As always, Big Idea has selected plays that represent a wide variety of styles and themes. This season’s shows are an exciting mix of old and new comedies and dramas that will strike a chord with our audience. Whether they are timeless stories re-written for a modern audience, or modern stories written in a timeless fashion, these stories are provocative and entertaining.
SYNOPSIS
Somewhere in America, an army of pre-teen competitive dancers plots to take over the world. And if their new routine is good enough, they’ll claw their way to the top at Nationals in Tampa Bay. A play about ambition, growing up, and how to find our souls in the heat of it all.
SYNOPSIS
Hedda is the daughter of General Gabler and is used to a life of luxury. However, she has recently married a failing academic. Returning from their honeymoon and feeling trapped in a boring marriage, Hedda craves the sinister thrill of manipulating the lives of those around her.
SYNOPSIS
Meet Diane, a permaculture gardener dripping with butch charm. She’s got supernatural abilities owing to her true identity—the Greek god Dionysus—and she’s returned to the modern world to gather mortal followers and restore the Earth to its natural state. Where better to begin than with four housewives in a suburban New Jersey cul-de-sac? In this Obie-winning comedy with a twist, Pulitzer Prize finalist Madeleine George pens a hilarious evisceration of the blind eye we all turn to climate change and the bacchanalian catharsis that awaits us, even in our own backyards.
SYNOPSIS
A Korean boy is ushered into a new house by his adopted American father. This new house belongs to an American boxer and her wife. American father un-adopts boy by a single signature on a piece of paper. But just before he leaves the new house, ex-father discovers that the new parents, to whom he has “re-homed” his ex-son, are a lesbian couple. American ex-father spends the rest of the play trying to get the boy back. In his corner is Ryan, the boxer’s coach and her wife’s brother. Ryan doesn’t like the new Korean boy, who is a bit weird.
Wolf Play is a messy, funny, disturbing theatrical experience grappling with a wolf, a puppet and the very prickly problem of “What is a family, and what do we need from families today? Is it very different from what humans have needed from families before?”
SYNOPSIS
Liz is prone to isolation and avoiding close relationships, with the exception being her roommate and best friend Jamie. Being concerned for Liz’s emotional and mental well being, Jamie invites her to join a tabletop campaign run by Jamie’s partner Nick. At their first game, Liz realizes a woman she’s been seeing casually, Olly, is one of Nick’s long time friends and a player in the campaign. As Liz learns to navigate this dynamic, she learns to open up to new people and allow them into her life. When tragedy strikes and threatens to break apart the newly formed group, Liz must decide if she’s truly ready to allow herself to be close to others, or retreat back into her avoidant tendencies.
Tabletops is more than a play about tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons. It is a story about the people who play them and the community and friendships that are found along the way.
SYNOPSIS
A charming devil arrives in the quiet village of Edmonton to bargain for the souls of its residents in exchange for their darkest wishes. Elizabeth should be his easiest target, having been labeled a “witch” and cast out by the town, but her soul is not so readily bought. As the devil returns to convince her – and then returns again – unexpected passions flare, alliances are formed, and the village is forever changed. An inventive retelling of a Jacobean drama, this sharp, subversive fable debates how much our souls are worth when hope is hard to come by.
