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2012 Season announcement dear friends,
Shotgun started 20 years ago doing unknown plays by well known playwrights. As our audience grew, we eased in new work. This season we're offering the best of both worlds. Tom Stoppard is arguably the greatest living playwright of the English language. Odds are, though, you haven't seen Voyage, the first part of his Coast of Utopia trilogy. This 7 Tony Award-winning achievement captures the swirling, electric passion that fueled the love affairs and heady days of the Russian Revolution. It's a theatre-lovers feast! Everyone has heard of Ibsen's A Doll's House, but his provocative An Enemy of the People rarely gets a professional production simply because it requires as many actors as most companies hire for an entire season. Our adaptation, The Great Divide by local writer Adam Chanzit, will reveal how Ibsen's controversial themes still resonate on today's headlines. This summer we proudly introduce two exciting playwrights; Ken Slattery of the SF based comedy troupe Killing My Lobster has written a charming and pointed comedy Truffaldino Says No, tackling issues of immigration, gay marriage and destiny. We follow that up with a touching and funny west coast premiere of Madeleine George’s three woman play Precious Little, exploring linguistic lust and lesbian pregnancy. Stephen Sondheim is America’s most celebrated composer and lyricist. If you think the upcoming presidential election already feels like a circus, then our spin on his devilishly clever Assassins this fall will be just what you need. We wrap up our season with the pièce de résistance—the first American production of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck adapted by musical legend Tom Waits. This show has been tearing up stages across Europe for nearly a decade. Waits, much to the surprise of his own agent, personally signed off on our request for the rights. It’s hard to overestimate how big a deal this is. Even as our reputation and reach expand, we continue to focus on what has been the key to our success: placing the audience and artist at the center of our process to make excellent theatre. Nothing else matters. We encourage you to join us as a subscriber and celebrate this magical season of epic masterworks and intimate new voices. Little theatre. Big plays. Bigger hearts. Sincerely, Patrick Dooley
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