2010/2011 Season
Music by Leonard Bernstein
Book Adapted from Voltaire by Hugh Wheeler
Lyrics by Richard Wilbur
Additional lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, John Latouche, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker and Leonard Bernstein
Directed by Mary Zimmerman
September and October, 2010
In the Albert Theatre
Director and adaptor Mary Zimmerman is the recipient of a 1998 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2002 Tony Award for Best Direction of her original adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and numerous Joseph Jefferson Awards—including Jeffs for best production and best direction. She is the Manilow Resident Director of Goodman Theatre, a member of the Lookingglass Theatre Company of Chicago and a professor of performance studies at Northwestern University.
Works which she has created and directed at Goodman Theatre include The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Journey to the West, Silk, Mirror of the Invisible World, the opera Galileo Gallei (with Philip Glass) and The Odyssey (based on an earlier production at Lookingglass). Works created and directed at Lookingglass include Metamorphoses, The Arabian Nights, Argonautika, The Secret in the Wings and Eleven Rooms of Proust (in collaboration with About Face). These original shows have gone on to production in regional theaters such as Berkeley Repertory, Seattle Repertory, Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, Missouri Repertory, Hartford Stage, Huntington Theatre and New York theatres such as Broadway's Circle in the Square, Second Stage, Manhattan Theatre Club and Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Recent directing credits for the Metropolitan Opera in New York include Lucia di Lammermoor and La Sonnambula, and this spring's Armida (with Renée Fleming). All three operas have been or will be seen as live HD movie theater broadcasts around the world.
Additionally, she has staged Pericles, All's Well That Ends Well, The Trojan Women and The Baltimore Waltz at the Goodman; and twice directed for the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park.
MaryZimmerman_01: Lisa Ebright
By Anton Chekhov
Directed by Robert Falls
October and November, 2010
In the Owen Theatre
Director Robert Falls has been the artistic director of Goodman Theatre since 1986. From 1977 to 1985, he was the artistic director of Wisdom Bridge Theatre. Most recently, he revived his double-bill of Hughie and Krapp's Last Tape (with director Jennifer Tarver) starring Brian Dennehy. Prior to that, he revived his critically acclaimed 2006 Goodman production of King Lear for the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. after directing Desire Under the Elms on Broadway and for "A Global Exploration: Eugene O'Neill in the 21st Century" at the Goodman. Other recent productions include the Broadway revival of American Buffalo, Hughie for Long Wharf Theatre and Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Shining City for the Goodman and Huntington Theatre Company, the Tony-nominated Broadway revival of Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio, the world premiere of Richard Nelson's Frank's Home for the Goodman and Playwrights Horizons, the Tony-nominated American premiere of Shining City on Broadway, A Life in the Theatre for the Goodman and the London revival of Death of a Salesman. Falls' production of Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida for Walt Disney Theatricals ran on Broadway for four years and toured nationally and abroad. Two of his most highly acclaimed Broadway productions, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night (first staged at the Goodman) were honored with seven Tony Awards and three Drama Desk Awards. Previous Goodman credits include the world premieres of Arthur Miller's Finishing the Picture, Rebecca Gilman's Blue Surge and Dollhouse, Eric Bogosian's Griller, Louis Rosen and Thom Bishop's Book of the Night, Steve Tesich's The Speed of Darkness and On the Open Road and John Logan's Riverview: A Melodrama with Music; the American premiere of Alan Ayckbourn's House and Garden; the Midwest premieres of Kenneth Lonergan's Lobby Hero and Edward Albee's The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?; as well as Galileo, The Iceman Cometh, A Touch of the Poet, Three Sisters, The Night of the Iguana, Landscape of the Body, The Misanthrope, Pal Joey and The Tempest. Elsewhere, Falls has directed Blue Surge at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, Horton Foote's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Young Man from Atlanta on Broadway (Tony-nominated transfer from the Goodman), the world premiere of Eric Bogosian's subUrbia at Lincoln Center Theater (Obie Award for Best Director), The Rose Tattoo for Circle in the Square (Tony-nominated), The Iceman Cometh at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, On the Open Road at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, The Night of the Iguana at the Roundabout Theatre and The Food Chain at the Westside Theatre, as well as productions for the Guthrie Theater, Remains Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera and the Grande Théâtre de Genève. Honors received by Falls include: Human Spirit Award (Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis), Governor's Award for Outstanding Contributions by an Individual Artist (Illinois Arts Council), "Chicagoan of the Year" (Chicago magazine), Artistic Leadership Award (League of Chicago Theatres), election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts (Lake Forest College), Special Jeff Award for Outstanding Contributions to Theatre and Chicago Illini of the Year Award (University of Illinois).
