Tuesday, April 4th, 2006
BIBLE WOMEN
by Elizabeth Swados
This song cycle showcases women from the Bible in rock and cabaret versions of their traditional stories. The variety of musical influences and feisty spirit displayed here are the qualities that have made Swados an influential figure in both contemporary musical theatre and Jewish religious life. Come hear musical storytelling so dynamic it was selected for the NASA space shuttle!
Directed by Pam Myers-Morgan
*BONUS PERFORMANCES:
* Monday, April 3rd, 2006 at Northaven United Methodist Church
* Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 at Unity Church of Dallas
Tuesday, March 7th, 2006
LETTERS AND LIEDER
by Jackie and Bill Lengfelder
Felix Mendelssohn's sister, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, received the same musical education as her celebrated brother. But she was discouraged by her father: "Perhaps for Felix music will become a profession, while for you it will always remain but an ornament." Discover the energetic and adventurous nature of Fanny's music and her soul though this intriguing, poetic work-in-progress.
Directed by Ellen Locy
Tuesday, February 7th, 2006
OH, WHAT A LOVELY WAR
by Joan Littlewood
An award-winning 1963 creation from Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, Oh, What a Lovely War chronicles World War I through source material and songs from the period in a story told by a company of clowns.
Directed by David Fisher
Tuesday, December 6th, 2005
A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN
Book by Betty Smith and George Abbott
Lyrics by Dorothy Fields, Music by Arthur Schwartz
This tender and funny 1951 musical combines Betty Smith's story with lyrics by one of Broadway's masters, Dorothy Fields. Tracing the hopes and dreams of two immigrant sisters, the show follows the adventures of one and the struggles of the other, ultimately reaffirming the transformative power of love.
Directed by Bruce Coleman and Ricky Pope.
*BONUS PERFORMANCE: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 at Winfrey Point on White Rock Lake
Tuesday, November 1st, 2005
I'M GETTING MY ACT TOGETHER AND TAKING IT ON THE ROAD
Book and Lyrics by Gretchen Cryer, Music by Nancy Ford
39-year-old singer-songwriter Heather explores her budding ideas about life, love, and womanhood in the first women's liberation musical of the 1970s.
Directed by Scott Eckert
Tuesday, October 4th, 2005
ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Book and Lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Music by Cy Coleman
Comden and Green are one of the most celebrated teams in musical theatre, and this 1978 gem is one of their classics. A delightful comedy involving a down-and-out theatre producer who books the adjoining cabin on a cross-country train ride to convince a capricious movie star to rescue his flagging career.
Directed by Bob Hess and Lynn Ambrose
*BONUS PERFORMANCE: Monday, October 3rd, 2005 at the Trinity River Arts Center!
Tuesday, May 3, 2005
WOMEN AND HORSES AND A SHOT STRAIGHT FROM THE BOTTLE by Mary F. Casey
A story of mothers, daughters, bronc riding, heartache, and unconditional love -- all colliding in the moment of one cowgirl's fateful ride. Directed by Bruce Coleman
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
LITTLE JOE MONAGHAN by Barbara Lebow
The true life adventures of Josephine Monaghan, who lived in an Idaho mining town in the late 1800s...disguised as a man! Directed by Doug Miller.
Tuesday, March 1, 2005
MY VISITS WITH MGM (MY GRANDMOTHER MARTA) by Edit Villarreal
Marta Feliz returns to the rubble of the Texas home where she was raised by her grandmother and her great aunt. As she remembers Marta Grande and Florinda, the family's struggle to find a new identity somewhere between a new world and the old is revealed. Directed by David Lozano.
Tuesday, February 1, 2005
FIRST LADIES by Dana Gillespie
Gillespie's charming story, commissioned by the Great American History Theatre, dramatizes an early winter in the lives of Minnesota's pioneer women, revealing their strength, ingenuity, and solidarity while exploring the budding relationship between child bride Mary and a mysterious Indian woman. Directed by Pam Dougherty.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
THE ANASTASIA TRIALS IN THE COURT OF WOMEN by Carolyn Gage
Personalities and politics clash as a feminist theatre group uses the lottery system to cast their play about the women who betrayed the famous Russian Royal -- and the audience acts as their jury. This Christmas, our "wacky, dysfunctional family" is Sisterhood!
Tuesday, November 9, 2004
THE SINGULAR LIFE OF ALBERT NOBBS by Simone Benmussa
Enter into the extraordinary life of Albert, a young man working hard as a porter at an exclusive English hotel, and guarding a precious secret. Come feast on this potent stew of gender, economics and theatricality.
Directed by Pam Myers-Morgan.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
HOW THE VOTE WAS WON by Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St. John
As we prepare to exercise the 19th Amendment this November, we revisit the theatrical efforts that helped put it in place. This charming farce was the most popular of the suffrage plays in England and the U.S.
Directed by Linda Leonard.
Tuesday, September 14th, 2004
APPROACHING SIMONE by Megan Terry
This innovative recounting of communist, pacifist philosopher Simone Weil's life exemplifies the ensemble-based, avant garde feminist theatre of the 1970s.
