Pick Your Plays B Owmer Close Down His Illegal Gambling Operation
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A ngus Pick Your Plays b owmer close down his illegal gambling operation. Play Suitability Suggestions Nathan is desperate for $1,000 to secure his These play descriptions provide specific next dice game’s location, so he bets high- t content information and suggestions roller Sky Masterson that Masterson cannot he A for play suitability for your students. convince a straight-laced Salvation Army tre Each school and community is unique, doll named Sarah to go on a date. To add to so please read carefully to determine the pressure, Nathan’s fiancée of 14 years, what is appropriate for your students. a nightclub performer named Adelaide, will Be aware that these suggestions walk out if she doesn’t walk down the aisle soon. Guys and Dolls is a delightful musical during the Communist takeover of China in are made before the plays go into 1949. Decades later, as death nears for Jiang, rehearsal. Occasionally, decisions are based on Damon Runyon’s fond stories of gamblers and showgirls. The bad guys aren’t he makes a last attempt to track down the made during the rehearsal process or really dangerous, the dolls have superhuman woman he lost so many years before. The preview performances that change patience, and what everybody wants deep other company is rehearsing Peach Blossom the appropriateness of a production. down inside is to reform and lead respectable Land, a bawdy retelling of an ancient Chinese When changes occur, the Education lives. Classic songs and great comedy make fable about a lost fisherman who finds Department posts updated suitability Guys and Dolls an odds-on favorite to please himself in a utopian land. Amid the chaos, suggestions on our website and makes the entire family. squabbles and humorous jabs at theatre every effort to contact group leaders. life, the two plays unfold and mysteriously intertwine, their epic themes calling to each Questions? Please contact OSF Group Fingersmith other across the centuries. Since its premiere Sales or the Education Department at Adapted by Alexa Junge in 1986, Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land has [email protected]. from the book by Sarah Waters become regarded as a masterwork of modern February 21 – July 9 World Premiere theatre in China and Taiwan. The play is at Sue Trinder has become the most talented times raucous, at times heartbreaking and Much Ado about Nothing pickpocket in Mrs. Sucksby’s employ, romantic. It contains occasional profanity, a by William Shakespeare earning her the nickname “fingersmith.” love triangle, farcical sexual situations and February 20 – November 1 Mrs. Sucksby’s acquaintance, Gentleman bawdy talk about size and fertility. Well- Don Pedro and his soldiers, drunk with victory Rivers, wants to borrow Sue to assist in an prepared teenagers who can handle these from the war, arrive in Messina to visit his elaborate scheme to cheat a gullible young elements will enjoy this funny, profound friend Leonato. Traveling with Don Pedro heiress named Maud out of her fortune. work and gain historical insight into the are his two finest officers: the quick-witted, But nothing is quite what it seems in this plight of thousands of Chinese forced to flee cynical Benedick and his earnest young friend gritty, wild ride of a crime thriller set in to Taiwan in 1949. Prologue* recommended. Claudio. In Leonato’s household are two Victorian England. Maud is the ward of a women: his earnest young daughter Hero man who collects erotic literature from all Sweat (whom Claudio wishes to marry) and his over the world and holds private readings by Lynn Nottage quick-witted, cynical niece Beatrice. Benedick to the “discerning gentlemen” who visit his July 29 – October 31 World Premiere country estate. As the twisting story sends and Beatrice have long waged a “merry war” A group of close friends shares everything: Sue spiraling through squalid London streets, of clever insults. It’s clear to everyone but drinks, secrets and laughs. But their world madhouses and a stifling mansion, it leads the two combatants that the battle of words is overturned when a shake-up disrupts the her to the most dangerous landscape of is their way of disguising their feelings for factory where they work, and a horrific crime all: love and betrayal. This world-premiere each other. It will take a monumental comic sends shock waves across two generations. adaptation of Sarah Waters’ celebrated deception to make them realize and admit This powerful world premiere by acclaimed novel is a psychologically rich and intriguing the truth. But Messina’s peace is shattered playwright Lynn Nottage explores America’s mystery. There is occasional strong profanity, when Claudio, influenced by a scheming industrial decline of the 1990s with a look sexuality, sensuality between