Theatre Lab at FAU Recently Hosted a VIP Pre-Season Celebration

TheatreLab, FAU's professional theater company, recently hosted a VIP Pre-Season Celebration to showcase the completion of renovations of its intimate 99-seat Heckscher Stage, preview the coming season and introduce their Matching Gift Challenge to raise private support for this exciting university and community endeavor.  

Theatre Lab, which is now in its second season, was founded by veteran artistic director and FAU Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Arts, Lou Tyrrell. The new venture features a laboratory approach to new play development. It allows FAU faculty and students, along with the entire South Florida community, to be an actual part of the artistic process, actively engaged by world-class professional theater performances, workshops and conversations with leading playwrights and theater artists.  It also provides a home base for playwrights developing their work.

To support this venture, Edith and Martin Stein have renewed their pledge as 2016/17 Season Benefactors, and Marta and Jim Batmasian have underwritten a new Matching Gift Challenge, seeking to raise $50,000 for program funding and for renovations of the theatre space.

"Theatre Lab offers our community sophisticated cultural experiences with professional actors as well as innovative learning opportunities for students," said Marta Batmasian.  "This endeavor puts Boca Raton at the forefront, along with major metropolitan cities, of places where communities are privileged to have sophisticated cultural and theatrical experiences."

As part of the Matching Gift Challenge, Theatre Lab has established a Wall of Recognition tp honor Inner Circle benefactors. The giving levels begin at $1,000. For more information on becoming an Inner Circle Benefactor contact Laurie Carney at 561-297-3606.

Lou Tyrrell announced the coming season of three fully produced new works to attendees at the Pre-Season celebration. They include:

"The Three Sisters of Weehawken"by Deborah Zoe Laufer - World Premiere

Friday, Oct. 21 to Sunday, Nov. 6

Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. ($35)

Preview Performance: Thursday, Oct. 20, 7:30 p.m. ($25)

Special closing weekend matinee: Saturday, Nov. 5, 3 p.m. ($35)

 

Olga, Masha and Irina have dreamt of returning to their childhood home of Manhattan all their lives. There it lies, gleaming, a mere ferry ride away from their provincial home in Weehawken, N.J.  Though their sister-in-law, Natasha, tries valiantly to help them realize their dream with offers of work, tickets, maps, guidebooks, even anti-depressants, old patterns are hard to break. And that 15-minute ferry ride may as well be a mission to Mars. As they remain, decade after decade stretching into old age, the walls of their world move in tighter and tighter, until it becomes nearly impossible to move at all. Borrowing as much from Beckett as Checkov, "The Three Sisters of Weehawken"wonders at the forces that keep us from following our dreams, and begs the question -- how little can one live, and still have lived "a life?"

 

"This Random World"by Steven Dietz - Southeast Premiere

Friday, Dec. 2 to Sunday, Dec. 18

Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. ($35)

Preview Performance: Thursday, Dec. 1, 7:30 p.m. ($25)

Special closing weekend matinee: Saturday, Dec. 17, 3 p.m. ($35)

 

"This Random World" turns the myth of serendipity on its head, using a comic premise of missed opportunities to explore the most serious of things.  From an ailing woman who plans one final trip, to her daughter planning one great escape and her son falling prey to a prank gone wrong -this funny, intimate and heartwarming play presents the life that may be happening just out of reach of our own. 

 

"Motherland" by Allison Gregory                                                                                          

Friday, Jan. 27 to Sunday, Feb. 12, 2017

Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. ($35)

Preview Performance: Thursday, Jan.26, 7:30 p.m. ($25)

Special closing weekend matinee: Saturday, Feb. 11, 3 p.m. ($35)

 

A self-made woman does her crafty best to protect her wayward children, keep her food truck business thriving, and impart some kind of moral code in a city battling collapse. In "Motherland," grit, guile, and guns are everyday parenting tools, and hope comes at a cost. A funny, raw, timely new play inspired by Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, considered one of the most important plays of the 20th century.

           

For ticket purchase and subscription information, call 561-297-6124 or visit www.fauevents.com. For more information about Theatre Lab, call 561-297-4784 or visit www.fau.edu/theatrelab.