THE CARETAKER
BY HAROLD PINTER, DIRECTED BY STEVE KIDD | SEPT 14 -OCT 7 2017
Disturbed handyman Aston has invited an irascible tramp to stay with him at his brother’s jumbled London flat. At first it seems that the manipulative guest will take advantage of his vulnerable host. But when Aston’s brother Mick arrives, an enigmatic power struggle emerges between the three men that is in equal parts menacing, touching and darkly comic. When it premiered in 1960, The Caretaker changed the face of modern theatre, now Harold Pinter’s groundbreaking classic comes to The Wilbury Group in a new production directed by Steve Kidd and featuring brothers Joe Short and Josh Short in the roles of Aston and Mick, and Richard Donnelly as The Caretaker.
"A powerful drama with a climax that tears at the heart." --NY Times
“Wonderful, beautiful theatre." --NY Daily News
BY HAROLD PINTER, DIRECTED BY STEVE KIDD | SEPT 14 -OCT 7 2017
Disturbed handyman Aston has invited an irascible tramp to stay with him at his brother’s jumbled London flat. At first it seems that the manipulative guest will take advantage of his vulnerable host. But when Aston’s brother Mick arrives, an enigmatic power struggle emerges between the three men that is in equal parts menacing, touching and darkly comic. When it premiered in 1960, The Caretaker changed the face of modern theatre, now Harold Pinter’s groundbreaking classic comes to The Wilbury Group in a new production directed by Steve Kidd and featuring brothers Joe Short and Josh Short in the roles of Aston and Mick, and Richard Donnelly as The Caretaker.
"A powerful drama with a climax that tears at the heart." --NY Times
“Wonderful, beautiful theatre." --NY Daily News
NEW AND DANGEROUS IDEAS
WORLD PREMIERE PLAY BY CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON | NOV 2-19 2017
Inspired by Roger Williams, Bill T. Jones and Everett Stage and School, New and Dangerous Ideas is a multi media experience by acclaimed international poet Christopher Johnson that challenges ideas of criminalizing race and expatriating police with the personal stories of several members of different communities intersected with spoken word poetry, framed in music, dance and video. Written as a response to the national conversation on mass incarceration, police profiling, police violence and race, New and Dangerous Ideas humanizes the statistics by using personal experiences of the writer as well as interviewed members of different communities including Police officers and other members of the criminal justice system. New and Dangerous Ideas was supported by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the support of AS220.
WORLD PREMIERE PLAY BY CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON | NOV 2-19 2017
Inspired by Roger Williams, Bill T. Jones and Everett Stage and School, New and Dangerous Ideas is a multi media experience by acclaimed international poet Christopher Johnson that challenges ideas of criminalizing race and expatriating police with the personal stories of several members of different communities intersected with spoken word poetry, framed in music, dance and video. Written as a response to the national conversation on mass incarceration, police profiling, police violence and race, New and Dangerous Ideas humanizes the statistics by using personal experiences of the writer as well as interviewed members of different communities including Police officers and other members of the criminal justice system. New and Dangerous Ideas was supported by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the support of AS220.
CHURCH
BY YOUNG JEAN LEE, DIRECTED BY BRIEN LANG | DEC 7- 23 2017
Acclaimed playwright and director Young Jean Lee (Straight White Men) transforms a life-long struggle with organized religion into an exuberant church service. Both celebratory and confrontational, Church will test the expectations of religious and non-religious alike—looking deep into why we believe what we believe.
“[Lee’s] slyly subversive drama ambushes its audience with an earnest and surprisingly moving Christian church service that might be the most unlikely provocation produced in years…Ms. Lee has a talent for evocative and sometimes grotesque imagery, and on the attack she is at the height of her powers.” --The New York Times
“Lee’s writing displays her customary surgical precision and menace, a rhetorically supple mix of invective and goofiness. And while she uses parable and drops the odd Biblical phrase…she seems more intent on roasting her audience’s secular complacency than blaspheming or exposing the machinery of belief…”--Time Out NY
BY YOUNG JEAN LEE, DIRECTED BY BRIEN LANG | DEC 7- 23 2017
Acclaimed playwright and director Young Jean Lee (Straight White Men) transforms a life-long struggle with organized religion into an exuberant church service. Both celebratory and confrontational, Church will test the expectations of religious and non-religious alike—looking deep into why we believe what we believe.
