Join us for a Season of Great Summer Theatre including Wheel of Fortune’s Pat Sajak returning to star as “The Man in the Chair” in the marvelous Broadway musical The Drowsy Chaperone and Barrett Foa, who stars as Eric Beale in the hit TV series NCIS: Los Angeles, as Harold Hill in The Music Man. The best way to ensure great seats is to subscribe!
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Once again, we are looking forward to working with the Drama department’s divisions of Costuming Design and Production Design.  Additionally, we are excited to welcome the addition of UConn’s own Symphony Orchestra to expand our collaborating efforts.

The allegorical and fantasy elements prevalent in the libretto lend itself to telling the story from many different angles.  There is seldom found the same concept and staging between any two productions.  It is this versatility that makes Die Zauberflöte such a standard in the operatic repertoire.  This year, we are influenced by the beauty and richness of the Hindu culture and present our production embracing Indian aestheticism.  Die Zauberflöte contains some of Mozart’s most charming and memorable musical moments.  The accessibility of the score, the number of roles available, and the timeless and challenging melodies of Mozart make the work a favorite of academic venues and perfect for all ages.

For tickets call 860-486-2113 Mon. – Fri between noon – 5 p.m..

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!” As I write this note our Presidential election campaign is heating up 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.

O Beautiful is a plea for civil discourse and empathy by one of our most important contemporary writers. Set in an average American suburb, the play asks, through sharp humor and electrifying theatrical invention, what happens to our teenagers as they try to find their way in a world defined by polarizing rhetoric and vitriol? O Beautiful is controversial, challenging, and human. In the end Rebeck finds our common values through our best hopes and aspirations. Veteran playwright and director Joseph Hanreddy will helm this regional premiere. CRT audiences loved Hanreddy’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in 2011.

Professor Michael Bradford will direct Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel about a modest African American seamstress who fashions delicate undergarments for women across social strata in the New York City of 1905. Intimate Apparel explores the common thread of love and aspiration across racial, social, and cultural divides.

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, a long divide between the Montague and Capulet families causes tragic results. Over the centuries this feud has been re-imagined by each generation to reflect the racial, cultural, familial and ethnic separations, propagated by the elders that define the times. I will direct this classical contribution to our season-long conversation about finding genuine connection in a polarized world.

Romantic polarization is the engine of screwball comedy and playwright John Guare brings one of the great comic films to the stage with his new adaption of Howard Hawk’s His Girl Friday. Guare’s adaption sets this comic war of wills against the backdrop of a United States about to go to war, which adds gravitas to the prickliest, and funniest, romance since Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedict.

Professor Kristen Wold will direct Simon Stephens’ Punk Rock. Punk Rock makes a nod to familiar territory covered in the much-appreciated History Boys, Catcher in the Rye, even TV’s Skins, but Stephens manages to capture something uniquely of this moment in time. These current teens, vicious with laughter and frustrated in everyday hope, internalize the pressures they are forced to endure and the result is shocking, devoid of nostalgia, and resonant with warning.

We will close our season full of nostalgia and hope, with the deliriously tuneful dance musical Hairspray, which takes on racial segregation, bullying, and social prejudice without missing a step or hitting a sour note. Paul Mullins, director of last season’s hit premiere I’m Connecticut, will helm this irresistible Broadway musical. As The New York Times said, “If life were everything it should be, it would be more like Hairspray.”

Near the end of O Beautiful at a particularly heated town meeting, Jesus, a member of the community, quiets the chaos with a loud whistle and a prayer. He says,

Please let us remember we are a community of beings who share this earth with each other. Let us listen to each other with grace and humility. Amen.

This season we bring you six voices from our greater artistic community – each distinct, each challenging, and each engaging. I look forward to the conversation, the listening, and, of course, the laughter.

Vincent J. Cardinal
Artistic Director
Head, Dept. of Dramatic Arts