HOUSTON: Mildred’s Umbrella Theater Company has announced its 2018-19 season, featuring two mainstage productions and a series of staged readings at the company’s new home at Chelsea Market Theater.
The season will start with Jen Silverman’s The Moors (Aug. 30-Sept. 15), a black comedy about the lives and works of the Brontë sisters, which follows two spinster sisters who live an isolated existence on the English moors. Artistic director Jennifer Decker will direct.
Next up will be a staged reading of Cicely Hamilton’s Diana of Dobson’s (Nov. 5), presented in collaboration with the Classical Theatre Company, about an Elizabethan woman who comes into an unexpected inheritance and pretends to be a wealthy widow. The reading will be accompanied by a talkback with the artists and the play’s curator, Elizabeth A.M. Keel.
Following will be a series of readings called “Consenting Bodies” (Jan. 9-13, 2019), which will feature three plays all grappling with the question of consent.
The next mainstage production will be Cherise Castro Smith’s The Hunchback of Seville (March 7-23, 2019), about Maxima Terrible Segunda, Queen Isabella’s adopted, disfigured sister, and her rise to power when the queen falls ill. Philip Hays will direct.
The season will conclude with the “Museum of Dysfunction XI: A Festival of New, Short, Weird Plays” (June 16-29).
Also part of the programming will be the launch of a new outreach program, Mildred’s Umbrella Partners for A.R.T. The theatre will collaborate with local women’s service organizations to bring awareness to issues affecting Houston women through improv, writing, and role-play workshops.
Mildred’s Umbrella, founded in 2001, is a female-focused theatre committed to repairing the gender disparity onstage.
