Madison New Play Festival

Madison Repertory Theatre is proud to present the 5th Madison New Play Festival, our annual opportunity to savor the developing work of some of the finest playwrights in America and beyond.  Artistic Director Richard Corley, who founded the Festival during his first season in Madison, described it in this way: “Each year we take a couple of weeks off from producing plays to do Research and Development.  We find writers new to us or re-visit the work of old friends, and give them time to work with directors and actors on a work-in-progress.  Then our audience has the exciting opportunity to see this fresh work in staged readings, and talk directly to the playwright.  The Madison New Play Festival has truly become one of the highlights of our year.”

Produced by Madison Repertory Theatre at The Playhouse, Overture Center for the Arts

Performances: October 20-27, 2007

Tickets & Schedule
Single tickets to each reading are $15, passes to all five readings are $50 for subscribers, and $70 for non-subscribers. Single tickets may be purchased, in-person, at the Overture Center Box Office, 201 State Street, Madison; by calling (608) 258-4141; or online at www.overturecenter.com. Festival Passes may be purchased at the Madison Repertory Theatre administrative offices, by calling Jeremy at 608-256-0029 x23. The Festival will run from October 20th through October 27th in The Playhouse at the Overture Center for the Arts. Readings are at 2pm & 7pm Saturdays and 2pm on Sunday.

Call 608-256-0029 x23 for reservations or more information.

The five plays to be presented in this year’s festival are:

Accent Adiós (Wisconsin Wrights Festival selection)
By Kurt McGinnis Brown
Directed by Trevin Gay
Saturday, October 20th at 2pm, The Playhouse

Retired from professional baseball at age 30, Boo steps out of a treatment center loaded with the pills that miraculously cured him. But did they change his self-destructive behavior?  Boo immediately becomes entangled with two quirky and needy characters that endanger his recovery and challenge his sense of identity.  Accent Adios was recently seen at UW-Madison as part of Wisconsin Wrights (under the title Recovering the Real Me), a collaboration between UW-Madison Continuing Studies in Theatre, University Theatre and Madison Repertory Theatre. 

The Journey to Sakhalin
By Thomas Gibbons
Directed by B.J. Jones
Saturday, October 20th at 7pm, The Playhouse

How much responsibility does a society carry for cruelty committed in its name? 

In the spring of 1890, at the height of his fame, Anton Chekhov embarked on a dangerous and exhausting journey across the breadth of Russia to Siberia. During the three months he spent at the penal colony of Sakhalin, Chekhov traveled to every prison and settlement and visited every exile’s hut, keeping detailed notes of all he saw and charting the moral corruption engendered by unlimited power over the helpless. The Journey to Sakhalin is by Thomas Gibbons, whose play Permanent Collection is part of our mainstage season.

The Curious Walk of the Salamander
By Kirsten Greenidge
Directed by Jennifer Uphoff Gray
Sunday, October 21st at 2pm, The Playhouse

Henry’s refusal to talk about her family’s past makes her sessions with her therapist far less than productive.  She stalls, she cajoles and when her therapist resolutely refuses to treat her anymore, Henry embarks on a campaign to reverse that decision in endearingly disturbing ways. The Curious Walk of the Salamander examines the forces that hold a family together, and drive it apart.

Interpreting William
By James Still
Directed by Norma Saldivar
Saturday, October 27th at 2pm, The Playhouse

Interpreting William is the story of a history professor’s struggle to finish a biography about 19th Century frontiersman William Conner. In his feverish obsession, the writer begins to conflate his own life with that of his subject... simultaneously experiencing the past and present, and discovering how history can be emotional, subjective, personal...and theatrical.

The Almond and the Seahorse
By Kaite O’Reilly
Directed by Sandy Shinner
Saturday, October 27th at 7pm, The Playhouse

“The last time I saw Gwennie was in our car eighteen years ago. She was smiling at me…That was the second before another car cannoned into us, sending her through the windshield. That’s our life, forever crashing through the windshield.” The Almond and the Seahorse are folk terms for the parts of the brain responsible for memory, emotion and personality traits. British writer Kaite O’Reilly tells the story of five people searching for a way to survive the effects of brain trauma and change.