RobertFalls_01: Eric Y. Exit
RobertFalls_02: Liz Lauren
By Regina Taylor
January and February 2011
In the Albert Theatre
A World Premiere
Playwright Regina Taylor's most recent play, Magnolia, premiered in the Goodman's 2008/2009 season, directed by Anna D. Shapiro (Tony Award Winner for August: Osage County). Her play, The Dreams of Sarah Breedlove premiered at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and was produced at the Goodman in June 2006 with Taylor directing. Drowning Crow, her adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull, was produced on Broadway at Manhattan Theater Club's Biltmore Theater. Taylor wrote the award-winning Crowns, which was first produced at the McCarter Theatre and at Second Stage in New York, and has become the most performed musical in America; Taylor also directed the production to critical acclaim.
Taylor's other plays include Oo-Bla-Dee, which premiered at the Goodman and which won the 2000 American Theatre Critics/Steinberg New Play Award; Escape From Paradise, a one-woman show; Watermelon Rinds; Inside the Belly of the Beast; Mudtracks; Love Poem #97; and she curated Urban Zulu Mambo, an evening of plays by Adrienne Kennedy, Ntozake Shange, Suzan-Lori Parks and Kia Corthron.
Taylor 's acting credits include roles on Broadway, off-Broadway and in numerous resident theaters. Her film credits include Clockers, Losing Isaiah, Lean on Me, A Family Thing, Courage Under Fire, with Denzel Washington and The Negotiator with Samuel L. Jackson. For her role as Lilly Harper on the television series I'll Fly Away, Taylor won an NAACP Image Award, was nominated for an Emmy Award and received the Golden Globe Award for Best Leading Dramatic Actress. She appeared as Cora in Cora Unashamed in PBS's Masterpiece Theater American Collection. She was seen on CBS's The Education of Max Bickford as Judith Bryant. Her additional television credits include the CBS series FEDS, Law & Order, Crisis at Central High, The Howard Beach Story, Children of the Dust with Sidney Poitier, and Strange Justice, a Showtime original film in which she portrayed Anita Hill (Peabody Award, Gracie Award). Most recently she portrayed Molly on CBS's The Unit written and produced by David Mamet and Shawn Ryan (2008 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama).
ReginaTaylor_01: Eric Williams
ReginaTaylor_02: Eric Y. Exit
By Thomas Bradshaw
Directed by May Adrales
February and March 2011
In the Owen Theatre
A World Premiere Goodman Theatre Commission
Playwright Thomas Bradshaw's newest play, The Bereaved, premiered in New York in September 2009 at Wild Project. In 2008, two of his plays were premiered: Southern Promises, at Performance Space 122 in September; and Dawn, at The Flea Theater in November. Both were listed among the Best Performances of Stage and Screen for 2008 in The New Yorker. His play entitled Purity was produced at Performance Space 122 in January 2007, and Strom Thurmond Is Not A Racist and Cleansed were produced on a double bill at The Brick Theatre in February of that year. Strom was also produced in Los Angeles in the spring of 2008.
Bradshaw received his M.F.A. from, and is an Assistant Professor, at Medgar Evers College. He has been featured as one of Time Out New York's ten playwrights to watch and Best Provocative Playwright by the Village Voice. Currently he is a Fellow at The Lark Play Development Center as well as the 2008/2009 Streslin Fellow at Soho Rep, where he has been working on his adaptation of the book of Job, which was workshopped at Stanford and Berkeley Rep in spring 2009. He was a Fellow at New York Theater Workshop in 2006/07 and is now a Usual Suspect.
Bradshaw is currently under commission from Goodman Theater, The Flea Theater, Theater Bielefeld (Germany), and Partial Comfort Productions. During his Guggenheim Fellowship term, he will be working in England and Germany on his new play about Queen Charlotte.
Photo courtesy of Goodman Theatre.
By Sarah Ruhl
March and April 2011
In the Albert Theatre
A World Premiere Goodman Theatre commission
A native of the Chicago area and recent winner of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, playwright Sarah Ruhl is "among the most acclaimed and accomplished young playwrights on the contemporary scene" (The New York Times). A 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Clean House (seen at the Goodman in the 2005/2006 season), which also won the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Ruhl's other plays include Eurydice, Dead Man's Cell Phone, Melancholy Play, Late: a cowboy song, Orlando, Demeter in the City (NAACP image award nomination). Her plays have been performed at Lincoln Center Theater, Second Stage, Yale Repertory Theatre, Arena Stage, Woolly Mammoth, Berkeley Repertory Theater, the Wilma, Cornerstone Theater, Madison Repertory Theater, Clubbed Thumb, and the Piven Theatre Workshop, among other theaters across the country. Her plays have been produced internationally in London, Canada, Germany, Latvia and Poland. She is the recipient of the Helen Merrill Award, the Whiting Writers' Award and is a proud member of New Dramatists and 13P.
SarahRuhl_01: Courtesy of Goodman Theatre
SarahRuhl_02: Peter Wynn Thompson