The Station Theatre Serves Up Silence, Science and Lauren Gunderson for 17-18

The Station Theatre in Urbana

The Station Theatre is usually the last to announce its fall season. Artistic Director Rick Orr is wont to make the big announcement at the company party that marks the end of summer, meaning fall shows are just around the corner when he spills their details.

Lauren Gunderson

Last year, the Station made the unusual choice (for the Station, anyway) of including two plays by the same playwright in the same season. For 2016-17, the playwright in the spotlight was Conor McPherson, represented by The Night Alive in October and The Birds in November. For 2017-18, Lauren Gunderson, Manhattan Theatre Club playwright-in-residence, is the one who gets special attention, with her take on Jane Austen in Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley as a holiday offering in December 2017 and Silent Sky, the true story of early 20th century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, in February 2018. You'll notice that both works are not only written by a woman (Gunderson) but inspired by work of famous women (Austen and Leavitt) and they feature women characters front and center (Mary Bennet, the fictional middle sister in Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and the historical character of astronomer Leavitt). And they'll be directed by women, with Joi Hoffsommer at the helm of Miss Bennet and Katie Burke taking on Silent Sky. Bravo, Station!

There's more good news in the rest of the season, too, with lots of provocative and interesting choices that represent something a little different. Here's the full scoop on what you'll see at the Station Theatre in 2017-18:

October brings Will Eno's Title and Deed, directed by Deb Richardson. Eno has emerged as a major voice in American theater since Thom Paine (based on nothing) in 2005, for which he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He followed that up with the Horton Foote Award for Most Promising New American Play for Middletown in 2010. When Title and Deed played at New York's Signature Theater in 2012, Charles Isherwood called the play "gorgeously and inventively wrought, line by line." In that production, Irish actor Conor Lovett was the solo actor on stage, "recounting his past in another country and his present in a strange new one" in a meditation on roots and rootlesness, hope and hopelessness, and how we've all created and used language to try to give meaning to life. Lovett was directed by his wife, Julie Hegarty Lovett, at the Signature, just as the Station's Deb Richardson will direct her husband, David Barkley, for the Station. Title and Deed opens October 5 and continues through the 21st.

Small Mouth Sounds by Bess Wohl is next, directed by Jaclyn Loewenstein in performances November 2 to 18. If a great deal of Title and Deed is about words, Small Mouth Sounds is about the lack of them, as its six characters are attending a retreat where they're not allowed to talk. They may be silent for most of the play's 100 minutes, but they are communicating nonetheless. "Filled with awkward and insightful humor, Small Mouth Sounds is the unique and compassionate new play that asks how we address life’s biggest questions when words fail us."

Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley arrives December 6, in good time for holiday entertainment. Gunderson's play (which usually gives a co-writing credit to former MTC Director of New Play Development Margot Melcon) focuses on bookish middle sister Mary Bennet and what happens to her two years after the "happily ever after" her sister Lizzie got in Pride and Prejudice. Mary and the other Bennets are gathering at Pemberley, the home of Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Darcy, for Christmas, but often-overlooked Mary, who always has her nose stuck in a book, is not in a romantic frame of mind. Just in time, a suitor arrives -- Arthur de Bourgh -- an Oxford man, someone who is more sure of his intellect more than his heart, just like Mary.

In January, we'll get our first area look at Fun Home, the Tony-winning Broadway musical based on an autobiographical coming-of-age graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. The brilliant (and very, very funny) Lisa Kron wrote the book and lyrics of the musical, while Jeanine Tesori wrote the music. Fun Home won the Best Musical Tony in 2015, along with awards for its score, book, leading actor Michael Cerveris and director Sam Gold. For the Station, Latrelle Bright will direct this "refreshingly honest, wholly original musical about seeing your parents through grown-up eyes" with performances January 18 to February 3, 2018.

