As of this writing, full casting hadn’t yet been announced for the 2012 season, but the big buzz is all about Powerhouse having snagged Chloe Sevigny for the title role in one of the two Mainstage productions, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s Abigail/1702, directed by David Esbjornson.
Indie film queen Sevigny received an Oscar nomination for Boys Don’t Cry and a Golden Globe for her role in the HBO series Big Love. The play is a sort of sequel to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, imagining Abigail Williams trying to put her shameful past behind her, ten years after the Salem witch trials. In The Crucible, Williams is portrayed as the ringleader of the gang of teenage girls who accuse their neighbors of sorcery; she is motivated by a desire for revenge against an older married man who has spurned her after she seduced him. In Abigail/1702 she has moved to Boston and changed her name, but is forced by an encounter with a “mysterious figure” to confront and atone for her past misdeeds.
Abigail/1702 runs June 27 through July 8 in the Hallie Flanagan-Davis Powerhouse Theater. It will be followed from July 18 to 29 by Stephen Belber’s The Power of Duff, directed by Peter DuBois. The play concerns a news anchor in a mid-market backwater who experiences an unexpected spiritual awakening on live TV. Both Mainstage plays – described by Powerhouse as “fully staged and designed works-in-progress” – run Wednesdays through Sundays, and all tickets cost $35.
Another component of this festival that always proves popular is the series of Martel Musical workshops, staged at the Vogelstein Center for Drama & Film. This summer’s musicals will include Itamar Moses and Michael Friedman’s The Fortress of Solitude, directed by Daniel Aukin, based on the novel by Jonathan Lethem, which will run Friday June 29 through Sunday, July 1. Set in the 1970s, Fortress is described as “the story of what would happen if two teens obsessed with comic book heroes actually…maybe… had super-powers.” The second Martel Musical will be Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash’s Murder Ballad, directed by Trip Cullman, running July 27 to 29. It’s a rock musical about a love triangle gone wrong, involving an Upper West Side Mom with a downtown past. Tickets for Martel Musicals, which are concert readings of works-in-progress, cost $30.
Audiences intrigued by the prospect of seeing a theatre piece in its earlier stages of development can do no better than to check out Powerhouse’s semi-staged Inside Look play workshops, performed at the Susan Stein Shiva Theater and costing $25 to get in. This year’s offerings include a tale of a convicted arsonist, Fires Are Confusing by Eva Anderson, Will Berson and Zach Helm, created by Los Angeles company Teatro de Facto and running July 13 to15; and Marcus Gardley’s The House that Will Not Stand, a loose adaptation of García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba set in New Orleans in 1836, running July 20 to 22.
This looks like fun. Where can I get more information? We usually just stay with our local sun valley resort, but wed like to try somewhere new. 🙂