Fw: 2009 Year of Plays - Compass Theatre

AMERICA BUFFALO
by David Mamet
Directed by Ruff Yeager
With: Walter Murray, Matt Scott & Nathan Dean Snyder

Runs: Thur Fri 8pm – Sat 4 & 8pm – Sun 2pm

$15 Previews 1/7 1/8 1/9 8pm 1/10 4pm / Opens 1/10 8pm - Closes February 11, 2009

Full Length, Drama 3 Males. Best American Play, New York Drama Critics' Circle Award 1977. In a Chicago junk shop three small time crooks plot to rob a man of his coin collection. Its existence came to light when the collector found a valuable "buffalo nickel" in the shop. The three plotter punks fancy themselves as businessmen pursuing the legitimate concerns of free enterprise. In reality they are Donny, the stupid junk shop owner; Bobby, a spaced out young junkie Donny has befriended and finally "Teacher", violent paranoid braggart. But their plans come to naught and in reality are futile, vulgar verbal exercises. Three excellent roles and character studies. Robert Duvall as "Teacher" returned to Broadway to critical acclaim after a long absence.

"Gripping drama. . . . Mamet's first trip to Broadway. It will hardly be his last." N.Y. Times.

"Mamet is an actor's playwright. . . . [He] senses the possibilities inarticulateness affords a savvy actor." WWD.

"It isn't often that a play with a dramatic intensity of American Buffalo comes to the Broadway theatre." N.Y. Post .

KILLER JOE
by Tracy Letts
Directed by Lisa Berger

Runs: Thur Fri Sat 8pm – Sun 2pm

$15 Previews 2/26 27 28 / Opens March 1 – Closes April 5^th, 2009

Full Length, Black comedy. 3 m., 2 f. Killer Joe is hired by the greedy Smith family, a dim witted clan wanting to do away with mother to get her insurance money. Killer Joe decides to bed the Smith daughter as a retainer against his final payoff. Before it's over, nearly everyone is bloodied.

"Set in Dallas, Killer Joe revels in its white trash stereotypes, and gives you permission to do the same; it's pulp fiction which has it both ways, deriving humor from dirty realism. It's slick, it's well constructed, it knows exactly where it's going." N.Y. Daily News.
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BOSTON MARRIAGE
By David Mamet

Directed by Josh Hyatt & Miriam Cuperman

Runs: Thur Fri Sat 8pm – Sun 2pm
$15 Previews: 4/23 24 25 / Opens April 19 – Closes May 24, 2009

Comedy. Full Length. 3 women. THE REVIEWS: "Brilliant…One of Mamet's most satisfying and accomplished plays and one of the funniest American comedies in years." —NY Post. "Devastatingly funny…exceptionally clever…demonstrates anew [Mamet's] technical virtuosity and flexibility." —NY Times. "Wickedly, wittily entertaining…What makes the play…such brilliant fun is its marriage of glinting period artifice and contemporary frankness." —Boston Phoenix. "[Mamet's characters] are at each other's throats with a wit akin to characters out of Wilde and a vengeance not unlike those from Pinter, Edward Albee, or Mamet himself." —Boston Globe.

THE STORY: Anna and Claire are two bantering, scheming "women of fashion" who have long lived together on the fringes of upper-class society. Anna has just become the mistress of a wealthy man, from whom she has received an enormous emerald and an income to match. Claire, meanwhile, is infatuated with a respectable young lady and wants to enlist the jealous Anna's help for an assignation. As the two women exchange barbs and take turns taunting Anna's hapless Scottish parlor maid, Claire's young inamorata suddenly appears, setting off a crisis that puts both the valuable emerald and the women's futures at risk. To this wickedly funny comedy, Mamet brings his trademark tart dialogue and impeccable plotting, spiced with Wildean wit.
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In Repertory as Compass Theatre’s contribution to PRIDE MONTH

BAD NIGHT IN A MEN’S ROOM OFF SUNSET BOULEVARD
by Ira Bateman-Gold
Directed by Josh Hyatt

Comedy. Love is where you find it. But what does a man look for if he doesn’t know what he wants? In the early 1980’s a movie idol makes a disastrous mistake and his manager convinces him to reclaim his stardom by returning to the stage with members of his family, this being perhaps his only chance to regain public support. But a difficult play on a cold stage in a small regional theatre, and the reality of love with a pretty young man on hormones living as a woman, may cause more troubles than it fixes.

And
Dancing the God
by Patricia Montly
Directed by Miriam Cuperman

A lawyer returns to her college to investigate the alleged seduction of a student by her female dance teacher. The student's accusation is vehement; the teacher refuses to defend herself. Prompted by the lawyer's questions, the pair reenact, through flashbacks, the stages of their playful, passionate relationship, reporting different versions of the culminating episode. In uncovering the truth about them, the lawyer is challenged to come to terms with her own experience in the face of what seem to her disarming ideas of education and female intimacy.