women, as malcontent, levels a shocking accusation at inside a Pennsylvania community whose well as physical and emotional violence Hero that brings the play perilously close people struggle to reclaim what’s lost, inflicted in a madhouse. Brief snippets of to tragedy. This sophisticated and witty find redemption and redefine themselves 19th century erotica are read. Mature high battle of the sexes, set in modern Italy, will in a new century. Sweat is a timely and school students who are prepared to handle also explore jealousy and rage, leaving one thought-provoking look at contemporary the play’s content will enjoy this literate and couple’s happiness still in doubt at the play’s American life. It explores the effects of recent thrilling look at Victorian England through end. Exuberant, passionate and complex, economic and trade policies and how a close the lens of Waters’ 21st-century feminist Much Ado about Nothing may be best suited community responds to devastating change. point of view. Prologue* recommended. for well-prepared middle and high school The play contains frequent strong profanity students. Prologue* recommended. and occasional racial epithets. An act of Secret Love in violence will be shown or described. It may Guys and Dolls Peach Blossom Land be best suited for well-prepared high school Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser; by Stan Lai students who are able to handle the play’s book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows April 15 – October 31 content. As Sweat is still in development, February 22 – November 1 Two theatre companies have accidentally check back closer to opening for possible Nathan Detroit runs the oldest established been booked into the same theatre for the updates. Prologue* recommended. permanent floating crap game in New York. same day. One company is rehearsing Secret The “floating” part is all about staying one Love, a tender tale of Jiang and Yun, two *For information on Prologues, see page 6. step ahead of the police, who would love to young lovers who lose track of each other 3 t hom A s t he A tre Pericles by William Shakespeare February 26 – November 1 Pericles, Prince of Tyre, sets out to woo a princess and sails headlong into a harrowing odyssey. Fleeing the wrath of the King of Antioch, Pericles embarks on a series of adventures that carry him all over the Aegean. With jousts, shipwrecks, encounters with pirates, finding the love of his life and losing her and his infant daughter in a storm-tossed sea, this sprawling Shakespearean romance follows Pericles from youth to maturity. In true storybook fashion, the lost are reunited with those who love them, finding joy and safe harbor at last. This story of good and evil includes an incestuous relationship, scenes in a brothel with dialogue about Long Day’s Journey into Night The Happiest Song Plays Last the trade, and an attempted rape. by Eugene O’Neill by Quiara Alegría Hudes However, at the play’s end, good triumphs March 25 – October 31 July 7 – November 1 with the help of divine intervention. The year is 1912. Actor James Tyrone’s Iraq War vet Elliot Ortiz has a bright new Middle and high school students who summer home is haunted by alcohol, career: movie star. But shooting a film on are prepared to handle these aspects of addiction, failed dreams and ghosts of location in Jordan with the tumultuous the play will find Pericles a delightful and resentments gone but hardly forgotten. Arab Spring rumbling nearby, he finds that moving tale. Prologue* recommended. Tyrone wrestles with his guilt over what his wartime nightmares have followed his traveling-actor lifestyle has done to him into his new life. Meanwhile, his his family. His delicate wife Mary lives cousin Yazmin, having purchased the old with a morphine addiction and clings to family home in North Philadelphia, spends an idealized past. Their oldest son Jamie her nights cooking food for the needy struggles with the guilt of throwing away members of her community. As Elliot and his promising acting career on a dissipated his friends on the film crew watch the life of expensive drink and cheap women. Arab Spring unfold on the news, Yazmin Their youngest son Edmund, who spent tries to keep her beloved community from years running away from his family by crumbling and finds herself drawn to an traveling the world on merchant ships, older musician friend. This powerful sequel contends with tuberculosis. Over the to Quiara Alegría Hudes’ Water by the course of a single day, recriminations Spoonful explores the places we live our and guilt lead the family to a harrowing lives and the places we can’t forget. The examination of their love and anger Happiest Song Plays Last contains frequent toward each other. Eugene O’Neill’s strong profanity and deals with themes autobiographical masterpiece is a journey of PTSD and stories of the horrors of war.