Weekly Read - A Bright New Boise by Samuel D. Hunter

Your weekly read this week is A Bright New Boise by Samuel D. Hunter.

Winner! 2011 Obie Award for PlaywritingNominated for the 2011 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play

"While the play delves into big existential questions about religion and the search for meaning, Hunter's story is heartbreaking and humorous. The play takes place in employee break room of a Hobby Lobby, a fictionalized big-box crafts store in Boise, Idaho. The ensemble of employees is a comedic set of misfits, each struggling to find their way. The play's central character, Will, is a piously religious man who arrives at the Hobby Lobby after fleeing his small hometown where his "end of days" church was embroiled in a scandal. He reconciles the disappointing world around him with his belief in the coming rapture."
                                          -PBS ARTBEAT

"Nothing is pretty about A Bright New Boise, a play that marches in the footsteps of Sam Shepard’s acid comedies, set in the weird American West...Hunter has such highly sensitive antennae for the look and rhythm of mundane places that A Bright New Boise develops an authentic texture, separate from other pieces in its genre." 
                                                                                               - The Washington Post 

PHOTOS from previous productions

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
Washington D.C.

The Wild Project Theatre
NYC

Playwright Samuel D. Hunter

Private Lives Revival on Broadway!

PRIVATE LIVES revival on Broadway!

I love and hate when I come across my favorite shows being put up on Broadway.  It tickles me to see pics of the production, and pains me to know I can't go see it.  One day New York, I know I will be engrossed in your theater world.  But for know I can only share with you my findings and keep us all in the loop of what creations come.  Which leads us to one of my all time favorites, Private Lives by Noel Coward.  I have been dreaming of the day I get to do this show with a competent director.  I did a scene from this, playing
Sybil, when I was at the Academy and loved the comedy of manners style and charm of 1930.  Coward's understanding of human emotions allows this tale to never tire.

This Broadway revival boast leading lady Kim Cattrall (fellow AADA alumni)  and Paul Gross as Amanda and her ex-husband, Elyot.  Both honeymooning in the South of France with new spouses, find themselves sharing adjoining hotel balconies, where they begin to rekindle old feelings.

Directed by Sir Richard Eyre, best known for directing amazing films like Notes on a Scandal, Stage Beauty and Iris which he also wrote, as well as numerous classics stage productions throughout London. This revival started it's run in London's Vaudeville Theatre in 2010 with Kim continuing the role in Toronto and now on Broadway.

Opening November 17 at the Music Box Theatre, with Simon Paisley Day as Victor and Anna Madeley as Sybil.

 

Gertrude Lawrence & Noel Coward in the original play 1930 as Elyot and Amanda

Mr. Coward himself