Exact dates to be announced. The shows will run seven-days a week in repertory.
June 7 – July 5, 2009

Resilience of the Spirit Festival

July / August 2009

Exact dates and plays TBA

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF
By Edward Albee
Directed by Shana Wride
With Glynn Bedington & Dale Morris

Runs: Thur Fri Sat 8pm – Sun 2pm
Previews 9/24, 9/25, 9/26, 9/27 / Opens October 1 – Closes October 25, 2009

Drama. Full Length 2 men, 2 women
THE REVIEWS: Winner of the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play. The Broadway production of this play was a shattering and memorable experience and proclaimed the author as a major American playwright. "This is a Big One." —NY Journal-American. "…a scorching, scalding, revealing and completely engrossing drama." —Women's Wear Daily. "…a brilliant piece of writing." —NY Herald-Tribune.

THE STORY: George, a professor at a small college, and his wife, Martha, have just returned home, drunk from a Saturday night party. Martha announces, amidst general profanity, that she has invited a young couple—an opportunistic new professor at the college and his shatteringly naïve new bride—to stop by for a nightcap. When they arrive the charade begins. The drinks flow and suddenly inhibitions melt. It becomes clear that Martha is determined to seduce the young professor, and George couldn't care less. But underneath the edgy banter, which is crossfired between both couples, lurks an undercurrent of tragedy and despair. George and Martha's inhuman bitterness toward one another is provoked by the enormous personal sadness that they have pledged to keep to themselves: a secret that has seemingly been the foundation for their relationship. In the end, the mystery in which the distressed George and Martha have taken refuge is exposed, once and for all revealing the degrading mess they have made of their lives.

PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS
by John Patrick Shanley

Runs: Thur Fri Sat 8pm – Sun 2pm
November 1 – November 28, 2009 (closes on a Saturday night)

Comedy Full Length 3 men, 2 women: 5 total
THE REVIEWS: "John Patrick Shanley's new play, PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS is…a smart new comedy about men and their befuddlements and a shrink who may just be the personification of evil…The play's first half is perfectly poised between daffy comedy and believable human neurosis which Shanley combines so well that although you never know what wacky thing is coming next, you believe it when it comes." —LA Times. "John Patrick Shanley's PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS is a salty boulevard comedy with a bittersweet theme…Shanley's craft…is actually at high tide. Shanley has written what on the surface is a deft boulevard comedy, but one with thought-provoking depths." —NY Magazine. "…It's great fun to watch the sparks fly and great scene material for auditions and classes." —BackStage. "Shanley is a wicked writer…in the mouths of savvy socialites and other members of the Manhattan elite, his dense, witty prose sings. A tour de force of witty, barbed dialogue." —Variety.

THE STORY: Arthur, an obscure young painter struggling in the art world of Manhattan, announces to his self-satisfied friend, Howard, that he is engaged to be married. To whom? Asks Howard. The answer is to Lucille, a powerful, attractive, no-nonsense Texas socialite, a kind of wealthy Annie Oakley. But, Arthur confides to Howard, there are three problems: 1. Arthur is a fetishist, and Lucille doesn't know. He cannot make love without being in proximity to his father's argyle socks. 2. Arthur's psychiatrist, Dr. Block, unable to cure Arthur of his fetish, has stolen said socks. 3. Arthur's wedding night is fast approaching, and he needs his socks back. Howard vows to retrieve his friend's socks from the wily Dr. Block. This brilliant if unconventional shrink proceeds to reduce Howard to a sniveling wreck. We finally meet the robust Lucille, in her wedding dress, as her friend Ellie (Howard's wife) blurts out all the bad news. At this point, Arthur enters and begs Lucille's forgiveness, which he obtains. Lucille resolves to go to this Block character and rescue her man's socks. Lucille and Dr. Block fight it out for the soul and the socks of Arthur. Lucille wipes the floor with the clever psychiatrist. Her secret weapon? A hearty store of common sense and razor-sharp country wit. Block finally resorts to trying to seduce her. When she cries help, Arthur and Howard burst in and save her. Arthur reclaims his socks (as each man must), and he and Lucille are married.

A TUNA CHRISTMAS (2009)
by Ed Howard, Joe Sears and Jaston Williams
Directed by Josh Hyatt
With Fred Harlow & Don Loper

December 6 – December 27, 2009

Comedy. 2 m. In this hilarious sequel to Greater Tuna, it's Christmas in the third smallest town in Texas. Radio station OKKK news personalities Thurston Wheelis and Arles Struvie report on various Yuletide activities, including hot competition in the annual lawn display contest. In other news, voracious Joe Bob Lipsey's production of "A Christmas Carol" is jeopardized by unpaid electric bills. Many colorful Tuna denizens, some you will recognize from Greater Tuna and some appearing here for the first time, join in the holiday fun. A Tuna Christmas is a total delight for all seasons, whether performed by two quick changing comedians as on Broadway or by twenty or more. Production requirements are minimal, making the play suitable for school and community producers as well as large venues. Audiences who have and who have not seen Greater Tuna will enjoy this laugh filled evening.

"A hoot!"-NY Times

"So funny it could make a racoon laugh affectionately at Davy Crockett.... It's far too good for just