Directed by Trey Walpole.
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
THE DAUGHTERS OF THE LATE COLONEL by Katherine Mansfield
Spinster sisters reel and regroup after their father's death in this curious nineteenth-century short story. Join us in the early stages of our adaptation process! Adapted by Brandi Andrade, Kateri Cale and Ellen Locy. Directed by Ellen Locy.
* Additional Performances *
Sunday, May 16, 2004 at the Downtown Branch of the Dallas Public Library
Friday, May 21, 2004 at the Dallas Museum of Art (part of the Arts and Letters Live Literary Cafe)
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
WHORES D'OEUVRES by Michelene Wandor
Two prostitutes float down the swollen Thames river on a raft after a freak hurricane sweeps through London. This courageously controversial feminist classic is a surreal satire on economics, sexual politics and the personal cost of the choices women make. "More than any single figure, Wandor is responsible for articulating and supporting the interaction of feminism, theatre, socialism and gay liberation in Britain." - Helene Keyssar
Directed by David Fisher.
* Bonus Feature * THE DOVE by Djuna Barnes
Directed by Pam Myers-Morgan
Tuesday, March 9, 2004
FOOD AND SHELTER by Jane Anderson
Jobless and homeless, a woman struggles to keep her belief in magic alive while holding her family together. Fierce, funny, sad and timely. Directed by Molly Moroney.
Saturday, February 14, 2004
LOVE POEMS BY WOMEN
*A Valentine's Day Special Event!*
A journey through time and across the globe with the voices of women speaking their hearts through verse. Sometimes tender, sometimes angry, often funny and always passionate, the poems of these extraoardinary women show us that, while cultures evolve and borders shift, love has remained constant for more than 4,000 years!
Directed by Pam Myers-Morgan.
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
HANNAH FREE by Claudia Allen
An unusual love story just in time for Valentine's Day! Two women in a nursing home recall the glories and trials of a love that spanned a lifetime. Directed by Pam Dougherty.
Tuesday, December 9, 2003
FREEDOMLAND by Amy Freed
1999: Our annual holiday offering of a whacked out, dysfunctional family play! Directed by Margaret Loft.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
A LATE SNOW by Jane Chambers
1974: Five women trapped by a snowstorm struggle to define their sexuality on their own terms in this groundbreaking work by a pioneering lesbian playwright. Directed by Tyne Vance.
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
HOLY DAYS by Sally Nemeth
1936: A heartbreaking story of two marriages set in the dustbowl of heartland America
Directed by Elizabeth Ware.
Tuesday, September 9, 2003
MISS LULU BETT by Zona Gale
1920: 'An American Comedy of Manners' with 2 different endings to explore. With this play, Gale became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
Directed by Terri Ferguson
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
SAILING TO BYZANTIUM by Sandra Deer
Kensington, London, Spring, 1916. While the Dublin Uprising rages not far away, Olivia and Hope Shakespear host a group of friends -- poets, lovers, ex-lovers, and fierce patriots -- for a brief and winsome reunion. A witty and wistful ode to love and to love's confusing joy. "From what I've observed of love, people don't give their hearts. Their hearts fly out from them and they must follow or not." Directed by Linda Leonard.
Tuesday, April 8, 2003
INDIA SONG by Marguerite Duras
India, 1937. Unseen voices narrate this story of the affair between the haunting Anne-Marie Stretter and the disgraced French vice-consul in Lahore. In the India of 1937, with the smells of laurels and leprosy permeating the air, the characters perform a dance of doomed love to the strains of a dying colonialism. A rarefied work of lyricism, despair and passion, INDIA SONG is imbued with a primitive emotional hunger that is all the more moving for its austere setting. Directed by Sheila Landahl.
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
BEST FRIENDS by Anat Gov
Tel Aviv, the Present. Is it true that girls are always friends in threes, so that any two of them can dissect the other one when she's not present, and so maintain the equilibrium? Brassy, upbeat and authentic, BEST FRIENDS captures the truth -- the love and dependency, the jealousies and gossip, the frankness and support -- of such a threesome from adolescence to middle age. Gov's play has been running for four years in Tel Aviv. In its Israeli context, the play's theme of reconciliation poignantly echoes larger hopes for ethnic and political peace. Directed by Niki Flacks
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
OUR HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY by Jean Kerr
Paris, 1923. Nineteen year-old socialites Emily and Cornelia venture on their first trip to Europe, largely unchaperoned. With hilarious results, they try to shed their provincial and childish ways, embracing all things artistic and Parisian. Based on the autobiography of Cornelia Otis Skinner, this charming and utterly delightful play withstands the passage of the years, evoking the simpler joys and values of a seemingly more innocent time. Perfect for audiences of all ages! Directed by David Fisher.
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
HEAVENLY SOMEWHERE by Sidney Brammer
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas and time for our annual dysfunctional family tale! Written by Austin playwright Sidney Brammer and premiered in an early version in NYC with Ellen Burstyn, this dark comedy wrestles with loneliness, love, family and faith early in the decade of Reagan's America. When weed, booze, speed and profanity don't make a dent in the holiday blues, what will? Directed by Sidney Brammer.
