Current Season
Boys’ Life
by Howard Korder
September 10 - October 3, 2009
Remember your late twenties? Boys were definitely still boys and men were - well, not quite men. Boys’ Life tracks the misadventures of three former college mates as they simultaneously pursue and refuse adulthood; and the women who are both attracted to and repelled by their bewitching mix of charm and treachery.
Playwright and screen writer Howard Korder was born in New York City and won a 1996 Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting. Winner of numerous awards for his work, Korder received an Obie award for his play, The Lights. Boys’ Life received a Pulitzer-Prize nomination after its debut at Lincoln Center in 1988, directed by William H. Macy. Korder’s other plays include Search and Destroy; Fun; Nobody; Night Maneuver; and The Hollow Lands.
”Boys’ Life puts sexual insecurity among under-30 males under the comic microscope and the result is a satisfying and thoughtful work by a fresh playwriting voice.” - Variety
Shows are at 8 p.m., Thursdays-Saturdays, with 4 p.m. “pay-what-you-will” Sunday matinees on Sept. 20 and 27.
Meet the Boys’ Life cast and crew!
Also check out Jay Paul’s beautiful promotional photos on our Flickr page!
This is How it Goes
by Neil LaBute
October 29 - November 21, 2009
Formerly high-school sweethearts, Belinda and Cody Phipps appear to be the typical middle-class, interracial success story. When another classmate returns to town, their seemingly amicable reunion devolves into a triangle of bigotry and betrayal. Staged on continually shifting moral ground that challenges our notions about gender, ethnicity, and even love itself, This Is How It Goes unblinkingly explores the myriad ways in which the wild card of race is played by both black and white in America.
Playwright Neil LaBute successfully made the transition to feature films with his debut In the Company of Men, a dark comedy that explores sexual and corporate politics and which went on to win the Filmmaker’s Trophy as Best Dramatic Feature at 1997’s Sundance Film Festival. He continues to combine intriguing moral and ethical metaphors with dark portraits of American life with the films Your Friends & Neighbors, Nurse Betty and The Shape of Things.
“Neil LaBute is the first dramatist since David Mamet and Sam Shepard - since Edward Albee, actually - to mix sympathy and savagery, pathos and power.” - Donald Lyons, New York Post
Directed by Bill Patton and starring Fred Iacovo, Thym Kennedy and Laine Satterfield.
Watch the Firehouse Web site for special events and talk-back programs to accompany this extraordinary show. Opening night, Thursday, Oct. 29, will be followed with a reception catered by Carena’s Jamaican Grille. Also join the Firehouse’s Facebook page or follow @firehouserva on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news.
Meet the This is How it Goes cast and crew
Production stills by Jay Paul now on Flickr!
Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake)
by Sheila Callaghan
February 25 - March 20, 2010
Blurring the lines between Mother and those needing mothering, Crumble tells the story of eleven-year old Janice, whose father has recently died, and her devastated mom, who trusts in superior baking skills as the key to healing. While her mother fires up the oven and dreams of Harrison Ford, Janice dreams of Justin Timberlake and compiles a very strange, very explosive Christmas-wish list. Toss a crumbling, mercurial apartment into the mix, and the road to redemption is a twisted one, indeed.
Sheila Callaghan’s plays have been produced and developed with Soho Rep, Playwright’s Horizons, South Coast Repertory, Clubbed Thumb, The LARK, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, New Georges, and Moving Arts, among others. She is the recipient of the Princess Grace Award for emerging artists, a Jerome Fellowship from the Playwright’s Center in Minneapolis, a MacDowell Residency, a 2005 Cherry Lane Mentorship Fellowship, the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, and the prestigious Whiting Award. Her full-length plays include Scab; Crawl Fade to White; Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake); We Are Not These Hands; and Dead City.
Talk-backs are scheduled for immediately following performances on Friday, Feb. 26, and Sunday, March 14.
“Soon-to-be classic… Whatever you do, don’t miss it… Amazing...” - Entertainment Today
Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake is a featured production in the Acts of Faith Festival, the joyful winter’s celebration of spiritual synergies that exist among Greater Richmond’s professional theatres and faith communities.
Please share this wonderful program with your synagogue, church or mosque. For more information about Acts of Faith, please visit www.theactsoffaith.org.
For group ticket sales, please contact Melissa Gropman at 355-2001 ext. 8 or email .
Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll
by Eric Bogosian
April 15 - May 8, 2010
An Obie-award winning series of eleven monologues by the loquacious and satirical Bogosian (Talk Radio), this one-man show portrays a funny, yet bleak, landscape of the Western world. Through such recognizable characters as a cerebral panhandler; a socially conscious rock star; an aging environmentalist; and a dropout from the 60’s, SDR&R pokes fun at the excesses and absurdities of a generation weaned on rock ‘n’ roll.
Eric Bogosian is the author of two plays, Talk Radio and Suburbia as well as three Obie-award winning solos: Drinking In America; Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll; and Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead. He is best known for starring as the misanthropic radio “shock-jock” Barry Champlain in Oliver Stone’s film version of his own Talk Radio (for which he received the Berlin Film Festival’s “Silver Bear"). Bogosian’s plays and solos have been staged around the world.
“With this brilliant show, his funniest and scariest yet, Mr. Bogosian has crossed the line that separates an exciting artist from a culture hero.” - The New York Times