Gunderson's Silent Sky follows, opening February 15 and closing March 3, 2018.  "A lovingly crafted period piece that imagines Leavitt’s inner world against the backdrop of World War I, Einstein’s discoveries and the suffragette movement, Silent Sky is an intellectual epic told on an intimate scale. Bottom line: Heavenly," wrote Wendell Brock for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. After Henrietta Leavitt earned a bachelor's degree from Radcliffe College in 1892, she worked without pay as a "computer" at the Harvard College Observatory, studying photographic plates to determine the brightness of stars. Leavitt and the other computers worked with photographic plates rather than telescopes because women weren't allowed to use telescopes at that time. Although she toiled in obscurity and never reached any sort of fame, Leavitt was an important figure in astronomy history. She was "the woman who discovered how to measure the Universe."

Discovery is also at the heart of Cock, a play with a simple title that has engendered quite a bit of controversy. When Mike Bartlett's play -- about a man who thought he was gay but then cheats on his male partner with a woman, throwing into question what he thought he knew about himself -- premiered in London, it was called Cock. When it came to the United States, the New York Times wouldn't print the title, so it became The Cockfight Play. It stayed that way in LA, although Toronto and now Urbana are apparently sophisticated enough for the original Cock. In any event, this "comic discussion of identity and sexuality" will be directed by Rick Orr for the Station, with performances from March 22 to April 7, 2018.

The season will finish up with Tracy Letts' blistery family comedy/drama August: Osage County, which runs from April 26 to May 12, 2018. Mathew Green, who just finished up Jordan Harrison's Marjorie Prime August 12, will be at the helm of Letts' Pulitzer Prize winning play next spring. Although August: Osage County began its life at Steppenwolf in Chicago, its subsequent Broadway production ran for 648 performances and won five Tonys, including Best Play, Best Director (Anna D. Shapiro), Best Actress (Deanna Dunagan), Best Featured Actress (Rondi Reed) and Best Scenic Design (Todd Rosenthal). It may only be ten years old, but it's already a classic.

All in all, the Station is offering a compelling mix of words, wit, silence, science, family and fierce theatrical imagination. For more information, visit the main website here with tabs at the top for individual pages.

MIDDLETOWN Burns Bright at Heartland

In a piece on Will Eno's Middletown earlier this year, Boston Globe critic Christopher Wallenberg called the play "a meditation on birth and death and the lives burning bright in between."

Note "the lives burning bright in between." The characters living in Middletown tell us about birth and death all through this quirky, engaging play, as they muse on why they're here, what their places are in this world, and what their legacies might be. It's easy to fall under the spell of Eno's heady writing in all its poetic beauty. But don't miss the fact that he is also etching vivid portraits of a town's worth of people -- the librarian, the mechanic, the cop, the handyman, the newcomer, even the astronaut who once called Middletown home -- in heartbreaking, wonderful detail. These people are as quizzical, as amusing, as real as your neighbors, and yet not like your neighbors at all.

It's to the credit of director John Kirk's current production for Heartland Theatre that each of those portraits comes across loud and clear. His actors, most of whom play multiple roles, have worked hard to come up with individuals who are different from each other, a little odd, a little awkward, and quite fascinating.

Rhys Lovell and Karen Hazen are out front among the cast, both turning in terrific, layered performances. Lovell is always good, but his John Dodge, a man in between jobs, in between hobbies, living very much in the in between, is something very special. Dodge may be a bit of a mess -- well-meaning, but a mess -- but Lovell's performance is anything but. He's fantastic.

And Hazen is just as subtle, just as amazing, opposite him as Mary Swanson, the newbie in town, the one who serves as our eyes on Middletown. Hazen's portrayal of Mary makes the character funny, sweet, and relatable, as Mary's yearning for something more, something more than a husband who is so often on the road, becomes clear.

