UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Penn State Centre Stage will begin its 2013–14 year-round professional theatre season by bringing award-winning plays and actors to the Penn State Downtown Theatre Center.
The season begins with "Good People," by Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire, June 12–22. "Good People" is set in South Boston, where this month’s paycheck covers last month’s bills, bingo is a night on the town and sharp-tongued single-mom Margie Walsh has just been let go from yet another job. Scrambling to make ends meet, she looks up an old flame, hoping he’ll help her make a fresh start in this humor-filled drama from Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire about how twists of fate determine our path.
The play stars Johanna Day as Margie Walsh. Day received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance as Claire in Proof on Broadway. You can listen to Johanna as Margie Walsh in the video clip below as she played the role for Boston's Huntington Theatre last August.
"Good People" also stars Amelia Campbell, who performed in several Broadway shows and received a Tony Nomination for Best Featured Actress in "Our Country's Good" and R. Ward Duffy, who appeared Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center, New Dramatists, and Cherry Lane Theatre, and received the Best of the Suncoast Best Actor Award for his performance in "True West" at the Banyan Theatre. The cast also includes Penn State School of Theatre faculty legend Jane Ridley who performed in New York at Pan Asian Repertory, La MaMa E.T.C., Lambs Theatre and New Dramatists; Joy Hooper who received her master of fine arts in acting from Penn State and has performed at St. Louis Black Repertory, New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, Milwaukee Repertory, Indiana Repertory and Cincinnati Playhouse In the Park; and Kevin Toniazzo-Naughton, a junior bachelor of fine arts musical theatre major, who played Sweeney Todd for here last fall.
July 24 thru Aug. 3, Ridley will return to star as Sister Aloysius Beauvier in "Doubt: A Parable," by John Patrick Shanley, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Best Play. "Doubt" also features returning master of fine arts acting alum Kevin Murphy, master of fine arts musical theatre alum Carly Hughes and third-year master of fine arts actor Stori Ayers.
The fall season begins with "No Place to Be Somebody," by Charles Gordone, Oct. 1 to 10, in the Pavilion Theatre. Directed by Charles Dumas, this Pulitzer Prize-winning play is set in the middle of the Civil Rights era, where a black bartender matches wits with a white mobster.
Next, musical theatre students can be seen in "Guys and Dolls," with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, and directed by Meghan C. Hakes from Nov. 5 to 20, in the Playhouse Theatre.
Spring begins in the Pavilion Theatre, Feb. 18 to March 1, with "Into the Woods," music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine, directed by Kasey RT Graham. And the season ends March 25 to April 5 back downtown with a Penn State School of Theatre commissioned new play "Blood at the Root," by Dominique Morisseau, directed by Steve Broadnax. "Blood at the Root" is a drama inspired by the Jena Six and the “white tree.” Morisseau is the 2012 National Theatre Conference Barrie and Bernice Stavis Playwright Award recipient, and an alumni of the 2011 Public Theater Emerging Writer’s Group, the Women’s Project Playwrights Lab and a 2011-12 Lark Playwrights Workshop fellow.
For additional show information and the free Penn State Downtown Theatre Center summer entertainment schedule, visit www.theatre.psu.edu. A 10 percent discount is available when tickets are purchased for four or more shows. Tickets are available at Penn State Tickets Downtown, Eisenhower Box Office, Bryce Jordan Center or by calling 814-863-0255 or 800-ARTS-TIX.