September 2016: Not Quite Right by Elaine Jarvik and Robert Benjamin. Not Quite Right, an upbeat and humorous family drama, features a misshapen pot, a marathon dance and a three a.m. mêlée over “what’s enough?” Three couples grapple with dueling expectations in the wee hours of the morning when everything seems, well, not quite right.
November 2016: The 1940s Radio Hour by Walton Jones.
This play captures the spirit of the 1940s when the world was at war and pop music meant “Strike Up the Band” and “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” The radio calvcade’s harassed producer copes with a drunk lead singer, the delivery boy who wants a chance in front of the mike, the second banana who dreams of singing a ballad, and the trumpet playing sound effects man who chooses a fighter plane over Glenn Miller.
January 2017: Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead by Bert V. Roya.
This unauthorized parody follows the familiar characters of the Peanuts comic strip, now teenagers, as they deal with very difficult issues confronting young adults, including drug use, suicide, eating disorders — and the loss of a beloved dog to rabies. A dark comedy, the play moves through increasingly harrowing events to an ending both hopeful and haunting.
March 2017: The Other Place by Sharr White.
This compelling drama centers on Juliana Smithton, a successful neurologist whose life seems to be coming unhinged. Her husband has filed for divorce, her daughter has eloped with a much older man and her own health is in jeopardy. But in this brilliantly crafted work, nothing is as it seems. Piece by piece, a mystery unfolds as fact blurs with fiction, past collides with present and the elusive truth about Juliana boils to the surface. An abridged version of this play was LALT’s entry in NM AACTFest17 in Las Cruces.
May 2017: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard.
Acclaimed as a modern dramatic masterpiece, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is the tale of Hamlet as told from the worm’s-eye view of two minor characters in Shakespeare’s play. In Tom Stoppard’s best-known work, the Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role, but do so in a world where reality and illusion intermix, and where fate leads the two characters to a tragic but inevitable end.