The Alliance Theatre’s 2009-2010 season brings four world premieres and four unique musicals to Atlanta, starting with the hotly anticipated Come Fly With Me, a new creation from Twyla Tharp, based on the music of Frank Sinatra. Playing Sept. 16-Oct. 11, the theater-dance collaboration follows four couples as they fall in and out of love in the exciting blend of modern movement and classical technique Tharp has made famous.
Next on the agenda is Middle School Musical, opening Oct. 17 as a Theatre for Youth show. Inspired by a famous high school musical that will remain nameless, this musical is part sketch comedy, part improvisation and totally devoted to giving tweens a voice.
Broadway legend André De Shields brings David Mamet’s A Life in the Theatre to light Oct. 28-Nov. 15. De Shields plays a veteran actor who doesn’t have a life beyond the footlights and is thrown together with a young actor who only looks at theater as a launching pad for something greater. Mamet’s muscular script follows the two men over several years, exploring the highs and lows of the lives they lead.
Famous Chicago comedy institution Second City premieres its second Alliance collaboration Nov. 6-Dec. 13. The Second City: Peach Drop, Stop and Roll is designed to gently skewer all things Atlanta and provide plenty of holiday cheer.
On the mainstage, Alliance’s annual holiday gift to Atlanta, A Christmas Carol returns Nov. 27-Dec. 24. The Broadway-scale musical features a virtual “who’s who” of Atlanta actors, and is a lavish feast for the eyes and ears.
Rolling into the new year, Avenue X (Jan. 13-Feb. 7) will transport audiences back to 1960s Brooklyn for a world-premiere musical rooted in the sounds of doo-wop and R&B, performed a cappella. It’s a tale of youth, upheaval and racial tension, sung from the streets.
On the Hertz Stage, Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition winner Ismail Khalidi paints a poignant picture of 1939 Palestine in Tennis in Nablus, playing Jan. 29-Feb. 21. The story of a lifelong rebel, his anti-colonial wife and young nephew, it’s a play about allegiance, struggle and crisis, where events and people are not what they seem.
Based on the Disney movie, Mulan (Feb. 24-March 19) follows a heroic young Chinese girl on a quest to save the emperor. The story of how she discovers the hero within while saving an empire will delight audiences of all ages.
Performance artist Mike Daisey brings his newest show The Last Cargo Cult to the Hertz Stage March 19-April 11). Inspired by South Pacific Islanders who have created a religion around the cargo left behind on American military bases, Daisey compares their habits of worship to American behaviors that contributed to the current financial crisis.
Rounding out the season is Lookingglass Alice, a magical, high-flying acrobatic show inspired by Lewis Carroll’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Directed by Lookingglass Theatre Company Artistic Director David Catlin, it will be performed on a radically reconfigured Alliance mainstage from March 31-May 2.
For more information, visit alliancetheatre.org.
