Previews January 13th, 14th, 15th, & 16th

Press Opening: January 17th

Runs January 17th—February 7th, 2015

 

Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

2013 OBIE Award, Playwriting winner.

2013 New York Critics Circle Award, Best Play

In a run-down movie theater in central Massachusetts, three underpaid employees mop the floors and attend to one of the last 35-millimeter film projectors in the state. Their tiny battles and big heartbreaks play out in the empty aisles, becoming more gripping than the second-run movies on screen. With keen insight and a finely tuned comic eye, The Flick is a hilarious and heart-rending cry for authenticity in a fast-changing world.

“Funny, heartbreaking, sly, and unblinking. The Flick may be the best argument anyone has yet made for the continued necessity, and profound uniqueness, of theater.” ~New York Magazine

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.

The Testament of Mary

By Colm Tóibín

Directed by Katherine Owens

Previews March 17th, 18th, 19th, & 20th

Press Opening: March 21st

Runs March 21st—April 11th, 2015

This one-woman show was nominated for three 2013 Tony Awards including Best Play. Based on Colm Toibin’s 2012 novella The Testament of Mary takes place in the period when Mary is living in solitude in the city of Ephesus, guarded by followers of her son seeking to record her account of the events surrounding his death. In Toibin’s portrayal of this iconic figure, she emerges not as the serene image familiar from religious art, but as a complex flesh-and-blood woman torn by grief and her refusal to endorse the official version of the story.

“The Testament of Mary isn’t irreverent. Nor is it reverent. It is imaginative and provocative — what theater should be.” ~NY Daily News

Colm Toibin was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in 1955. His novels include ‘The South’, ‘Homage to Barcelona’, ‘The Heather Blazing (1992, winner of the Encore Award); ‘The Story of the Night’ (1996, winner of the Ferro-Grumley Prize); ‘The Blackwater Lightship’, ‘The Master’, and ‘Brooklyn’. His short story collections are ‘Mothers and Sons’ (2006, winner of the Edge Hill Prize) and ‘The Empty Family (2010). His play ‘Beauty in a Broken Place’ was performed at the Peacock Theatre in Dublin in 2004. His other books include: ‘The Modern Library: the 200 Best Novels Since 1950’ (with Carmen Callil); ‘Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush’ (2002); ‘Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovar’ (2002) and ‘All a Novelist Needs: ‘Essays on Henry James’ (2010). He has edited ‘The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction’. His work has been translated into thirty languages. In 2008, a book of essays on his work ‘Reading Colm Toibin’, edited by Paul Delaney, was published. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Ulster and from University College Dublin. He is a regular contributor to the Dublin Review, the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. In 2006 he was appointed to the Arts Council in Ireland. He has twice been Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University and also been a visiting writer at the Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He also taught at Princeton between 2009 and 2011, and was Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester in the autumn of 2011. He is currently Mellon Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. His second collection of stories ‘The Empty Family’, published in 2010, was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Prize. His collection of essays on Henry James, ‘All a Novelist Needs’, appeared also in 2010. In 2011 his play ‘Testament’, directed by Garry Hynes, was performed in the Dublin Theatre Festival with Marie Mullen in the lead role. Also in 2011, his memoir ‘A Guest at the Feast’ was published by Penguin UK as a Kindle original. In 2012 his new collection of essays ‘New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers & Their Families’ appeared, as did his edition for Penguin Classics of ‘De Profundis and Other Writings’ by Oscar Wilde. Also in 2012, his novel ‘The Testament of Mary’ was published and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2013. In April 2013 ‘The Testament of Mary’ opened on Broadway with Fiona Shaw, directed by Deborah Warner and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best New Play. The Broadway production will transfer to the Barbican in London in May 2014. In 2013 it was released as an audio book with Meryl Streep. Colm Toibin’s new novel ‘Nora Colm Tóibín

Undermain Theatre’s 31st Season Summary- 2014/2015

 

Tomorrow Come Today

By Gordon Dahlquist

*World Premiere*

Directed by Katherine Owens

Previews September 16th, 17th, 18th, & 19th

Press Opening: September 20th

Runs September 20th—October 11th, 2014

 

