WILMINGTON, DEL.: Delaware Theatre Company has announced a diverse 2015-16 season, including area premieres and new plays, many with a musical score or theme.
“Our 37th season of professional artistic programming is the most ambitious upon which Delaware Theatre Company has ever embarked,” said Bud Martin, the theatre’s executive director, in a statement.
First up is the Delaware premiere of Maurice Hines Is Tappin’ Thru Life (Sept. 16-Oct. 4), written and performed by Hines and directed by Jeff Calhoun. In the show Hines pays tribute to his brother, Gregory Hines, and the singers who have inspired his work, including Frank Sinatra and Lena Home, and uses song and dance to bring the history of American tap to life.
Next is Play the Assassin (Oct. 21-Nov 8) by David Robson, a new play about the violence football subjects its players to, and the true story of an NFL star’s career-ending injury at the hands of a player nicknamed “the Assassin.”
The following show is Diner (Dec. 2-27) by Barry Levinson and nine-time Grammy Award winner Sheryl Crow. Kathleen Marshall will direct and choreograph this musical staging of Levinson’s 1982 movie about burgeoning adulthood and friendship. The show premiered with a nine-week run at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Va.
DTC will join forces with George Street Playhouse to present Nureyev’s Eyes (March 2-20, 2016) by David Rush. The play imagines a meeting between the legendary ballet dancer and Jamie Wyeth, an American painter, as Wyeth does a series of studies and paintings of the Russian dancer. The play, written with the permission and support of Wyeth, will be directed by Michael Mastro.
Closing the season will be The Explorer’s Club (April 27-May 15, 2016) by Nell Benjamin, who wrote the lyrics for DTC’s recent production of Because of Winn-Dixie. Set in London in 1879, the play is a farce about the title organization whose ranks are ruffled by the proposal to admit a woman to the society.
The company will also give a special presentation of Tina Packer’s Women of Will, Jan. 29-31, 2016. Packer, a Shakespearean actor and dramaturg, takes a deeper look at the famous female characters from the Bard’s canon.