“[Lee’s] slyly subversive drama ambushes its audience with an earnest and surprisingly moving Christian church service that might be the most unlikely provocation produced in years…Ms. Lee has a talent for evocative and sometimes grotesque imagery, and on the attack she is at the height of her powers.” --The New York Times
“Lee’s writing displays her customary surgical precision and menace, a rhetorically supple mix of invective and goofiness. And while she uses parable and drops the odd Biblical phrase…she seems more intent on roasting her audience’s secular complacency than blaspheming or exposing the machinery of belief…”--Time Out NY
THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH
BY THORNTON WILDER, DIRECTED BY JOSH SHORT WITH MUSIC BY MATT REQUINTINA | JAN 18 -FEB 4 2018
Completed by the author less than a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, The Skin of Our Teeth broke from established theatrical conventions and walked off with the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Combining farce, burlesque, and satire, and elements of the comic strip, Thornton Wilder depicts an Everyman Family as it narrowly escapes one end-of-the-world disaster after another, from the Ice Age to flood to war.
"Wonderfully wise...A tremendously exciting and profound stage fable.” -- Herald Tribune
"For an American dramatist, all roads lead back to Thornton Wilder...The Skin of Our Teeth was a remarkable gift to an America entrenched in catastrophe, a tribute to the trait of human endurance." -- Paula Vogel, Foreword, THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH
BY THORNTON WILDER, DIRECTED BY JOSH SHORT WITH MUSIC BY MATT REQUINTINA | JAN 18 -FEB 4 2018
Completed by the author less than a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, The Skin of Our Teeth broke from established theatrical conventions and walked off with the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Combining farce, burlesque, and satire, and elements of the comic strip, Thornton Wilder depicts an Everyman Family as it narrowly escapes one end-of-the-world disaster after another, from the Ice Age to flood to war.
"Wonderfully wise...A tremendously exciting and profound stage fable.” -- Herald Tribune
"For an American dramatist, all roads lead back to Thornton Wilder...The Skin of Our Teeth was a remarkable gift to an America entrenched in catastrophe, a tribute to the trait of human endurance." -- Paula Vogel, Foreword, THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH
THE FLICK
BY ANNIE BAKER, DIRECTED BY WENDY OVERLY | MARCH 8-24 2018
In a run-down movie theater in central Massachusetts, three underpaid employees mop the floors and attend to one of the last 35 millimeter film projectors in the state. Their tiny battles and not-so-tiny heartbreaks play out in the empty aisles, becoming more gripping than the lackluster, second-run movies on screen. Presented in a site-specific production by The Wilbury Group at the historic Cable Car Cinema in downtown Providence, The Flick is sure to be hilarious and heart-rending cry for authenticity in a fast-changing world.
"CRITIC’S PICK. Hilarious and touching...Annie Baker, one of the freshest and most talented dramatists to emerge Off Broadway in the past decade, writes with tenderness and keen insight. Her writing is a great blessing to performers: The Flick draws out nakedly truthful and unadorned acting. This lovingly observed play will sink deep into your consciousness." -- The New York Times
"Funny, heartbreaking, sly, and unblinking. The Flick may be the best argument anyone has yet made for the continued necessity, and profound uniqueness, of theater." -- New York Magazine
“Exhilarating...Utterly in tune at every moment." -- Village Voice
BY ANNIE BAKER, DIRECTED BY WENDY OVERLY | MARCH 8-24 2018
In a run-down movie theater in central Massachusetts, three underpaid employees mop the floors and attend to one of the last 35 millimeter film projectors in the state. Their tiny battles and not-so-tiny heartbreaks play out in the empty aisles, becoming more gripping than the lackluster, second-run movies on screen. Presented in a site-specific production by The Wilbury Group at the historic Cable Car Cinema in downtown Providence, The Flick is sure to be hilarious and heart-rending cry for authenticity in a fast-changing world.
