Actors Guild of Lexington’s 24th season, my 4th as Artistic Director, is what I consider to be a dream season. It features a veritable murderers row of great, great playwrights (Shakespeare, August Wilson, David Mamet, Tom Stoppard); it features a wonderfully sweet and sentimental holiday musical; it features a great knockabout Hollywood farce and it solidifies relationships with old friends and begins relationships with new friends. It features the best of Central Kentucky’s actors, directors and designers combined with interesting new talents from around the country. It also features a season of theatrical “stories from across the spectrum of time and place” as our Vision Statement maintains that will serve to remind our community of timeless themes and universal interconnectedness. In short, Actors Guild of Lexington’s 2007-2008 season is epic, dramatic, funny, timely, provocative, stimulating…all the things great professional theatre should be. It is with great pride that I officially announce Actors Guild of Lexington’s 24th season:
Actors Guild of Lexington’s 2007-2008 Season
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
By August Wilson
Directed by Sidney Shaw
Starring Cathy Rawlings
September 12 – October 7, 2007
Chicago 1927 - in a studio somewhere in the city, Ma Rainey’s band is gathering to record a new album. But legendary Blues singer Ma Rainey hasn't turned up, the new young trumpeter wants to play the music his way and the other band members bicker, fight, laugh and tell stories. It looks increasingly unlikely that any songs will be recorded at all. August Wilson died in 2005 and is considered one of America's greatest modern playwrights. Ma Rainey... was the first of an epic cycle of plays chronicling every decade of the African-American experience in the 20th century.
"Searing ... funny, salty, carnal and lyrical.... Wilson has lighted a dramatic fuse that snakes and hisses through several anguished eras of American life. When the fuse reaches its explosive final destination, the audience is impaled by the impact."
The New York Times
Hamlet
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Richard St. Peter
Starring Adam Luckey
Special Multimedia design by Cyburbia Productions
October 17 – November 11, 2007
William Shakespeare comes to Actors Guild of Lexington for the first time with AGL’s production of perhaps the greatest play ever written: Hamlet. Starring AGL Associate Artist Adam Luckey and directed by AGL Artistic Director Richard St. Peter, this promises to be a Hamlet for the 21st century. Featuring new media design by the Washington DC-based Cyburbia Productions, Hamlet promises to be a feast for the eyes and ears as it unfolds in all of its glory: ghost story, kings and queens, political intrigue, and murder most foul make for a gripping and engrossing evening of theatre. This soaring production is not to be missed!
She Loves Me
Book by Joe Masteroff
Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick
Music by Jerry Bock
Based on a play by Miklos Laszlo
Directed by Michael Friedman
Music Direction by Ryan Shirar
Choreography by Diana Evans
Presented in Association with Paragon Music Theatre
November 28 – December 23, 2007
Georg and Amalia are two feuding clerks in a European parfumerie during the 1930s who secretly find solace in their anonymous romantic pen pals, little knowing their respective correspondents are none other than each other. Funny, intelligent, honest and sentimental, She Loves Me is a warm romantic comedy with an endearing innocence and a touch of old world elegance and nostalgia, yet as universal and relevant as ever in this age of internet romances. An ideal Holiday show, this heart-warming work by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick (the songwriting team of Fiddler On The Roof) and Joe Masteroff (the bookwriter of Cabaret) is a pleasure whatever the occasion.
Boston Marriage
By David Mamet
Director TBA
January 30 -- February 24, 2008
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, acclaimed playwright David Mamet brings his trademark tart dialogue and impeccable timing, spiced with Oscar Wilde-type wit.
“Devastatingly funny…exceptionally clever…demonstrates anew Mamet’s technical virtuosity and flexibility.” The New York Times
Arcadia
By Tom Stoppard
Directed by Ave Lawyer
March 12 – April 6, 2008
From the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Shakespeare in Love comes this dazzling play of wit, romance, genius and poetry. Widely regarded as one of the most brilliant plays of the 20th century, Arcadia is an intriguing mystery that takes place in both 1809 and the present day. Set in a large country house in Derbyshire, the drama plays on the emotions, carefully mixing sadness and humor, at times leaving the audience unsure whether to laugh or cry. Although it broaches high-brow subjects like the chaos theory and the second law of thermodynamics, the play is wickedly funny and accessible to all, and includes lashings of Stoppard’s legendary humor and wit.
"Pure entertainment for the heart, mind, soul.... The best Broadway play for many, many a season. It is a work shot through with fun, passion and, yes, genius." The New York Post.
Moonlight and Magnolias
By Ron Hutchinson
Directed by Richard St. Peter
Starring Charles Edward Pogue, Roger Lee Leasor and Eric Johnson
April 16 – May 11, 2008
1939 Hollywood is abuzz. Legendary producer David O. Selznick has shut down production of his new epic, Gone with the Wind, a film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s novel. The screenplay, you see, just doesn’t work. So what’s an all-powerful movie mogul to do? While fending off the film’s stars, gossip columnists and his own father-in-law, Selznick sends a car for famed screenwriter Ben Hecht and pulls formidable director Victor Fleming from the set of The Wizard of Oz. Summoning both to his office, he locks the doors, closes the shades, and on a diet of bananas and peanuts, the three men labor over five days to fashion a screenplay that will become the blueprint for one of the most successful and beloved films of all time.
“… a Hollywood dream-factory farce…At once a hyperventilating slapstick comedy, an impassioned love song and a blazing critique of Hollywood…” The Chicago Sun Times
Drama, comedy, romance, music, farce…something for everyone at Actors Guild of Lexington!
If you are interested in ordering subscriptions, please contact the LexArts Box Office at 859-225-0370 or visit boxoffice@lexarts.org. We are lowering our subscription prices this season so that all subscribers, no matter what level you subscribe at, will receive 6 shows for the price of 5! A great deal for great theatre!!
Peace and Love
Richard (Rick) St. Peter
Artistic Director
March 2, 2007
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