HOUSTON: Alley Theatre has announced six of the eight shows in its 2015–16 season, the inaugural season in its newly renovated two-house theatre. The roster includes Richard Bean, Sharr White, Tom Stoppart and Jennifer Haley.
“The new Alley season in the superb renovation of the theatre space begins a new era for the Alley Company,” said artistic director Gregory Boyd in a statement. “The roster of plays reflects the most vivid theatrical storytelling anywhere—and we are hugely excited to welcome our family back to its new home, and a new generation of theatregoers to the Alley.”
The season begins with Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors, about a man-servant who tries to keep his two criminal employers from discovering each other (Oct. 2–Nov. 1). Next is Sharr White’s The Other Place (Oct. 23–Nov. 15), a play told from the point of view of a female neurologist going through Alzheimers.
In January, just in time for the 2016 presidential primaries, is Robert Schenkkan’s All the Way, about Lyndon Baines Johnson’s efforts to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Jan. 29–Feb. 21, 2016).
Next will be Travesties by Tom Stoppard (March 18–April 10, 2016), about in imagined meeting between three extraordinary historical figures who lived in Zurich in 1917: novelist James Joyce, Dadaist performance artist Tristan Tzara and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
Alternate reality is the theme in Jennifer Haley’s The Nether (May 13–June 12, 2016). The play, winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, is a crime drama investigating the borders of alternate reality and role-playing.
The season will close with Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin (June 3–July 3, 2016), a screwball comedy about a corrupt tycoon who hires a political reporter to educate his ex-showgirl girlfriend.
Two other titles will be announced at a later date. The season will also contain holiday classics A Christmas Carol—A Ghost Story of Christmas (Nov. 19–Dec. 28) and the more contemporary The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris (Dec. 4–31).
The Alley Theatre was founded in 1968 and has performed a mix of new plays, classics and musicals to an audience of more than 8 million people to date.
