All The World’s a Stage — TheatreWorks Opens The Fourth Wall on May 1

TheatreWorks New Milford is proud to announce its premiere of THE FOURTH WALL, a “comedy of redecorating” by Roxbury playwright, A.R. Gurney. The show opens May 1, at 8 p.m., for a four-week run. 

Directed by Sonnie Osborne, THE FOURTH WALL follows Roger and Peggy, an upper-class, Buffalo, New York couple in the midst of a little crisis. Peggy (Beth Bonnabeau) has radically redecorated the living room so that all the furniture faces a large empty wall. The rearrangement gives the room the look and feel of a stage set, and begins to have a strange affect on the way they both behave. Faced with a big, blank fourth wall (the theater-world notion of the invisible barrier separating the actors from the audience), Peggy begins to suspect there are mysterious people--and possibly a much better, more exciting world--waiting for her just beyond the plaster.

The change alarms Roger (Jonathan Ross), and with Peggy behaving as if she were losing her mind, he invites an old friend to visit and give her opinion. Julia (LuAnn Leonard) is a dramatic person to begin with, but at the first sight of the fourth wall, she begins referring to her conversations as "scenes," and becomes desperate to interject the visit with a thread of a plot. Things get crazier when the local college's theater professor (Glenn R. Couture) shows up. With his "direction," the action then begins zipping in and out of a theatrical styles--bedroom farce, crime thriller, existential drama, absurdist comedy--as characters follows their own story line. Added to the mix is a player piano with a mind of its own which has them all spontaneously singing Cole Porter tunes as the story moves along.

The New Yorker said THE FOURTH WALL is “some damn clever writing...constructed to illuminate the nature of the dramatic form while raising questions about the current state of the theatre in America.”

May 1,2 8,9 15,16,17 22,23 Fridays & Saturdays 8:00 PM / Sunday 2:00 PM $20.00 Reserved Seating TheatreWorks, 5 Brookside Avenue, New Milford, CT (Saturday May 9th performance is a Benefit for the Washington Art Association. Click Here for tickets to this special event.)

A Connecticut Treasure,
Playwright AR Gurney

A.R. GURNEY, of Roxbury, is one of the most prolific and produced playwrights in America. His work focuses primarily on the issues and realities of middle-class American life and has been produced on international theatre stages for more than 30 years.

After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree from Williams College in 1952, Gurney joined the United States Navy during the Korean War, writing shows to entertain the military personnel. Following his discharge in 1955, he enrolled in the Yale School of Drama where he received his Master's degree in playwriting. Later he joined the faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge where he taught until 1987.

In 1958, Gurney wrote Love in Buffalo, which was the first musical ever produced at Yale. His first play, The David Show, was produced in New York in 1968. In 1970, Scenes from American Life received its world premiere at the Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo. During the 1970s, he wrote two novels and several plays, including Children, which premiered in London, England in 1974.

His breakthrough success came in 1982 with The Dining Room. Other award-winning plays include The Middle Ages, Richard Cory, The Golden Age, What I Did Last Summer, The Wayside Motor Inn, Sweet Sue, The Perfect Party. Another Antigone, The Cocktail Hour, Love Letters, The Old Boy, The Fourth Wall, Later Life, A Cheever Evening, Sylvia, Overtime, Let’s Do It (a Cole Porter musical), Labor Day, Far East, Darlene And The Guest Lecturer, and Ancestral Voices.

Gurney is the recipient of many awards, notably a Drama Desk Award in 1971, a Rockefeller Award in 1977 and two Lucille Lortel Awards in 1989 and 1994.  He has also received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the New England Theatre Conference. In 2006, Gurney was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Casting Call: DOUBT

TheatreWorks is looking for four actors for its upcoming drama DOUBT, directed by Alicia Dempster. For character breakdowns and audition sides please click here.

Auditions: Monday, May 4th & Tuesday, May 5th from 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM at TheatreWorks.

Washington Art Association Fundraiser

Join the WAA for a special fundraising performance of THE FOURTH WALL on Saturday May 9th. The Washington Art Association is a non-profit organization that has for over 50 years supported artists in Northwest Connecticut. It offers studio courses for adults and children, workshops, lectures, and a wide array of special arts-related events. It has showcased the work of both emerging and established artists from all over the world, drawing more than 10,000 visitors per year.

Click here for tickets to this special event and for more information on the WAA.

Staged Readings Return to TheatreWorks

TheatreWorks is excited to revive its Page to Stage staged reading series as part of its 2009 Season. The purpose of this series is to bring to the forefront some of theatre’s best pieces that, for some reason or another, have fallen by the wayside. A sophisticated evening of great theatre at no extra cost. »Click Here to learn more

TheatreWorks is sponsored in part by: