Category Archives: Drama

It’s a Wonderful Life – The Radio Play at Laurel Mill Playhouse, Dec 13, 2013 – Jan 4, 2014

It’s a Wonderful Life – The Radio Play at Laurel Mill Playhouse, Dec 13, 2013 – Jan 4, 2014

It’s a Wonderful Life – The Radio Play

by Philip Grecian

Directed by Michael Hartsfield

Produced by Maureen Rogers

Location: Laurel Mill Playhouse

Friday December 13, 2013 through Saturday January 4, 2014

Performances run weekends from Friday December 13, 2013 through Saturday January 4, 2014 with Friday and Saturday evening performances at 8 p.m.

Tickets are $15 for general admission. Admission for students (18 and under), active duty military and seniors (65 and over) is $12. For reservations, please call 301-617-9906 and press 2. For further information visit the web site at http://www.laurelmillplayhouse.org or contact Maureen Rogers at maureencrogers@gmail.com or 301-452-2557.

Description: It’s a Wonderful Life is the story of George Bailey, the unsung, beloved hero of Bedford Falls. As a child, George risked his own life to save his brother from drowning. As he grew older, his countless small deeds mattered very much in the lives of the Bedford Falls townspeople. George prepares to leave town and go to college to fulfill his dream of building skyscrapers. However, when his father, the president of the small Bailey Building and Loan Company, dies, George postpones his dreams, manages the family company, and finds happiness in his marriage to Mary Hatch. When Uncle Billy accidentally misplaces company funds, George faces financial ruin and almost certain imprisonment. Seeing no way out, he runs to the bridge over the river, prepared to plunge to his death. Enter Clarence, George’s lovable, bumbling guardian angel, who has come to Bedford Falls to prove to George that his life is worth living and to earn wings for himself. He grants George one wish: to see what the world would be like if he had never been born. Suddenly Bedford Falls is a very unpleasant place: the bustling small town main street is lined with pool halls and saloons; none of his friends or family recognize him, not even his beloved wife, Mary, who, in this world without him, is a prim spinster. Pursued by police, George returns to the bridge and begs to have his life back. Clarence grants it and George runs home to find his children, his wife, and a town that rallies to support him. Finally, George comes to realize…it truly is a wonderful life.

Produced by special arrangement with Dramatic Publishing.

Active Cultures Theatre presents High Tea Stories at CPAE, Dec 13

Active Cultures Theatre presents High Tea Stories at CPAE, Dec 13

Location: College Park Arts Exchange
Old Parish House, 4711 Knox Road, College Park MD

Friday, December 13, 2013 at 7:30pm

Active Cultures Theatre presents a dramatic reading of a play by a local playwright.

High Tea Stories
by Laura Zam,
directed by Mary Resing,
performed by Laura Zam and Hilary Kacser.

Friday, Dec 13, 7:30 pm, Old Parish House, 4711 Knox Road (corner of Knox and Dartmouth, one block from College Park Metro).

Commissioned by The Associated of Baltimore and produced by Active Cultures.

Description: When Chana, a character from the Book of Samuel, faces conflict and self-doubt, she turns to a group of modern day women in Baltimore for help. A modern parable, High Tea Stories celebrates the role of authenticity, community and generosity in our lives.

Please support our free events with your donation at the door.

Lysistrata at Bowie State University, Nov 14-17

Lysistrata at Bowie State University, Nov 14-17

BSU Theater presents Lysistrata by Aristophanes

Description: Directed by Professor Bob Bartlett, “Lysistrata” is an anti-war comedy where wives organize and go on strike against their husbands to come to a mutual agreement.

Dates: November 14 & 15 at 11am, November 14, 15 and 16 at 7:30pm, November 17 at 2:30pm.

Location: Main Stage, Fine and Performing Arts Center, Bowie State University.

Cost: $3 for children; $5 for BSU faculty, staff, students and senior citizens; $10 general admission

Box office opens 1 hour before performances. Call 301-860-3717 for ticket information.

The Cover of Life by the Bowie Community Theatre at the Bowie Playhouse, Nov 8-24

The Cover of Life by the Bowie Community Theatre at the Bowie Playhouse, Nov 8-24

By R. T. Robinson

Directed by Bob Sams

By the Bowie Community Theatre at the Bowie Playhouse

Produced by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.

