The SF Playhouse 2010-2011 Season
The theme of the new season will be ‘Why Theatre?' Why do we do theatre? How does theatre serve our community? Each of our selections for our 8th season will give a different answer to these questions. Based on the belief that mankind created theatre to serve a spiritual need in our community, our riskiest and most challenging season yet will ask us to face mankind’s deepest mysteries from the very meaning of existence to forging individual identities, facing the fear of change and exploring enduring human myths.
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The Sunset Limited
West Coast Premiere
by Cormac McCarthy
directed by Bill English
Sept. 28-Novemer 6th
Press Opening, Saturday October 2, 2010
To kick off the season we bring one of the most insightful writers of our time, Cormac McCarthy (The Road, No Country for Old Men) together with two of the most powerful actors in the Bay Area, Carl Lumbly (Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, Alias, Cagney & Lacey) and Charles Dean (White Christmas, Awake and Sing!). A startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a run-down tenement where they engage in a brilliant verbal duel on a subject no less compelling than the meaning of life.
Coraline
West Coast Premiere
book by David Greenspan, books and lyrics by Stephin Merritt
directed by Bill English
Nov. 16-January 15th
Press Opening November 20th
Poor bored Coraline. She's left to rattle 'round her perpetually distracted, workaholic parents' house all by her lonesome. But late one night, her dreams of a better reality come true as she opens a big, carved, wooden door at the far end of the drawing room and passes into a perfect replica of her own world. When she's greeted there by a vastly loving Other Mother and a kindly Other Father, she's thrilled! But as the rats start to creep from the floorboards, and the way home becomes increasingly unclear, Coraline begins to suspect that, perhaps, all is not as perfect as it seems...
Harper Regan
West Coast Premiere
by Simon Stephens
directed by Amy Glazer
Jan. 25-March 5th
Press Opening January 29th
On a startlingly bright autumn night Harper Regan walked away from her home, her husband and her daughter. She kept walking. She told nobody where she was going. She put everything at risk. For two lost days and nights, until it looked as though her entire life might unravel, she didn’t turn back.
Wirehead
Regional Premiere
by Benjamin/Brown
directed by Susi Damilano
March 15-April 23
Press Opening: March 19th
Imagine that tomorrow anyone with the money could get a brain implant that automatically makes them a genius. What if you couldn’t afford it and your hated coworker could? The “wireheads” in this play find themselves at odds with the rest of their office as hilarity, mystery, and tragedy ensue, and we try to answer the question: “Just because something can be done, should it be done?”
Reborning
World Premiere
By Zayd Dohrn
May 3-June 11th
Press Opening May 7th
This dark comedy takes an unsettling look at work, latex, and the power of creation. A young artist who crafts custom made dolls begins to suspect that a demanding client may be the mother who abandoned her at birth. As she tries to unravel the mystery, she discovers the path to her own "Reborning”.
Tigers Be Still
West Coast Premiere
by Kim Rosenstock
directed by Amy Glazer
June 21st - July 30th
Critically acclaimed in its 2010 New York premiere, Tigers Be Still is a quirky, endearing
and deliciously dark new comedy. Sherry Wickman, a young woman expects the perfect career
and life to fall into place immediately upon earning her master’s degree in art therapy. Instead,
Sherry finds herself unemployed, overwhelmed and back at home hiding out in her twin-sized
childhood bed. But when Sherry gets hired as a substitute art teacher, things begin to brighten
up. Now if only her mother would come downstairs, her sister would get off the couch, her very
first therapy patient would do just one of his take-home assignments, her new boss would
leave his gun at home, and someone would catch the tiger that escaped from the local zoo,
everything would be just perfect.