SEASON 11

The English Bride by Lucile Lichtblau

The play is a fictionalized recapitulation of an actual event -- the attempted bombing of an El Al plane in 1986. In that incident, a pregnant and entirely unwitting Irishwoman was found with a suitcase bomb planted by her Middle Eastern fiancé, while she was supposedly en route to their wedding.The English Bride had its off Broadway production at 59 E59th Street Theaters, Oct. 2013 and rolling world premieres at Theatre Exile, Philadelphia, PA and Centenary Stage, Hackettstown, NJ. It’s west coast premiere was at The Road Theatre, North Hollywood, CA in March and a staged reading at The Workshop Theatre of Nantucket was also in March. It was the winner of the Susan Glaspell Prize and the Israel Baran Award and was a nominee for the ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. See an interview with playwright Lucile Lichtblau talking about The English Bride-produced by Centenary Stage Company

The Play Crawl

June 15, 2016

6:00pm-11:00pm

Tickets $35.00

The Oriental Theatre-4335 W. 44th Street, Denver CO 80212

Featured playwrights:

Linda Berry, Christie Brenner Winn, Lisa Wagner Erickson, Jennifer Faletto, Rebecca Gorman O'Neill, Leslie C. Lewis, Melissa Lucero McCarl, Nina Alice Miller,  Carol Samson, and Catherine Wiley.

the reading series

January 12, 2016

Tina and Prometheus by Karla Jennings

at Cafe Max

Tina and Prometheus meet cute – she’s the eagle who rips out his liver, he’s chained to a rock – but they really hit it off when they finally chat. Tina frees Prometheus and they hide out to avoid Zeus’s wrath. When a loquacious swan tells them the gods are disappearing, Prometheus, being a god, is disturbed, while Tina faces something equally unnerving; she’s turning human. When Athena warns that Ares is about to destroy the human race, the three join to save humankind, confronting the dilemma we all face: If we don’t answer to a higher power, how can we find joy and meaning in our lives? Also, what affordable commercial products can help you stop molting?

February 9, 2016

The Tightwad by Edith Weiss

at Syntax Physic Opera

This is an adaptation of Moliere’s satire The Miser that remains to true to Moliere's intentions while modernizing elements of his play. Harpagon, the tightwad of the title, is a wealthy and avaricious widower who wants to marry Marianne, a young woman he passed by on the street.  Unbeknownst to him, his son Cleante is in love with Marianne, and has been visiting her without divulging his name. Harpagon also wants to marry his daughter Elise off to an old and wealthy widower, Signor Anselm. But Elise is in love with Valere, a young man of noble birth who has gotten a job as a steward in Harpagon’s household to be near Elise. Hidden identities, banned love, and a stolen money box soon cause a conflagration of laugh out loud comedy. Will young love win out? Maybe. Will the love of family show Harpagon that money is not the most important thing?  No.  Moliere is not Oprah.

OCTOBER 26, 2016

ORCHID CHILD BY LESLIE C. LEWIS

MERCURY CAFE

6:30 PM

ADMISSION FREE BUT RESERVATIONS ARE STRONGLY SUGGESTED CALL 720-583-3975

Violent and unpredictable, Ada is the child of your nightmares.  Would she turn out differently if her teenage parents could give her away to the “right” family?  Watch two possible futures unfold for Ada, and consider whether or not nurture can really overcome nature.

NOVEMBER 3-19, 2016

LOST CREATURES BY MELISSA LUCERO MCCARL

A WORLD PREMIERE PRODUCTION

7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday

Lost Creatures follows the evening in May of 1978 when British theatre critic Kenneth Tynan met his long time cinematic idol Louise Brooks.  He travels to her dingy little apartment in Rochester, NY where she has sequestered herself for many years.  He is there ostensibly to write a profile on Brooks for the New Yorker, but he discovers that they are kindred spirits, and in spite of an age gap of twenty years, theirs becomes an unlikely love story discovered through a marathon dialogue about sex, philosophy, art, and criticism.  There is also a silent third character, Lulu, (based on Louise’s role in her most famous silent film Pandora’s Box) who drives the action of the play.