WELLFLEET, MASS: Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (WHAT) has announced its 2017 season.
The season will open with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (March 23-April 9), featuring a cast of five actors. The production is presented in association with Psittacus Productions and Lincoln Center Education.
In May, WHAT will present Sex with Strangers by Laura Eason (May 18-June 10), about an affair between a fortysomething novelist and a twentysomething blogger.
Next will be Painting Churches by Tina Howe (June 15-July 9). Gardner and Fanny Church have asked their daughter Mags, a painter, to come home and help them move. Mags decides she wants to paint her parents’ portrait.
During the summer, WHAT will present the world premiere of The Empaths by John Marcus and Rebecca Bazell (July 20-Aug. 19). The comedy is about a new couple who is having their first six dates in couples counseling.
After that will be Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman (Aug. 24-Sept. 24). The play is set in a country that’s emerging from a dictatorship, and about Paulina, who interrogates a man whom she believes tortured her while she was in prison.
The season will close on a scary note, with Jeffrey Hatcher’s The Turn of the Screw, based on the novel by Henry James (Oct. 19-Nov. 5), about a governess who believes she is seeing ghosts in her new home.
In addition to the mainstage season, WHAT will present special events. In the summer, the company will host the a reading of 24 Gun Control Plays, including works by Elaine Avila, Neil Blackadder, Kyle Bostian, Alex Bround, Gab Cody, Tameka Cage Conley, Cecilia Copeland, Amina Henry, Yvette Heylinger, Zac Kline, Neil Labute, Jennifer Maisel, Lynn Manning, Oliver Mayer, Chiori Miyagawa, Winter Miller, Matthew Paul Olmos, Ian Rowlands, August Schulenburg, Saviana Stanescu, Caridad Svich, Chris Weikel, Gary Winter, and Laura Zann.
The theatre will also host the return of Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne (July 13-16), where one man portrays the nine residents of a Jersey shore town. Then, in the fall, Randy Noojin will perform his one-man play Seeger (Oct. 12-16), about folksinger/activist Pete Seeger, who advocated for free speech in Cuba.
Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater is entering its 33rd year in providing professional theatre to residents of the Cape.