The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls

By Meg Miroshnik

*Regional Premiere*

Directed by Dylan Key

Previews November 11th, 12th, 13th, & 14th

Press Opening: November 15th

Runs November 15th—December 6th, 2014

 

The Flick

By Annie Baker

*Regional Premiere*

Directed by Blake Hackler

Previews January 13th, 14th, 15th, & 16th

Press Opening: January 17th

Runs January 17th—February 7th, 2015

 

The Testament of Mary

By Colm Tóibín

*Regional Premiere*

Directed by Katherine Owens

Previews March 17th, 18th, 19th, & 20th

Press Opening: March 21st

Runs March 21st—April 11th, 2015

 

Undermain Reads at the Dallas Museum of Art

Called a “wild success” by the Dallas Morning News, Undermain Reads draws on an array of rare and visionary works from theatrical traditions spanning the entire globe and features fully produced readings accompanied by a feast of sound and visuals.

Dates and Titles to be announced

All readings are free to the public

Undermain Theatre performances are Wednesdays-Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. and Fridays-Saturdays at 8:15 p.m. Tickets are Wednesdays and Matinees $15, Thursdays $20, Fridays $25, and Saturdays $30. Undermain is located at 3200 Main Street at the corner of Murray Street in Deep Ellum. Discounts are available for seniors, students, KERA members, and groups.

Call 214-747-5515 or visit www.undermain.org.

 

About Undermain

Now in its 31st season, Undermain Theatre is a company of artists that has produced 36 World Premieres, 52 regional premieres and countless re-workings of masterpieces that celebrate language and poetics. Undermain’s work stretches beyond its home state of Texas and has reached audiences in New York, Greece and Macedonia.

The San Diego Union Tribune called Undermain “one of the best small theaters in America.” The theater collaborates with playwrights, supports a theater archive and operates a theater under 3200 Main Street in Dallas’ legendary Deep Ellum. Call 214-747-1424 or visit www.undermain.org for more information.

Artistic Director: Katherine Owens, Executive Producer: Bruce DuBose, Associate Producer: Suzanne Thomas

 

All Access Single Season Pass: $100

• Unlimited attendance to ALL Undermain productions for one person (Minimum of 3 Shows)

• One guest ticket voucher good for any performance

• $5 Discount on any additional tickets purchased

• Subscription to Season Pass e-mail Newsletters

• $1 off all beer and wine purchases at Concessions Bar

• 20% off all Undermain merchandise

• Free admission to all readings at the Dallas Museum of Art

• Free admission to all Undermain special projects

• Invitations to Season Pass Only Pre-Show Talks

• All Season Passes are NON-TRANSFERABLE

 

All Access Double Season Pass $175

• Unlimited attendance to ALL Undermain productions for two people (Minimum of 3 Shows)

• Two guest ticket vouchers good for any performance

• $5 Discount on any additional tickets purchased

• Subscription to Season Pass e-mail Newsletters

• $1 off all beer and wine purchases at Concessions Bar

• 20% off all Undermain merchandise

• Free admission to all readings at the Dallas Museum of Art

• Free admission to all Undermain special projects

• Invitations to Season Pass Only Pre-Show Talks

• All Season Passes are NON-TRANSFERABLE

All Access Artist** Season Pass $75

• Unlimited attendance to ALL Undermain productions for one person (Minimum of 3 Shows)

• One guest ticket voucher good for any performance

• $5 Discount on any additional tickets purchased

• Subscription to Season Pass e-mail Newsletters

• $1 off all beer and wine purchases at Concessions Bar

• 20% off all Undermain merchandise

• Free admission to all readings at the Dallas Museum of Art

• Free admission to all Undermain special projects

• Invitations to Season Pass Only Pre-Show Talks

• All Season Passes are NON-TRANSFERABLE

 

** To purchase this pass, please call our box office at 214-747-5515. Requirements for eligibility can include: a valid website, business card, union membership card, or artist resume.

 

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