Connecticut Repertory Theatre Announces 2012-13 Season

The Connecticut Repertory Theatre (CRT) announces its 2012 – 2013 season which will include a wide variety of exciting theatrical styles investigating a polarized society. For detailed information and tickets call the box office at 860-486-2113 or visit www.crt.uconn.edu.

Artistic Director Vincent J. Cardinal said, "In the new play O Beautiful by Theresa Rebeck, Benjamin Franklin appears on a Glenn Beck style "television news" show and states, "I am advocating temperate debate, and common sense." To which the TV host fires back, "These are not temperate or sensible times!" Our current Presidential election campaign and the political discourse on both sides of the debate proves the TV host's observation. Each of the plays this season examines personal stories at moments in our history when the national conversation favored division and the human heart sought compassion."

THE MAIN STAGE SERIES

O Beautiful October 4 - October 14, 2012

By Theresa Rebeck, Regional Premiere Harriet S. Jorgensen Theatre

Directed by Joseph Hanreddy

O Beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves . . . In our age of cyber-bullying and aggressive patriotism remember those lyrics – or else! Theresa Rebeck, Broadway playwright and creator of the TV series Smash, pens a theatrically inventive mash up of contemporary American life and the history that got us to this politically polarized age. Its fiercely funny story explores the lives of high school students, teachers, and their families as they cope in a world of real personal problems and extremist ideological rhetoric that gets so heated that Jesus, Saint Paul, Joan of Arc, John Adams, Patrick Henry and Benjamin Franklin, among others, show up to weigh in and mix it up. Alternately sweet and fiery, and as topical as tonight's newscast, O Beautiful lands the complex realities of our culture squarely on the stage deck in an electrifying blend of ancient characters, founding fathers and your neighborhood high school.

Warning: This show includes political, social and religious content that some will find challenging, maybe even offensive. Don't miss it!

Playwright Theresa Rebeck

Romeo and Juliet November 29 - December 9, 2012

By William Shakespeare Nafe Katter Theatre

Directed by Vincent J. Cardinal

This timeless tale of "star-cross'd lovers" fills the stage with dizzying swordplay and delightful wordplay. From the first blush of forbidden teenage love, to the blooming of a passion that fuels death itself, Shakespeare's classic love story thrills anew in every generation. In the heat of a raging feud between their two households, teenagers Romeo and Juliet lose their hearts to each other in a chance meeting. With a price on Romeo's head, and Juliet suddenly betrothed to another man, the young lovers share a night of forbidden passion before Romeo flees the city. Juliet's desperate pleas to call off the wedding are denied, and she hatches a secret plan for them to be reunited, with devastating consequences. Connecticut Repertory Theatre winds up 2012 with a play as passionate, comic and frightening as love itself.

His Girl Friday February 28 - March 10, 2013

Adapted by John Guare From The Front Page Nafe Katter Theatre

By Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur & the Columbia Pictures Film, Directed by Dale AJ Rose

His Girl Friday is an all American rat-a-tat comedy adapted from the film to the stage by acclaimed playwright John Guare. It's August 1939 in the Press Room of the Criminal Courts Building in Chicago. On the world stage Hitler is about to invade Poland, but tonight Hildy Johnson just wants to bid farewell to her old pals, get married and leave the newspaper racket behind, which should go well unless she runs into her hard-boiled editor and ex-husband Walter Burns who wants to keep her on the beat and in his life. With rapid-fire dialogue and a crackling conflict, His Girl Friday remains one of our wildest, wittiest whirlwinds of American romantic comedy.

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