SAN DIEGO – San Diego REPertory Theatre (San Diego REP) San Diego REP has announced their Season 39 line-up. Each of the six productions for 2014-2015 in San Diego REP’s 39th season “The Pianist of Willesden Lane,” “Honky,” “Steal Heaven,” “Oedipus El Rey,” “Uncanny Valley,” and “Lifeline: The Music of Harry Nilsson” is brand new to San Diego. The diverse lineup features three world premieres, and performances by a Grammy Award-winning musician Mona Golabek as well as Tony Award-winners Gregory Jbara and Alice Ripley.
“The choices for our 39th season reflect our love for stories of personal discovery and self-realization,” says Sam Woodhouse, co-founder and artistic director, San Diego REPertory Theatre. “Each production is a first-class example of virtuosity in playwriting — with an energy that jumps off the page, demanding to be seen on stage.” Woodhouse continues: “Our 39th season features an extraordinary group of characters, both real and imagined, with passions, gifts and dreams that inspire us. This is a powerful season about music, race and patricide.”
Mona Golabek in
“The Pianist of Willesden Lane”
Based on the book “The Children of Willesden Lane” by Mona Golabek and Lee Cohen
Adapted and directed by Hershey Felder
Sept. 3-28, 2014
Opening Night: Sept. 6, 2014
The Lyceum Stage
Written by Mona Golabek, a Grammy-nominated pianist and storyteller, the stage production of “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” shares the tale of a young girl who survives the rise of the Nazi Party in Europe through determination and her love of music. Featuring Golabek, the story is a tale told deep from the heart about the power of music to heal and sustain the soul.
In Vienna 1938, a 14-year-old piano prodigy finds her dreams of becoming a concert pianist threatened by the looming war in Europe. After her parents buy her a one-way ticket to England on the Kindertransport, the children’s survival train, a story of art sustaining life begins.
In this theatrical event, Golabek is both actress and pianist. Center stage is a concert grand piano Golabek uses to weave her tale. With the works of Grieg, Chopin, Beethoven, Debussy, Bach and Gershwin, she brings to life musically this story. David C. Nichols of the Los Angeles Times calls the production “an arresting deeply affecting triumph.”
“Honky”
By Greg Kalleres
Directed by Sam Woodhouse
Nov. 8-Dec. 7, 2014
Opening Night: Nov. 15, 2014
The Lyceum Space
This New York Times Critic’s Pick, had a wildly successful extended-run off-Broadway last season and is a new comedy not afraid to ask dicey questions and offer daring answers.
Inspired by his experience as a writer of TV commercials, Greg Kalleres’ irreverent satire begins with the shooting of a young black teenager, all because of his trendy new “Sky Max” basketball shoes. It goes on to reveal secrets about steamy love affairs, hallucinations of a drunken Abraham Lincoln and a foul-mouthed Frederick Douglas, and the promotion of a pill that promises to cure racism.
In this play, every character must navigate through the rhetoric of race, just to make it through the day. While “Honky” is far from being a cure for racism, it makes the case that the ability to laugh together is going to have to be part of the remedy.
“Steal Heaven”
A World Premiere by Herbert Siguenza
Directed by Todd Salovey
Jan. 10-Feb. 1, 2015
Opening Night: Jan. 17, 2015
The Lyceum Space
Do you ever wonder if activism is dead in America? Are we afraid to stand up and speak out?
Maybe it’s time to get a little crazy! This is where bad-boy Abbie Hoffman, played by Herbert Siguenza, comes in.
Hoffman was the political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party (“Yippies”) in 1968. In this tale written by Siguenza, the icon of youthful rebellion now serves as the patron saint of radicals. In his little corner of heaven, Hoffman conducts a boot camp for activists who have the chutzpha required to go back to Earth to become new agents of change. But where are the radical activists of today?
Enter Trish, a young veteran-turned activist, who finds herself at the pearly gates. Hoffman senses he may have finally found the right combination of anger, courage, and cunning wit, to make change and take on the challenges of the 21st century. He calls in his comrades John Lennon and Albert Einstein, locks the gate and says, “Let the training begin!”
