Shows Category: 2010s

A brilliant, headstrong pioneer at the dawn of modern astronomy, Henrietta Leavitt must leave her Wisconsin home to pursue her dream of studying the night sky. But she soon discovers that the distance to the stars is less than the distance to acceptance in the man’s world of turn-of-the-century science. Family, music, love and history come alive beneath a blanket of stars in this magical story of a scientist’s quest for the heavens in a society determined to keep a woman in her place.

In a run-down movie theater in central Massachusetts, three underpaid employees mop the floors and attend to one of the last 35-millimeter film projectors in the state. Amidst the daily drudgery, they navigate the small triumphs and heartbreaking moments that are the substance of our daily lives. Issues of race, class, family, and sex underline this awkward, funny, and incredibly touching play. With keen insight and a finely-tuned comic eye, The Flick is a hilarious and poignant cry for authenticity in a fast-changing world.

In a not-so-distant future where the grid has failed, society has crumbled, and memories can no longer be stored on hard drives, a group of survivors bands together to recreate their vanished world through theater, music, and remnants of popular culture. Anne Washburn’s imaginative dark comedy takes us on a post-apocalyptic thrill ride to a time when memory is the new currency, and theater is the new social media. Whether you’ve never seen The Simpsons or you know every episode by heart, you’ll enjoy this animated exploration of how the pop culture of one era evolves into the mythology of another.

Last winter, Forward Theater Company asked Wisconsin-based playwrights to submit their works for an opportunity to participate in their Wisconsin Wrights New Play Festival, part of FTC’s 2015-16 season. Forward Theater Company accepted stewardship of the Wisconsin Wrights program from the UW-Madison Division of Continuing Studies in the summer of 2014 and is making the program a bi-annual part of their season.

The purpose of the project is to give three playwrights the extraordinary opportunity to develop their plays with professional directors, dramaturgs, and actors, with rehearsals culminating in a public reading. The goal is to support the expansion and exercise of the playwriting craft, exploration of characters, and constructive critique by caring, invested artists.
In response, they received an overwhelming number of plays from Wisconsin playwrights, which then endured a critical selection process.

Free-spirited 21-year-old Leo sets off from the West Coast on an epic cross-country bike adventure. By the time he shows up at his grandmother Vera’s New York City apartment, his journey has taken some unexpected turns. Leo hopes for a short-term escape from the chain of events that has left him estranged from his family and friends. But as days turn into weeks, he and Vera bond over love, loss, and the difficulties of growing up and growing old. With both humor and heartbreak, 4000 Miles takes an intimate look at the road to self-acceptance we all must travel — and the unexpected connections we make along the way.

Anthony and Rosemary are facing down middle age from neighboring farms in rural Ireland. Only a strip of land separates these eccentric souls, but with a feud simmering between their families, these introverted misfits will need to overcome a childhood grudge and years of stubborn pride to find happiness. Flinty humor and poetic passion highlight this charming and poignant play about how it’s never too late to take a chance on love.

Elise Sabato is thrilled when her husband Brad returns from his deployment in Iraq, and their plans for a life and family together can finally be realized. But it soon becomes clear that for Brad, coming home is only the beginning of a long journey. It is up to Elise to find help for a man she no longer recognizes, who suffers from injuries that neither of them can see or understand. With a story set in Madison, and written and adapted by Wisconsin authors, Learning to Stay asks what you would do when the person you’re married to is no longer the person you married..

Chances are, you’ve had one – more than one. They can be inspiring, terrifying, tedious, nauseating, and profound. Jobs. Jobs put food on our tables, roofs over our heads, and (sometimes) anxiety in our hearts. FTC’s fourth monologue festival, Someone’s Gotta Do It, features a dozen original pieces written just for us by playwrights from across our community and around the nation, with characters sharing their work stories: the exhilarating, the necessary, and the outlandishly absurd.

Anthony arrives at Caroline’s door bearing waffle fries, a beat-up copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and an urgent assignment from their high school Lit teacher. Living most of her life online, Caroline is sick and hasn’t been to school in months, but she is as quick and sardonic as Anthony is athletic and popular. As these two let down their guards and share their secrets, this seemingly vanilla poetry assignment unlocks a much deeper mystery that has brought them together. I and You is a valentine to youth, life, love, and the strange beauty of human connectedness.

The no-holds-barred story of a Chicago public high school slated for closure at the end of the year. The impending shut-down causes tensions in the school’s already volcanic neighborhood to rise to the breaking point, but a small group of teachers launch a last-minute battle to save their school. Over the course of the year, they put their careers, their future and their safety in the hands of a fast-talking administrator who comes on strong: but might actually have no clue what he’s doing.