Kathleen Kirk's librarian and Dean Brown's "public speaker," who introduces the idiosyncratic tone of the piece, add quirky warmth to the tableau, while George Freeman's scary cop and Richard Jensen's scary (in a different way) ne'er-do-well mechanic bring harder edges into Middletown. Others in the cast who shine are Aric Diamani and Devon Lovell as doctors, John Poling as an astronaut high above the town, Lynna Briggs as a strange spectator, and Ann White and Megan Huff, who pair up as guide/tourist and hospital attendants.

Your guidebook to Middletown is written right into the script. Pay attention to how many times the "great and unexamined middle," as Eno puts it, comes up. The middle, the intermission, the time between birth and death, waiting periods and in-between times... Or, you know, life.

Eno has a unique voice in contemporary theater, just as Heartland Theatre has a unique place in our local theater scene. And what a good match they are.

MIDDLETOWN
By Will Eno

Heartland Theatre Company

Director: John W. Kirk
Assistant Director/Stage Manager: Jess Friedli
Scenic Designer: Kenneth P. Johnson
Lighting Designer: Anita McDaniel
Costume Designer: Jeanine Fry
Properties: Cyndee Brown
Sound Engineer: Aaron Paolucci

Cast: Lynna Briggs, Dean Brown, Aric Diamani, George Freeman, Karen Hazen, Megan Huff, Richard Jensen, Kathleen Kirk, Devon Lovell, Rhys Lovell, John D. Poling, Ann Bastian White

Running time: 2:30, including one 15-minute intermission

Remaining Performances: April 25-27 and May 2-4 at 7:30 pm and April 28 and May 5 at 2 pm.

For show times, click here. For reservation information, click here.

Will Eno's MIDDLETOWN Opens Tomorrow Night at Heartland

There are always a few "it boys" in current American playwriting, and right now, the eccentric and poetic Will Eno definitely hits the list. Eno emerged onto the national theatre scene with Thom Pain (based on nothing), a one-man show that enjoyed a sold-out run at the 2004 International Edinburgh Festival, where it won the First Fringe Award, among others, and then took New York by storm with a year of off-Broadway performances. Thom Paine was also a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Flu Season received the 2004 Oppenheimer Award for the best debut production in New York by an American playwright, and his newest work, Gnit, an updated and irreverent adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, was a mainstage selection for the recent Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, in a production directed by Actors Theatre Artistic Director Les Waters.

Yep. It Boy.

It helps that Eno's writing is singular and different, with its own rhythms and warped sense of humor. Middletown, the deceptively sweet play about life in Anytown USA that preceded Gnit, received the Horton Foote Prize for Promising New American Play in 2010. It has that Eno touch, making it sound and feel distinctly different from Thornton Wilder's Our Town, for example, a play Middletown has been widely compared to. Both plays deal with ordinary people living ordinary lives in an ordinary town, and both touch on life and death. But while Our Town shows us life and death, Middletown is more about the time and space in between, about the middle, about regular old people finding a way to mind that gap.

John Kirk, who is directing Middletown for Heartland Theatre, writes that Eno's characters "are trapped in 'the space between' their birth and their death. The title Middletown...suggests the dilemma of characters who are stuck in the middle of themselves and have not found a way out."

Karen Hazen (left) and Rhys Lovell appear in Heartland's Middletown

The characters in the play range from John Dodge, a handyman type who is between jobs but has lived in Middletown for a while, and Mary Swanson, who just moved there with her husband to start a family, to a cop, a librarian, a mechanic, doctors, and even a couple of tourists who come to see what this town is all about. For Heartland, Rhys Lovell will play John, and Karen Hazen will play Mary, with Lynna Briggs, Dean Brown, Aric Diamani, George Freeman, Megan Huff, Richard Jensen, Kathleen Kirk, Devon Lovell, John Poling and Ann White filling out all the other roles in the everyday tableau that is Middletown.

Performances begin tomorrow night with a special Pay What You Can preview at 7:30 pm, with shows continuing Thursdays through Sundays till May 5. For details on times and dates of performances, click here. To see reservation information, click here.

