ALLEY THEATRE

www.alleytheatre.org

Gregory Boyd, Artistic Director

Dean R. Gladden, Managing Director
Box Office Phone 713-220-5700

THE 2015 - 2016 SEASON
 

THE ALLEY THEATRE 2015 - 2016 SEASON

Alley Theatre, with financial support from its Extended Engagement Capital Campaign, completed renovations on its downtown building.  The grand opening of the renovated Alley Theatre is scheduled for Fall 2015. 

“And it is equally exciting to add to our season the ‘spellbinding,’ ‘ripped from the headlines,’ Grounded, which joins the season in a tour de force production directed by Jackson Gay (the Alley’s Intelligence-Slave, Other Desert Cities and August: Osage County)” said Artistic Director Gregory Boyd. “In Grounded, an ace fighter pilot reassigned to a remote-controlled drone faces 12-hour shifts hunting targets from her Air Force trailer followed by 12 hours in the suburbs with her family in this award-winning new play about the complicated consequences of waging war without leaving home. It’s an exceptional new play by George Brant, making his Alley debut. Both these productions add exciting theatricality to a season full of great writers, and all of us are looking forward to sharing this unparalleled variety with our audiences."

Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana, directed by Michael Wilson (Alley’s The Old Friends, Dividing the Estate), will run on the Alley Theatre’s Hubbard Stage in March, 2016. The Night of the Iguana is the story of Rev. Lawrence Shannon, a defrocked Episcopalian priest, and his fight to keep his personal demons at bay. He leads a bus-load of middle-aged church ladies on a tour of the Mexican coast and comes to terms with the failure haunting his life. The New York Times called it “one of the great plays by Tennessee Williams that mapped the terrible limbo of human loneliness.” Yet it is still at its heart about accepting goodness and beauty where you find them. The Night of the Iguana is the first Alley production of a Tennessee Williams play since the thrilling collaboration with the National Theatre on Williams’ Not About Nightingales – which moved to Broadway following its triumphant sold-out Alley run in 1998.
Previews start March 4, opens March 9, and runs through April 3, 2016.
Contains mature themes.

On the Neuhaus Stage also in March is George Brant’s Grounded. In the Nevada desert, a now pregnant ace F-16 fighter pilot has been reassigned to a new position, flying a remote-controlled drone from an Air Force trailer. Her 12-hour shifts hunting terrorist targets in the Middle East are followed by 12 hours at home, struggling as a wife and mother in suburban Las Vegas. The mounting pressure to track a high-profile target blurs the boundaries between the desert she lives in and the one she patrols, half a world away. “Top Notch – a chilling portrait of future war” – New York Magazine. “A stratospheric level of theatrical intensity” – The Telegraph.
Previews start March 25, opens March 30, and runs through April 17, 2016.
Recommended for mature audiences.

One Man, Two Guvnors begins the Alley Theatre’s 2015-2016 season on October 2, 2015. Previously announced plays in the 2015-2016 season also include The Other Place, All The Way, Travesties, The Nether and Born Yesterday. Please note changes in the previously announced dates for the Alley Theatre’s production of Travesties.

In October, the Alley Theatre’s season begins with Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors, a unique laugh-out-loud mix of satire, songs, and stupendous physical comedy. In the heart of 1960’s England, charming and doltish Francis, fired from his pop band, unexpectedly finds himself with two new jobs and two new bosses, who are connected to each other in wildly improbable ways. Mistaken identities, outrageous farce, love triangles and inspired lunacy are the result. Called “The funniest show in the western world,” by the Daily Mail, and described by the Daily Telegraph as “Comic perfection.”
Previews start October 2, opens October 7, and runs through November 1, 2015
Contains adult language and sexual situations.

On the Neuhaus Stage in the fall is Sharr White’s The Other Place. Juliana Smithton is a neurologist whose research leads to a potential breakthrough for a new Alzheimer treatment. Just as it does, her life takes a disorienting turn. During a lecture to colleagues, she enters into a mystery that blurs fact with fiction, the past with the present, until the elusive truth is unraveled in a windswept cottage on the shores of Cape Cod, “the other place.” Variety says “a haunting drama, so cleverly constructed that the nature and depth of the problem isn’t revealed until the last shattering scene.”
Previews start October 23, opens October 28, and runs through November 15, 2015.
Contains adult language and mature themes.

On the Hubbard Stage in January is the winner of the 2014 Tony Award, All The Way, by Robert Schenkkan. The Alley’s Texas-sized production of a gripping new play about LBJ features a cast combining artists from the Alley, with members of the Dallas Theater Center portraying some of history’s most dynamic figures and the 36th President of the United States himself, Lyndon Baines Johnson. 1964: A pivotal year in American history – a landmark civil rights bill passed, involvement in Vietnam deepening, and one man at the center of it all, determined to lift the country out of the ashes and rebuild it into The Great Society – by any means necessary.
Previews start January 29, opens February 3, and runs through February 21, 2016.
Contains adult language.

