LOS ANGELES: L.A. Theatre Works (LATW) has announced its 2018-19 season, featuring seven plays that will each be recorded in front of a live audience at UCLA’s James Bridges Theater for future broadcast.
The season will kick off with a national tour of Steel Magnolis (Oct. 12-March 8, 2019), by Robert Harling, about a group of women who gather together in a Louisiana beauty salon during times of joy and strife. The cast will include Shannon Holt, Elisa Bocanegra, Monica McSwain, Inger Tudor, Cerris Morgan-Moyer, and Patti Yasutake. The radio theatre production will travel to 29 venues throughout the tour.
Following will be The Little Foxes (Oct. 19-21), by Lillian Hellman, about a Southern family in the early 20th-century striving to maintain their prominence and authority in changing times. Rosalind Ayres will direct.
Next up will be Philip Kan Gotanda’s Sisters Matsumoto (Nov. 16-18), about the struggles three Japanese American sisters face when they return to their family farm after spending years in an internment camp.
Following will be The Good Negro (Jan. 25-27, 2019), by Tracey Scott Wilson, about a Civil Rights leader in Alabama fighting for a woman who was arrested for resisting segregation.
The season will continue with the world premiere of Kate McAll’s A Room With a View (March 1-3). The play, adapted from the novel by E.M. Forster, about a couple who meet each other in Florence while on holiday.
Next will be Oslo (April 12-14), by J.T. Rogers, about the individuals behind the historic 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. Brian Kite will direct.
Following will be DIE MOMMIE DIE (May 17-19), by Charles Busch, a noir comedy about a woman plotting to kill her husband and the chaos that ensues when their children learn about the plan. Busch will star and Carl Andress will direct.
Next up will be Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (June 28-30, 2019), translated by Doug Hughes, about a woman who feels trapped in her marriage to an academic. Debbie Devine will direct.
LATW, founded in 1984, aims to make theatre widely accessible and affordable. They record their plays in front of a live audience, and the recordings are syndicated weekly on public radio stations across the U.S. and heard daily in China and worldwide on the Radio Beijing Network. The recordings can also be downloaded as a podcast via iTunes and can be streamed at www.latw.org.