Heartland Has its MIDDLETOWN Cast in Place

Will Eno's Middletown is a bittersweet slice-of-life, showcasing the citizens of a small town on ordinary days in their lives. There's birth, death, curiosity, pride of place, casual cruelty, longing for connection and... A good deal of humanity.

Because of the ensemble nature of the show, the size of the cast has varied from production to production. After auditions last week, director John Kirk has announced his cast for the Heartland Theatre production coming in April. For Heartland, the Middletown ensemble will contain twelve players, ranging from IWU student Geena Barry to Heartland past-president Ann B. White, who is also the program director and founder of Young at Heartland, the theater's senior acting troupe.

Barry will play three roles -- Woman, Female Tourist and Music Host -- while White will be take on the roles of Tour Guide, Aunt and Attendant.

The other denizens of Middletown will be played by Lynna Briggs (playing Sweetheart and Ground Control), Dean Brown (Public Speaker, Landscaper and Janitor), Aric Diamani (Male Tourist, Freelancer and Male Doctor), George Freeman (Cop), Karen Hazen (Mrs. Swanson), Richard Jensen (Mechanic), Kathleen Kirk (Librarian), Devon Lovell (Female Doctor and Cop Radio), Rhys Lovell (John Dodge and Science Host) and John Poling (Greg and Man).

It looks like a powerhouse cast for a complex, thoughtful and poetic play by a major new voice in American theater. Will Eno received the Horton Foote Prize for Promising New American Play in 2010 for Middletown, the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theatre Award, and numerous other awards and citations. His play Thom Pain (based on nothing) was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Performances of Middletown begin April 18 at Heartland Theatre. Follow these links to see showtimes and reservation information.

Auditions for MIDDLETOWN Now Set at Heartland

Director John Kirk has announced he will hold auditions for Heartland Theatre's upcoming production of Will Eno's Middletown on March 6, 7 and 8, 2013, from 7 to 9:30 pm each night.

This is how Kirk describes what he will be looking for:

"Middletown is a play by an exciting new talent in the theatre. Will Eno is writing for the most advanced and contemporary performer. His characters are trapped in 'the space between' their birth and their death. The title, Middletown, while it seems to be about a small town, echoing Our Town, it is much more than that. It suggests the dilemma of characters who are stuck in the middle of themselves and have not found a way out. They are truly lost in themselves and the performances should reveal that.

"What that means for the actor is perhaps best exemplified in this quote from Will Eno’s preface to another of his plays, Thom Pain.

The actor should, of course, be so comfortable and familiar with the script that words come out of him as if they are his own, as if he is making them up as he goes along… There are a lot of 'switchbacks' and changes-of-direction in the script. He thinks and feels quickly and changes his mind a lot; we all do. Both directions he might go in are true, each direction comes out of a real feeling and a real need to move in that particular direction at that particular time… Honor this, honor the largeness, the complicatedness, of human beings, and find a way to play it all as simply and truly as possible… Though there are many parts of the play that are meant to be funny, for the most part, [the characters are] unaware or unconcerned that what [is said] might be found humorous…

"There are 26 characters in this play. They will be played by 9 or 10 actors, so there will be lots of double and triple casting. You could play small parts and have a big role.

"The nature of the play makes character 'descriptions' inappropriate and actually probably counter-productive. The characters don’t really know who they; they are trying to find that out. They are human beings. So here’s a list with genders and approximate ages in order of appearance."