In April on the Hubbard Stage is Travesties, a brilliantly funny, pyrotechnical tour-de-force. A freewheeling, invigorating whirligig of art, revolution, sex and song-and dance by four-time Tony Award winner Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love, the Alley’s Rock ‘n’ Roll, Hapgood, The Real Thing), Travesties centers around the fictional meeting of three extraordinary figures in Zurich in 1917: the novelist James Joyce, the Dadaist performance artist Tristan Tzara and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The two revolutionary artists and the political Revolutionary collide inside the faulty memory of one of Stoppard’s greatest comic creations, a minor official named Henry Carr, whose exuberant imagination rewrites history in very surprising ways.
Previews start April 22, opens April 27, and runs through May 15, 2016.*
Suitable for mature audiences. Striptease. Nudity. Pie-fights.
*Please note changes from previously announced dates

On the Neuhaus stage in May is Jennifer Haley’s The Nether, winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Set in the year 2050, The Nether is an intricate sci-fi crime drama that tells the story of a new virtual digital world which provides total sensory immersion. Log in, choose an identity, and indulge your every whim, with no consequences in the “real” world. Or so it seems. A female detective begins an investigation to determine if there is a point at which thought or intention may actually constitute a crime within, and outside of, this new virtual realm. The Nether is “Mind-bending… like a hall of mirrors...” “CSI SVU meets Ray Bradbury.”
Previews start May 6, opens May 11, and runs through May 29, 2016.
Sexual content and language.

The finale to the season is Born Yesterday on the Hubbard Stage, the great American comedy about politics and the power of female persuasion. Born Yesterday tells the story of a hot-tempered and corrupt tycoon and a not-so-dumb blonde out to “capitalize” on everything Washington has to offer. This ex-showgirl gets an extreme makeover from a political reporter hired by her boyfriend and receives more than a history lesson. Born Yesterday is a delicious screwball classic.
Previews start June 3, opens June 8, and runs through July 3, 2016.
Suitable for general audiences.

The Alley’s 2015-2016 subscription season includes 8 plays, plus traditional holiday special A Christmas Carol – A Ghost Story of Christmas and, returning to the Neuhaus Stage for a limited run, The Santaland Diaries.

ABOUT THE ALLEY THEATRE
The Alley Theatre produces 400 performances annually, more than all other performing arts organizations in the Theater District combined.  The Alley has attracted over 8 million people to Houston’s Theater District since 1968 and has a $34.5 million annual economic impact on the City of Houston (“Arts & Economic Prosperity III: The Economic Impact of Nonprofit Arts & Culture Organizations and their Audiences in the City of Houston,” Americans for the Arts, 2005.)

The Alley Theatre, one of America’s leading not-for-profit theatres, is a nationally recognized performing arts company focused on collaborating with resident actors, visiting artists, directors, designers, dramaturgs, and authors to cultivate the new voices, new work, and new artists of the American theatre.  A staff of 177 is under the direction of Artistic Director Gregory Boyd and Managing Director Dean R. Gladden. The Alley has also brought its productions to 40 American cities, and to Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg and New York’s Lincoln Center, as well as to major European festivals (including two in one season at the Venice Biennale) and Broadway. A recipient of the Special Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, the Alley creates a wide-ranging repertoire and innovative productions of classics, neglected modern plays, and premieres, as well as new works developed through the Alley’s new play initiative. For more information go to alleytheatre.org.

TICKET AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
Season tickets are on sale now; tickets to individual productions go on sale August 2015. Packages range from $129 - $614. A Christmas Carol and The Santaland Diaries are available with a season package purchase prior to the general public. Season tickets can be ordered online (alleytheatre.org) or by phone (713.220.5700). Groups of 10 or more can receive special concierge services and select discounts by calling 713.220.5700 and asking for the group sales department.  

Projects at the Alley Theatre are funded in part by a grant from the City of Houston and the Texas Commission on the Arts. The Alley Theatre is supported by the 2015-2016 season sponsor United Airlines, the official airline of the Alley Theatre.

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2015-2016 SEASON SCHEDULE

ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS    
By Richard Bean

October 7 - November 1, 2015
Based on Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni
Songs by Grant Olding
Directed by Gregory Boyd
Hubbard Theatre
Previews start October 2, Opens October 7, Through November 1, 2015

THE OTHER PLACE
By Sharr White

October 28 - November 15, 2015
Neuhaus Theatre
Previews start October 23, Opens October 28, Through November 15, 2015

ALL THE WAY
By Robert Schenkkan

February 3 - February 21, 2016
Directed by Kevin Moriarty
A co-production with Dallas Theater Center Hubbard Theatre
Previews start January 29, Opens February 3, Through February 21, 2016

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
By Mark Brown

Directed by Mark Shanahan

March 9 - April 3, 2016
Hubbard Theatre
Previews start March 4, opens March 9, and runs through April 3, 2016

GROUNDED
By George Brant
Directed by Jackson Gay

March 30 - April 17, 2016
Neuhaus Theatre
Previews start March 25, opens March 30, and runs through April 17, 2016

THE CHRISTIANS
By Lucas Hnath
Directed by Gregory Boyd

April 27 - May 15, 2016

Hubbard Theatre
Previews start April 22, opens April 27, and runs through May 15, 2016*
*Please note changes from previously announced dates

THE NETHER
By Jennifer Haley

May 11 - May 29, 2016
Neuhaus Theatre
Previews start May 6, Opens May 11, Through May 29, 2016

BORN YESTERDAY
By Garson Kanin

June 8 - July 3, 2016
Hubbard Theatre
Previews start June 3, Opens June 8, Through July 3, 2016

Add-ons to Subscription Package:

A CHRISTMAS CAROL – A GHOST STORY OF CHRISTMAS
By Charles Dickens
Adapted and Originally Directed by Michael Wilson
Directed by James Black

November 20 - December 28, 2015
Hubbard Theatre
Previews start November 20, Opens November 22, Through December 28, 2015