“Americans Abroad”

In our fourth season, “Americans Abroad”, we will look at the ways Americans are impacted by and impact the world outside our borders. Within the broad spectrum of American voices we will look at political and social commentary, the poetic and the macabre, madcap humor, and a surreal fever dream of blindness and redemption.

The Readings

AFTER THE FALL

by Arthur Miller, Monday, October 13 at 7:00p.m. (part of Free Theater Week!)

Quentin is reeling from a failed marriage and a powerful visit to a burnt out concentration camp where he’s met and fallen in love with a woman who may change his life. But what is that life? And how has he navigated the mine field of allegiances, lust and betrayal. Miller’s explosive 1964 look at post World War II angst and the HUAC debacle is what Time Magazine called “endlessly fascinating and emotionally harrowing.”

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER

by Tennessee Williams, Monday, February 16 at 7:00p.m.

When a troubled young woman is the sole witness to her cousin's shocking death, she’s brought to her aunt’s “planned jungle” in a New Orleans courtyard to confront a family that is intensely interested in having her lurid tale silenced. In his richest, boldest poetical flourishes, Williams creates, in the words of Walter Kerr, “a concrete and blistering portrait of loneliness…of the sudden snapping of that spider's web that is one man's life, of ultimate panic and futile flight.”

DON’T DRINK THE WATER

by Woody Allen, April 20 7:00p.m.

Before Woody Allen started making movies, he wrote this slapstick farce that takes place in an embassy behind the Iron Curtain. Topical humor rings remarkably true for today, and the circus of miss matched and bumbling characters make for a bracing and laugh filled evening.

The Production

EYES FOR CONSUELA

by Sam Shepard – JUNE ‘09

When an American tries to flee his life’s mistakes by holing up in a run down Mexican hotel, he finds himself caught in a mysterious triangle with a man with a ready knife, bent on retrieving a “bouquet of eyes” for his ghostly lover. "The writing has the kind of apparently effortless boldness that reminds you that you are in the presence of one of the greatest living playwrights." —NY Daily News "