"Power to the Theatre" is the rallying cry for the University of Alberta Studio Theatre's 2012-13 season with six plays asking daring questions about how we live, work, worship and wage war, and who holds the power to affect change. It is a smart and sexy season designed to stimulate and entertain.
A bona fide Canadian theatre star, Mr. Miles Potter, makes his way to the University of Alberta's Department of Drama in March 2013 as the Mary Mooney Distinguished Guest Artist. The Stratford Festival veteran directs Shakespeare's Richard II - a timeless but up-to-the-minute tale about a King's rise and fall from power and the dawning of a new political era.
Greg MacArthur, the University of Alberta Lee Playwright in Residence was commissioned to write a new play, The Missionary Position, for the BFA Acting class of 2013 to perform. The world premiere in February 2013 promises to be politically contentious and provocative, as the play follows a group of deeply committed young missionaries to a third world country to save children they perceive as lost.
In November 2012, guest director Trevor Schmidt of Edmonton's Northern Light Theatre puts his bold and twisted comic flair on Vaclav Havel's The Memorandum. The office politics skewered in this satire are all too familiar for today's audiences grappling to find meaning in the absurd doublespeak of corporate re-organization.
The other productions in the season are two contemporary and visionary American plays, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo by Rajiv Joseph, directed by U of A Drama faculty member Sandra M. Nicholls and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by MFA Directing candidate Simon Bloom as well as the modernist classic, The Ghost Sonata, by August Strindberg, directed by MFA Directing candidate Jessica Carmichael.
These six diverse plays were selected for full-scale "Power to the Theatre" productions on the Timms Centre mainstage to showcase a company of Canada's leading university students in acting, directing, design, vocal coaching, technical theatre and stage management.
Season subscriptions are $55 student / $80 Senior / $100 Adult, on-sale now, through the Timms Centre for the Arts box office, by phone 780-492-2495. For more information, visit www.studiotheatre.ca .