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
NIGHT OF JANUARY 16TH by Ayn Rand
Murder. Adultery. Deceit. Embezzlement. Philosophy. Objectivist philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand's courtroom drama was written sixty years before Court TV -- and it's a real potboiler. Is Karen Andre guilty or not guilty? You decide. A jury of twelve audience members determines the outcome of the case -- and the play! Directed by Patty Lewis.
Tuesday, October 8, 2002
DUMB SUPPER and MUD FLAP GODDESS by Deborah Pryor
A pair of creepy short plays, not for the faint of heart! Two teenage girls in the North Carolina mountains, curious about a local legend, make a DUMB SUPPER at midnight in hopes of seeing their own true lover walk through the door. MUD FLAP GODDESS finds a mother and her grown son living together in a small suburban Virginia house, entwined in a sadistic cat and mouse game involving a forbidden toaster, chicken nuggets, hanks of hair and a padlocked freezer. Directed by James Venhaus and Kristina Baker & Joe Calk.
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
TISSUE by Louise Page
In anticipation of Breast Cancer Awareness month in October, Echo presents TISSUE, one woman's journey through breast cancer. Boldly theatrical, poignant, and funny, TISSUE celebrates struggle, survival and the ultimate triumph of life. Directed by Niki Flacks.
Tuesday, May 7, 2002
VITA AND VIRGINIA: Selected Letters of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West Compiled by Eileen Atkins
Love, lust and literature! Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West met in 1922 and began a nearly twenty-year correspondence which today bears witness to their instant and lifelong friendship. Their adventure was filled with love and expectation, their letters with excitement, hope and verbal caress. And yet, beneath the words, we sense the strange alchemy of love mixed with uncertainty and of compulsion mingled with constraint. Directed by Pam Myers-Morgan.
Tuesday, April 2, 2002
THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK by Naomi Wallace
It is 1936, a town outside a city somewhere in the U.S. Two lonely teens plan to do what no one's ever done, 'run the tracks' on a dare to beat the train over the trestle at Pope Lick Creek. Tough yet beguilingly vulnerable, Pace Creagan and her unassuming friend Dalton Chance experience first love and its tragic consequences in this spare, beautiful and mysterious piece by Naomi Wallace, the multi-award winning playwright of ONE FLEA SPARE and IN THE HEART OF AMERICA. Directed by Elizabeth Rothan.
Tuesday, March 12, 2002
RIO ESMERELDA by Erin Cressida Wilson
It takes an act of enormity to escape forever the world of the mundane. Esmerelda journeys to the Rio Grande to keep a thirty year-old promise to a former lover. A phone booth appears in the desert. Eggs fall from the sky. And renewal is tantalizingly close ... then her daughter appears on the horizon. Sexy and profane, surreal and hilarious, RIO ESMERELDA takes its audience to intimate places of primal truths and achingly irreversible retributions. Directed by Kateri Cale.
Tuesday, February 4, 2002
LOVE ALL by Dorothy L. Sayers
A breezy bon bon about love and loyalty to get you in the Valentine's mood. A villa in Venice and London's theatrical world in 1938 provide the backdrops for this delightful comedy of manners with a feminist twist! One of only two plays written by the popular detective story writer, LOVE ALL features a trademark Sayers heroine: a bright, educated woman working in a man's world. She and a colorful cast of characters amuse you with the unmistakable Sayers touch -- part irony, part whimsy, pure delight! Directed by Kerri Cole.
Tuesday, December 11, 2001
THE CHEMISTRY OF CHANGE
by Marlane Meyer
Prepare for your own holiday season with a dysfunctional
family tale in which the connections between marriage and death, evil and love,
destiny and luck are not as contradictory as you might expect. A domineering
mother, her reproductively-challenged sister, an angry dutiful daughter, 3
slackish sons, and a demon who achieves a state of grace will make your own
family gatherings look like the Waltons. Directed by John Navarro.
Tuesday, November 6, 2001
HE AND SHE by Rachel Crothers
Echo returns to a theme from their debut production,
DREAM OF A COMMON LANGUAGE - artistic rivalry under the same roof - as
conflicts arise between a loving husband and wife, both working artists, when
the woman is forced to choose between motherhood and career. This revival of a
classic feminist drama, by the early 20th century's most esteemed female
playwright, was written in 1911 and was the first comprehensive examination on
stage of the implications of increasing numbers of women professionals. Directed by Linda Leonard.
Tuesday, October 2, 2001
THE WAITING ROOM by Lisa Loomer
Time collapses and women from three different eras - and
three different male-dominated societies - meet in a doctor's waiting room. The
politics of medical care, the dignity of choice, and the link between physical
oppression and psychological oppression make this dark comedy especially timely
in light of our nation's confounding health care industry. Directed by Ellen Locy.
Tuesday, September 4, 2001
GUM by Karen Hartman
Two sisters in a foreign, eerily familiar, yet vaguely
sinister land share a forbidden pleasure, Gum! