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The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Music and lyrics by William Finn
Book by Rachel Sheinkin
OCT. 8-24, 2010
Winner of two Tony Awards including Best Book of a Musical.
Acclaimed by critics and audiences from coast-to-coast during its national tour, Spelling Bee is a hilarious musical tale of overachievers’ angst chronicling the experience of six adolescent outsiders vying for the spelling championship of a lifetime. It’s the unlikeliest of hit musicals about the unlikeliest of heroes: a quirky yet charming cast of outsiders for whom a spelling bee is the one place where they can stand out and fit in at the same time.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner: ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’ is the Civic Center’s best show of the season!” – Des Moines Register review of the touring production (April 2008).
The Seafarer
By Conor McPherson
DEC. 3-12, 2010
Iowa premiere
Tony Award and Olivier (London) Award Nominee – Best Play
“A timeless classic.” – Hollywood Reporter
In the grand tradition of Irish storytelling, comes this Christmas fable about the sea, Ireland, and the power of myth. It’s Christmas Eve in Dublin. In the rundown house where Sharky cares for his blind brother, old acquaintances gather for a card game – joined by an ominous stranger. As the booze flows and the game intensifies, Sharky discovers that he may be playing for his very soul. In this eerie, haunting tale, celebrated Irish playwright Conor McPherson examines how we face the demons of our past, and struggle for redemption.
The Beebo Brinker Chronicles
By Kate Moira Ryan and Linda S. Chapman
Adapted from books by Ann Bannon.
FEB. 18-27, 2011
Regional premiere
“‘The Beebo Brinker Chronicles’ pries open the closet door and reveals the characters trapped behind it.” – BackStage
Based on the groundbreaking, award-winning pulp novels of the 50s and 60s, The Beebo Brinker Chronicles follows the lives and loves of friends in pre-Stonewall Greenwich Village. Beth and Laura, secret lovers in college, still pine for each other. Before they can reunite, they find themselves entangled in a web spun by Beebo Brinker, a butch denizen of the underground bar scene. The play, originally produced by Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner, celebrates the era when “the love that dares not speak its name” began breaking the old rules.
Title of Show
Music and by Jeff Bowen
Book by Hunter Bell
APRIL 1-17, 2011
Iowa premiere
Tony Award Nominee – Best Book of a Musical
Obie Award – Best Book of a Music
| You’re reading the official blurb, or short summary, of [title of show]. Blurb. That’s a funny word. We spent a lot of time on this blurb so please read the whole blurb. [title of show] is a musical about two nobodies named Hunter and Jeff who decide to write a completely original musical starring themselves and their attractive and talented ladyfriends, Susan and Heidi. Their musical, [title of show], gets into the New York Musical Theatre Festival, and becomes a hit. Then it gets an off-Broadway production at the Vineyard Theatre, and wins three Obie Awards! Then (drumroll if you’ve got a drum) it’s announced that their musical is going to Broadway (hooray!) and people start seeing this blurb everywhere! Fully intrigued, those people snatch up tickets and help make Hunter and Jeff’s life-long dream come true! And now we’re playing in Des Moines – cool – here ends the blurb. |
Reasons to be Pretty
By Neil LaBute
June 23-July 9, 2011 as part of The Beauty Trilogy Repertory Series
Iowa premiere
Tony and Drama Desk Award Nominee – Best Play
Top Ten Plays of the Year –Time and Associated Press
A love story about the impossibility of love. Do we ever really know what our partner thinks of us? Reasons to be Pretty confronts America’s obsession with physical beauty headlong when Greg, a working-class guy in a long-term relationship, inadvertently remarks to a friend that, compared to a pretty coworker, his girlfriend is “regular.” This off-hand statement, a slip-of-the-tongue, begins a downward spiral as the characters begin to experience insecurities in their own lives. Is anyone ever totally comfortable in their own skin?
“Mr LaBute is writing some of the freshest and most illuminating dialogue to be heard anywhere these days.” –New York Times
“It is tight, tense and emotionally true, and it portrays characters who actually seem part of the world that the rest of us live in.” Time
SPECIAL PRODUCTIONS
Bill W. and Dr. Bob
By Stephen Bergman and Janet Surrey
Sponsored by the Powell Chemical Dependency Center at Iowa Lutheran Hospital
Sept. 17-26, 2010
Iowa premiere
“An insightful new play.” – New York Times
“The sleeper hit of the season!” – NYTheatre.com
“Paints an endearing portrait of friendship and human weakness with warm humor.” – New Yorker
In 1929, famous New York stockbroker Bill Wilson crashes with the stock market and becomes a hopeless drunk. Dr. Bob Smith, a surgeon from Ohio, has also been an alcoholic for thirty years, often going into the operating room with a hangover. Through an astonishing series of events, Bill W. and Dr. Bob meet and form a relationship, each helping to keep the other sober. This is the amazing and often humorous story of the two men who pioneered Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as the story of their wives, who founded Al Anon.
The Beauty Trilogy Repertory Series
June 23-July 17, 2011
Reasons to be Pretty (part of StageWest’s subscription series)
The Shape of Thing
Fat Pig
By Neil LaBute
A unique, must-see theatre event that is guaranteed to start a conversation. Three plays in repertory by one of the most important new voices in American theatre. The New Yorker calls Neil LaBute “the best new playwright to emerge in the past decade … a genius.”
Together, they deal with the complexities of romantic relationships, sexual politics and physical appearance. Comprising a trilogy of plays linked by theme, though without recurring characters or a connected plot, the plays each reflect on their common themes in unique and distinctive ways. Though each play has had immensely successful productions in New York and London, the three plays have never been performed in a three-week repertory format.