"CRITIC’S PICK. Hilarious and touching...Annie Baker, one of the freshest and most talented dramatists to emerge Off Broadway in the past decade, writes with tenderness and keen insight. Her writing is a great blessing to performers: The Flick draws out nakedly truthful and unadorned acting. This lovingly observed play will sink deep into your consciousness." -- The New York Times
"Funny, heartbreaking, sly, and unblinking. The Flick may be the best argument anyone has yet made for the continued necessity, and profound uniqueness, of theater." -- New York Magazine
“Exhilarating...Utterly in tune at every moment." -- Village Voice
THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE OR, THE SLAVE OF DUTY
BY GILBERT & SULLIVAN, WILDLY ADAPTED BY SEAN GRANEY & KEVIN O'DONNELL, DIRECTED BY JOSH SHORT
WITH MUSIC DIRECTION BY MATT REQUINTINA AND CHOREOGRAPHY BY ALI KENNER-BRODSKY | MAY 17 -JUNE 3 2018
This subversive, loopy, and fantastically eccentric take—think banjos, beach balls, and guitars—on Gilbert and Sullivan’s preposterous musical took audiences in Chicago by storm when presented by rebel theatre-makers The Hipocrites. Frederic was mistakenly apprenticed as a young boy to a band of sentimental pirates. Now 21, he falls head-over-heels for the Major-General’s daughter and forswears the buccaneer’s life forever, or so he thinks. This buoyant, award-winning Pirates of Penzance by Sean Graney and featuring just 10 actors (who also serve as the orchestra) is an irrevent and fresh homage to a world turned upside-down for Gilbert and Sullivan fans and would-be-haters alike.
“The charm, energy, integrity and youth of this re-imagining of this familiar warhorse is so contagious and so dramatically convincing that their spirited irreverence suggests a contemporary approximation of how G & S might have been experienced in their own time.” –-NewCity Chicago
“A zany delight from start to finish.” –-Chicago Sun Times
BY GILBERT & SULLIVAN, WILDLY ADAPTED BY SEAN GRANEY & KEVIN O'DONNELL, DIRECTED BY JOSH SHORT
WITH MUSIC DIRECTION BY MATT REQUINTINA AND CHOREOGRAPHY BY ALI KENNER-BRODSKY | MAY 17 -JUNE 3 2018
This subversive, loopy, and fantastically eccentric take—think banjos, beach balls, and guitars—on Gilbert and Sullivan’s preposterous musical took audiences in Chicago by storm when presented by rebel theatre-makers The Hipocrites. Frederic was mistakenly apprenticed as a young boy to a band of sentimental pirates. Now 21, he falls head-over-heels for the Major-General’s daughter and forswears the buccaneer’s life forever, or so he thinks. This buoyant, award-winning Pirates of Penzance by Sean Graney and featuring just 10 actors (who also serve as the orchestra) is an irrevent and fresh homage to a world turned upside-down for Gilbert and Sullivan fans and would-be-haters alike.
“The charm, energy, integrity and youth of this re-imagining of this familiar warhorse is so contagious and so dramatically convincing that their spirited irreverence suggests a contemporary approximation of how G & S might have been experienced in their own time.” –-NewCity Chicago
“A zany delight from start to finish.” –-Chicago Sun Times
Additional productions from Studio W to be announced including a new adaptation of Alfred Jarry's absurdist masterpiece Ubu Roi by Phoenyx Williams, and New Works by Ali Kenner-Brodsky, James Stanley & Jesse Hawley, Marlon Carey, Laura Neill, and more.
*plays and dates are subject to change.