PUBLIC SPEAKER – Male 40s-60s
COP – Male 30s-50s
MRS. SWANSON – Female, late 30s
JOHN DODGE – Male, late 30s-40s
MECHANIC – Male, late 20s-30s
LIBRARIAN – Female, 50s-60s
TOUR GUIDE – Female, 20s-30s
MALE TOURIST – 30s-40s
FEMALE TOURIST – 30s-40s
GREG - Male, 40s-60s

Intermission Audience:
AUNT – Female, 40s-50s
SWEETHEART – Female, 12-16
FREELANCER – Male, 30s-40s
MAN – 20s-30s
WOMAN – 20s-30s
LANDSCAPER – Male, 20s-30s
MALE DOCTOR – 40s-50s
FEMALE DOCTOR – 40s-50s
ATTENDANT #2 - Female, 20s-30s
ATTENDANT – Female, 20s-30s
JANITOR – Male, 30s-50s

Offstage Voices:
COP’S RADIO – Female
GROUND CONTROL – Male (Possibly seen onstage)
INTERCOM – Female
RADIO HOST (Science Show)– Male
RADIO HOST (Classical Music Show) - Female

---------------------------------

When Middletown was performed at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, director Les Waters used a cast of ten -- five women and five men -- including Brenda Barrie, Francis Guinan, Ora Jones and Tracy Letts. In New York, Middletown's cast of twelve included Linus Roache, Georgia Engel and David Garrison in the Vineyard Theatre production directed by Ken Rus Schmoll. Kirk clearly has a plan for nine or ten, so look for something more like the Steppenwolf arrangement, where, for example, actor Tim Hopper played Public Speaker, Male Tourist, Greg, Freelancer, Male Doctor and Radio Host (Science Show), and Alana Arenas played Tour Guide, Sweetheart, Attendant #2 and Intercom.

For more information on these auditions, click here.

2013 Humana Festival Array of New Plays Announced

As promised, Actors Theatre of Louisville has announced what new plays will be on the schedule for its 2013 Humana Festival of New American Plays next spring.

This time out, there will be full-length plays from Jeff Augustin, Mallery Avidon, Will Eno, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Sam Marks, with a piece created for Actors Theatre's Apprentice Company by Rinne Groff, Lucas Hnath and Anne Washburn. There will also be a program of 10-minute plays, with Sarah Ruhl the only announced playwright so far, since Actors Theatre's 10-minute play competition is still underway and one or more of the other plays may be chosen from that contest.

New Actors Theatre Artistic Director Les Waters will direct Will Eno's play, called Gnit. As you might guess from the name, Gnit is a new take on Peer Gynt, Henrik Ibsen's rambling adventure about a shiftless sort of man who travels around the world, running into a king, dairymaids, trolls, brownies, nixies, gnomes, Bedoins, madmen, missionaries, the Sphinx and the Devil. This Gnit promises to be a "rollicking and very cautionary tale about, among other things, how the opposite of love is laziness."

Appropriate is the title of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' new play, although without hearing it said aloud, I don't know if the piece is supposed to be the adjective appropriate, as in suitable or fitting, as opposed to the verb appropriate, as in, borrow without permission. Given that the play's action begins when the three adult children in the Lafayette family "descend upon a crumbling Arkansan plantation to liquidate their dead patriarch’s estate," I'm going to guess it's the verb appropriate, the one that is just a stone's throw from steal.

Gary Griffin, who is the Associate Artistic Director at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, where he recently directed a phenomenal production of Sunday in the Park with George, will be at the helm of Appropriate, his first directing gig at Actors Theatre.

Meredith McDonough, Actors Theatre's Associate Artistic Director, directs The Delling Shore, Sam Marks' look at competing novelists -- one successful and one struggling -- and their daughters, who also aspire to write. It's really hard not to take sides when push comes to shove, when wordplay becomes just as cutting as knives.

Cry Old Kingdom, about an artist trying to survive in Papa Doc Duvalier's Haiti, marks Jeff Augustin's professional debut as a playwright. It will be directed by Tom Dugdale, recipient of the 2012 Princess Grace Award in Theater with La Jolla Playhouse.

