Shows Category: 2014-15

Meet Kenny Barrett, a brooding teenager who has done something that has everyone on high alert. He wishes he could make it through the rest of his senior year unnoticed, but that’s going to be hard since he has to publicly apologize to his entire high school. As his family tries to rebuild their lives, Kenny’s just trying to get through lunch period. A darkly funny and unexpectedly moving story about a family limping out the door in the morning and coming home no matter what.

Juliana Smithton is a brilliant research scientist whose life seems to be coming undone. Her husband has filed for divorce, her daughter has run away with a much older man, and her own health is in jeopardy. But in this brilliantly crafted work, nothing is what it seems. Scene by scene, this mystery unfolds as fact blurs with fiction, past collides with present and the elusive truth about Juliana bubbles to the surface. The result is a potent and haunting drama that explores the fragile boundaries of reality in one woman’s struggle with identity and, ultimately, forgiveness.

in Bucks County, PA, Vanya and his adopted sister Sonia are living out their middle age after years of caring for their ailing, Chekhov-loving parents. It’s a mild and tedious existence. That all changes once their movie-star sister Masha arrives with her twenty-something boy-toy Spike. Soon the siblings are dressing up as fairy-tale characters, channeling Maggie Smith, and dodging the voodoo curses of their soothsaying cleaning woman. Amidst the hilarity, there are moments when this family finds that good old-fashioned human connection might not be obsolete after all.

In Promenade Hall at Overture Center our Monologue Festival is back by popular demand, with an all-new slate of original works performed by some of your favorite FTC actors. This year, we are thrilled to partner with the Dane County Library System to present a monologue festival celebrating our freedom to read.

As always, Forward will invite playwrights from our community and across the country to add their voices to this conversation about free speech – and all that freedom entails.

Needless to say, we’re looking forward to the results: monologues may take the point of view of an author of a banned book, a patron requesting a banned book, a character who’s been “banned,” or even a person challenging a book’s validity.

This is a festival that will ask us to open our minds – and maybe a book or two!