Performances

Week 1: November 8th and 9th, 2013 at 8 pm, November 10th at 2 pm
Week 2: November 15th and 16th at 8 pm, November 17th at 2 pm
Week 3: November 22nd and 23rd at 8 pm, November 24th at 2pm

Ticket Prices

Adults – $20.00
Seniors/Students – $15.00

Group Rates(10 or more people)
Adults – $15.00
Seniors/Students – $10.00

PARENTAL ADVISORY: Adult language and themes.

Buy your tickets now!

Synopsis

Henry Luce needs a cover story for Life Magazine, and he’s found it in Tood, Weetsie and Sybill Cliffert. Intrigued by these three young Louisiana housewives, keeping the home fires burning for their husbands – three brothers who are all off at war – he sends Kate Miller to write his prize story. Fresh off assignment in Europe, Kate resents being assigned to a fluff piece about military wives, but she hasn’t landed a cover story yet and ambition is riding her hard. A week with the Clifferts rocks the foundations of Kate’s world and all four women walk away changed – for Life.

No. 731 Degraw-street, Brooklyn, or Emily Dickinson’s Sister at the Venus Theatre Play Shack, Nov 7-Dec 1

No. 731 Degraw-street, Brooklyn, or Emily Dickinson’s Sister at the Venus Theatre Play Shack, Nov 7-Dec 1

by Claudia Barnett

November 7 to December 1

Location: Venus Theatre Play Shack.

Thursday, November 7 at 8:00pm
Friday, November 8 at 8:00pm
Saturday, November 9 at 3:00pm and 8:00pm
Sunday, November 10 at 3:00pm
Thursday, November 14 at 8:00pm
Friday, November 15 at 8:00pm
Saturday, November 16 at 3:00pm and 8:00pm
Sunday, November 17 at 3:00pm
Thursday, November 21 at 8:00pm
Friday, November 22 at 8:00pm
Saturday, November 23 at 3:00pm and 8:00pm
Sunday, November 24 at 3:00pm
Saturday, November 30 at 3:00pm and 8:00pm
Sunday, December 1 at 3:00pm

Description: Kate Stoddard murdered Charles Goodrich in 1873–after he told her they weren’t really married and had her evicted from his Brooklyn brownstone in a blizzard. Kate’s struggles to maintain her sanity and her identity, both before and after she shot her one true love three times in the head, are the subject of this play, which moves backwards and forwards through time and invokes a poetry of madness.

A note on the title: Virginia Woolf imagined a sister for Shakespeare, an artist chastened for her gender and derided for her vision. Unable to act or write, she “killed herself one winter’s night and lies buried at some cross-roads.” Claudia Barnett imagines a similarly metaphorical sister for Emily Dickinson. Kate Stoddard was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1847, about a hundred miles from the reclusive Amherst poet. Inspired by Woolf’s musings, Dickinson’s poetry, and Stoddard’s tragic life, No. 731 Degraw-street, Brooklyn, or Emily Dickinson’s Sister asks: How might the same impulse lead one woman to poetry and another to murder?

Claudia Barnett teaches playwriting at Middle Tennessee State University. She has developed two previous scripts, Feather and Another Manhattan, with Venus Theatre. She wrote No. 731 Degraw-street, Brooklyn, or Emily Dickinson’s Sister as playwright-in-residence at Tennessee Repertory Theatre, and she wrote Witches Vanish as resident playwright at Stage Left Theatre. Her book I Love You Terribly: Six Plays is published by Carnegie Mellon (2012).

“When … one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs … I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Brontë who dashed her brains out on the moor …”

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“She had cultivated a romantic disposition by a liberal perusal of story papers and novels, and it is more than likely that cheap literature is the prime cause of all her woes and misfortunes.”

The Goodrich Horror:
Being the full confession of Kate Stoddart, or Lizzie King
Thanks for letting the girl talk.

PARENTAL ADVISORY: Ages 16+ – 731 covers rich literary territory with an amazing physical element that has a kind of violence always brewing just under the surface.

Tickets: General Admission $20. Purchase tickets on-line.

Suggested meal before the show: Fajita, or anything that sizzles on a hot pan.
Tampico Tex-Mex Restaurant
42 Washington Blvd
Laurel, MD 20707
301.490.5300