Heartland News X 3

In addition to opening the first show of their fall season tonight and launching the new ten-minute play contest this week, Heartland Theatre has also announced auditions next week for their November show. Here's the lowdown on all three Heartland happenings:

Fighting Words by Sunil Kuruvilla, directed by Don Shandrow, opens tonight with a Pay What You Can preview. After tonight, tickets are $15 for general admission, $12 for seniors over 65, and $5 for students, with performances through September 24. Groups of ten or more qualify for special discounts. Kuruvilla is a Canadian playwright who has a master's degree in playwriting from Yale School of Drama. This particular play involves three women in a small mining town in Wales, waiting to watch their hometown hero in a boxing match taking place halfway across the world in Los Angeles. Shandrow's cast for Fighting Words is Jessie Swiech, Lizzy Selzer and Nancy Nickerson. If you're interested in seeing the show, you'll find show times here and reservation information here.

Heartland has revealed the new theme for their annual ten-minute play competition. It's "The Graduation Party." They're asking for plays "that explore the fleeting moments when people realize they’re finishing a journey together." If your "Graduation Party" play earns highest honors and wins a spot in next year's festival, performances will take place June 8 to July 1, 2017. For more information on what they're looking for in terms of plays, try this link. Rules and guidelines are here.

Auditions for the next play on Heartland's schedule, Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, will be held at the theater on Sunday, September 11, from 3 to 5:30 pm, and Monday, September 12, from 7 to 9:30 pm. Sandra Zielinski is directing The Homecoming, which features Pinter's trademark brand of menace and unpleasantness, as a professor with working class origins comes back into contact with his family, a loutish bunch of men. He brings his wife with him to this Homecoming, creating tension and conflict as the men posture for her attention. A bit of trivia: Like Fighting Words, The Homecoming has a would-be boxer among its characters. Zielinski will be looking for five men ranging in age from mid-twenties to 70s, and one woman in her 30s. Click here for all the audition info. Performances are scheduled for November 3 to 19, 2016.

To sum up, Fighting Words opens tonight and runs through the 24th; ten-minute plays on the theme "The Graduation Party" are now being accepted in a contest for possible production next year; and auditions for The Homecoming will take place this coming Sunday and Monday.

A "Reckoning" Season Coming Up for Steppenwolf in 2012-13

Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company has not only launched a splashy new look for their website, but also announced their upcoming 2012-13 season.

They're calling their upcoming season "The Reckoning," with the teaser "There comes a moment when we are called to account. Will our deeds be repaid? Will our secrets be revealed? Will we get what we deserve?"

All of which sounds like a very Steppenwolf season.

The five plays they've chosen to represent "what happens when the past comes knocking" are:

GOOD PEOPLE, by David Lindsay-Abaire. September 13 to November 11, 2012.
Lindsay-Abaire's Boston-based play opened on Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club just about a year ago, with a production directed by Daniel Sullivan and starring Frances McDormand as a down-on-her-luck single mother who turns up on the doorstep of an old boyfriend who turned out to be a lot more successful than anybody else in the neighborhood. McDormand won the Tony for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for her role in "Good People." For Steppenwolf, ensemble member K. Todd Freeman will direct, with Alana Arenas, IWU alum Mariann Mayberry and Molly Regan in the cast.

THE MOTHERF*CKER WITH THE HAT, by Stephen Adly Guirgis. December 27, 2012 to March 3, 2013.
Everybody wanted to know how the Times and other papers would refer to this play. I don't think the asterisk is fooling anybody, but apparently, "Motherf*cker" is what we're all going with. It, too, played on Broadway last year, with comedian Chris Rock as a parole and drug abuse counselor. Cast members Bobby Cannavale, Yul Vázquez and Elizabeth Rodriguez were all nominated for Tonys, as was director Anna D. Shapiro, who will also be at the helm for this new production at Steppenwolf. Will Shapiro take the play and its comic storyline about a guy just out of prison who thinks his girlfriend is cheating on him in a new direction this time?

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, by Harold Pinter. January 24 to May 19, 2013.
This Pinter classic, full of menace, dread and murky motives, is about a birthday party in a dumpy seaside town, with two surprise guests who turn everything upside-down. "The Birthday Party" will be directed for Steppenwolf by Austin Pendleton, who recently visited ISU, with ISU alumni Francis Guinan and Moira Harris in the cast along with John Mahoney, Ian Barford and Harris's daughter Sophia Sinise.

HEAD OF PASSES, by Tarell Alvin McCraney. April 4 to June 9, 2013.
Another birthday party! McCraney's brand-new play is nowhere near Pinter's England, however. She sets her party "at the Mississippi River's mouth," which I'm assuming means New Orleans, with a family gathering that exposes old, dark secrets. McCraney's "Brother/Sister Plays" were directed by Tina Landau, who will also take on "Head of Passes." Look for Alana Arenas, K. Todd Freeman, U of I grad Jon Michael Hill, Tim Hopper and James Vincent Meredith, who memorably appeared at the Station Theatre in Urbana before his Steppenwolf tenure.

BELLEVILLE, by Amy Herzog. June 27 to August 25, 2013.
No, not Belleville, Illinois. Herzog's suspense drama is is set in the artsy, gentrified Belleville neighborhood in Paris, the one that appeared in "The Triplets of  Belleville." Zack and Abby, a pair of American 20-somethings, think they've found the perfect place to be hip and trendy, idealistic and Bohemian, young and in love. But there are ominous cracks in their marriage from the very start, contrasting their experience in Paris with the more stable French-African married couple who are their landlords. "Belleville" will be directed by Anne Kaufman, with omnipresent ensemble member Alana Arenas as well as Kate Arrington in the cast. Fun fact about playwright Amy Herzog: Her grandfather was Arthur Herzog, Jr., who wrote the song "God Bless the Child."

For information about subscriptions to Steppenwolf's "Reckoning" season, click here.