BREATHE...A
NEW MUSICAL
By Dan Martin and Michael Biello
March 6 - March 30, 2003
click
here for more info
"BREATHE, a new musical by Dan Martin and Michael Biello, has the power to penetrate even the most hardened of hearts. Full of a life-loving spirituality, its deeply felt celebration of humanity, and specifically the emotional lives of gay men and lesbians, is a bittersweet antidote to the modern ailment of cynicism."
SNAP! Fest 2003
New Works Festival
June 12- June 29, 2003
click here for
more info
Join SNAP! for three intriguing
weekends of up-to-the minute, original theatre done in repertory. We receive
scripts from all over the world and
even try to bring the playwrights to Omaha! We host post-performance discussions
so that you can pick the brains of our cast and directors to find
out what it’s like to go where no actor has gone before.
VISITING
MR GREEN
By Jeff Baron
August 28 - September
21, 2003
Directed by Jan Reardon
"Jeff Baron’s absorbing and touching play is unashamedly old-fashioned. Its humanity leaves a heartwarming spirit." --NY Law Journal. "A cannily crafted comedy-melodrama about friendship, family, openmindedness and forgiveness...a feelgood winner." --NY Newsday. "Baron knows how to stay one step ahead of his audience and give it an experience that is emotionally true...As Mr. Green might have said, What’s not to like?" --Boston Globe. "It is doubtful you are likely to encounter a play more enjoyable, more honestly funny and, in the end, more moving than this quite delightful two-hander by Jeff Baron." --Johannesburg Citizen.
THE STORY: Mr. Green, an elderly, retired dry cleaner wanders into traffic
on New York’s Upper West Side and is almost hit by a car driven by Ross Gardiner,
a twenty-nine-year-old corporate executive. The young man is charged with reckless
driving, and is given a community service sentence of helping Mr. Green once
a week for six months. The old man’s wife has just died, he lives in a fourth
floor walk-up, and he needs help with groceries and such. The play follows the
two men’s growing and changing relationship over several months beginning with
the first of these weekly visits. What starts out as a comedy about two men
who do not want to be in the same room together, turns into a gripping and moving
drama as they get to know each other, come to care about each other, and open
old wounds they’ve been hiding and nursing for years.
CABARET
Book by Joe Masteroff Based on the play by John Van Druten and Stories by
Christopher Isherwood
Music by John Kander, Lyrics by Fred Ebb
November 13 - December 7
Directed by Billy Bohannon with
Music Direction by Mitch Fuller
The scene is a night club in Berlin, as the 1920's are drawing
to a close. The Master of Ceremonies welcomes the audience to the show and assures
them that, whatever their troubles, they will forget them at the Cabaret. His
songs provide wry commentary throughout the show. On the train to Berlin we
find Cliff, a young American writer, and Ernst, a German who surprises Cliff
by putting his briefcase among Cliff's luggage at the German border. History
is in the process of being made. Musical numbers include It Couldn't Please
Me More, Wilkommen, Cabaret, Don't Tell Mama and Two Ladies. We find
Cliff on the train again, now leaving Berlin alone. He writes about Sally and
the people of Berlin leading up to the Third Reich. It has been a tumultuous
and heartbreaking era.
Look forward to...
SEASON 2004
STOP
KISS
By Diana Son
March 2004
"There’s so much that is vital and exciting
about STOP KISS...you want to embrace this young author and cheer her on to
other works...the writing on display here is funny and credible...you also will
be charmed by its heartfelt characters and up-to-the-minute humor. --NY Daily
News. "...irresistibly exciting...a sweet, sad, and enchantingly sincere
play. --NY Times.
THE STORY: A poignant and funny play about the ways, both sudden and
slow, that lives can change irrevocably. After Callie meets Sara, the two unexpectedly
fall in love. Their first kiss provokes a violent attack that transforms their
lives in a way they could never anticipate.
THE LISBON TRAVIATA
By Terrance McNally
August/September 2004
A successful Off-Broadway production, this incisive, brilliantly executed play veers from high comedy to stark tragedy as it follows the troubled course of a homosexual relationship--using an obsession with grand opera as a metaphor to underscore the larger-than-life passions which bring the play to its explosive conclusion. "...McNally is a real writer with a flair for crackling dialogue." --Variety. "...a defiant attempt to confront demons." --NY Times. "...McNally is a lovely writer, his dialogue crackles crisply..." --NY Post.
THE STORY: The first act is set in the fussily ornate apartment of Mendy,
a ferociously dedicated opera buff who begs and cajoles his friend Stephen to
let him borrow his copy of the pirated Maria Callas recording of La Traviata
made during a performance in Lisbon, Portugal. Stephen, a blocked playwright
whose detailed knowledge of opera exceeds even Mendy's, delights in showing off
his expertise while dodging his friend's entreaties, but beneath their often
hilarious banter it is evident that both men are deeply unhappy--Mendy because
of his loneliness, and Stephen because he is aware that his longtime roommate
(whom he loves deeply) is having an affair with someone else. Both it seems, are
trapped within opera, with its grand but contrived passions becoming a neurotic
substitute for real life. But in the second act, which takes place in Stephen's
starkly modern apartment, reality arrives with stunning force as Stephen
confronts his roommate, Mike, and tries to salvage their relationship. Sensing
his failure, Stephen turns on Mike and his new lover, Paul, driving the latter
away and taunting Mike so venomously that all hope of a reconciliation is soon
shattered. And, in the end, it is the operatic, the grandly tragic, which
assumes control again as Stephen, unable to accept life and reality on their own
terms, stabs his errant lover--tortured by his continuing lack of creative
fulfillment and by the compelling need to preserve the illusion of love and
fidelity to which he has clung so desperately.
New Musical - TBA
November 2004