You can probably surmise from the title of Mallery Avidon's O Guru Guru Guru or why I don’t want to go to yoga class with you that it involves yoga or the lack thereof. Directed by Lila Neugebauer, O Guru Guru is a "disarming look at the precarious process of becoming yourself." Whether that means yoga or not.

The subject matter of the apprentice showcase, conceived by Amy Attaway and Sarah Lunnie, directed by Attaway, and penned by Rinne Groff, Lucas Hnath and Anne Washburn, is also apparent from the title. Sleep Rock Thy Brain is about... Sleep! Or at least the "rich complexities of the sleeping brain," explored through science, spectacle and theatrical invention.

Last year's apprentice piece was about food, and we got brownies on the way out. Maybe this year, they'll give us pillows. That would be exciting.

The Humana Festival, which is supported and sponsored by the Humana Foundation, begins February 27 and runs through April 7, 2013. Various packages and weekend deals are available for different audiences throughout that time period, with specific information on who goes when here.

Heartland Theatre Announces What's Up for 2012-13

Heartland Theatre Company has announced its 2012-13 season, beginning with the very popular 10-Minute Play Festival, running from June 7 to July 1.

This year, the 10-Minute Play Festival's theme is "Playing Games," with each of the eight winning plays involving a game of some sort. The plays range from John D. Poling's "Destiny's Tug-of-War," about a divorced couple and the wife's new partner, all three worried about the dog caught between them, to Austin Steinmetz's "Word Play," about a world Scrabble champ scrambling to stay on top, and Erin Moughon's "In Memory of Calvinball," about a game whose only rule is that rules constantly change. For more information about all the plays and the "Playing Games" festival, click here. You are advised to make your reservations early, as it is always an audience favorite.

Coming in July is New Plays from the Heartland, which features three one-acts written by Midwestern playwrights just for Heartland. The New Plays' theme is "Summer in the Heartland," with the three winning plays performed July 13 and 14 in conjunction with a master class and forum conducted by Douglas Post ("Bloodshot," "Drowning Sorrows"), this year's guest playwright in residence.

The fall kicks off with "These Shining Lives," Melanie Marnich's sad and beautiful look at the women who made radium-dial watches in Ottawa, Illinois, in the 1920s. "These Shining Lives," directed by Illinois State University Professor Don LaCasse, opens on September 6 and runs till September 23, 2012. (The poster image at right is from a Chicago workshop production of the play in 2011. A previous production at Chicago's Rivendell Theatre received Jeff Award nominations for the play, director and leading actress. ISU alum Kathy Logelin played the lead role when Rivendell revived the play later.)

Next up is the blazing art drama "Red," by John Logan, which began its life at London's Donmar Warehouse in 2009, before moving to Broadway and winning the 2010 Tony Award for Best Play. The play involves artist Mark Rothko and his assistant as they prepare canvases for New York's Four Seasons restaurant, with issues of artistic integrity played against monetary success and accolades. Illinois Wesleyan's Christopher Connelly will direct "Red," with performances from November 1 to 18, 2012.

Opening on Valentine's Day, Donald Margulies' "Time Stands Still" is the first show in 2013 for Heartland. "Time Stands Still" involves a photojournalist who must decide whether she will return to a dangerous, exciting life spent on the front lines or stay where she is, in a more peaceful, comfortable place on the home front. ISU Professor Sandra Zielinski returns to Heartland to direct "Time Stands Still," which runs from February 14 to March 3, 2013.

And the last show on the schedule is Will Eno's "Middletown," which looks at extraordinary lives in Small Town, USA, over the course of a few very ordinary days. It's been compared to "Our Town," but I'd say "Middletown" is quirkier, more poetic, and a whole lot more surprising. "Middletown" received the Horton Foote Prize for Promising New American Play in 2010. ISU Professor Emeritus John Kirk will direct "Middletown" in performance from April 18 to May 5, 2013.

For more information on Heartland Theatre, you can visit the website here, with new information being added all the time.