Todd Salovey, who celebrates his 25th year as San Diego REP’s associate artistic director, is set to direct this world premiere production.
“Oedipus El Rey”
By Luis Alfaro
Directed by Sam Woodhouse
March 7-29, 2015
Opening Night: March 14, 2015
The Lyceum Stage
In 430 B.C., the playwright Sophocles wrote one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the Western world: “Oedipus Rex”, the tale of a king who from birth was destined to murder his father and marry his mother.
Now Luis Alfaro, acclaimed playwright and MacArthur Genius Grant winner, has created a contemporary adaptation that trades the temples of classical Thebes for the urban barrios of Southern California. Alfaro melds the ancient with the modern. Oedipus is imprisoned for ripping off a Costco; Jocasta splashes on the Jean Naté while glued to “All My Children,” and the oracle offers life coaching…but visitors must bring cash.
Placing the passionate love between Oedipus and his mother Jocasta squarely at the play’s center, but the 2,500-year-old question, asked by a prescient, opinionated chorus of heavily tattooed inmates remains the same. “Is our young homeboy doomed to suffer el destino?” The word on the street for El Rey is not good.
NOTE: Contains adult themes, violence, language and nudity.
“Uncanny Valley”
A National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere
By Thomas Gibbons
Director TBA
April 11-May 10, 2015
Opening night: April 18, 2015
The Lyceum Space
Chasing immortality by downloading your thoughts and memories into an everlasting human-shaped computer may sound like science fiction, but current research in robotics and artificial intelligence makes it possible now. The challenge is to get past the “uncanny valley,” the discomfort people experience when seeing electronic recreations of human beings that are not quite believable.
Claire, played by Rosina Reynolds, is a neuroscientist who has devoted her entire life to crafting a non-biological being. Her latest attempt is named Julian. As he is “born” over the course of the play, going from just a head to a fully-functional body, Claire teaches Julian what it is to be human. But as anyone who has ever raised a child knows, “We have no idea how this new being we have created will turn out.” So when Claire finally comes face to face with her creation, she is shocked to discover who is staring back at her.
The National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere proposes modern science as the creator of human life on earth and redefines what it means to be human in the 21st century. “Stuffed with fascinating food for thought this taut, smart drama is the kind of play audiences expect from San Diego REP, says Woodhouse.”
Tony Award Winners
Gregory Jbara and Alice Ripley
in the World Premiere Musical Review
“Lifeline: The Music of Harry Nilsson”
By Steve Gunderson and Javier Velasco
Directed and choreographed by Javier Velasco
Musical Arrangements by Steve Gunderson
May 23-June 21, 2015
Opening Night: May 30, 2015
The Lyceum Stage
When the Beatles were asked to name their favorite American musical artist at a press conference in New York, they shouted out “NILSSON!”
Described as “the most famously anonymous composer and performer of our time,” Harry Nilsson, was a two-time Grammy Award winner and legendary hell-raiser best known for “Everybody’s Talkin’ at Me,” “Can’t Live, If Living is Without You,” “One is the Loneliest Number” and “You Put the Lime in the Coconut.” Nilsson’s special genius captured the imagination of Steve Gunderson and Javier Velasco to bring the world premiere musical event, “Life Line: The Music of Harry Nilsson” to the Lyceum Stage. The duo has crafted Nilsson’s repertoire into a song cycle that explores the journey from innocence to adulthood, through the many stages of love.
Tony Award-winners Gregory Jbara and Alice Ripley are the stars of the world premiere production. Jbara created “Dad” in “Billy Elliot the Musical” on Broadway and also plays “Deputy Commissioner Moore” on the CBS network television show “Blue Bloods.” Ripley originated leading roles in a number of Broadway musicals, including “Side Show” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Next to Normal.”
Subscriptions are currently available for purchase by calling the San Diego REP box office at 619-544-1000 Individual tickets will be available for purchase June 1, 2014.
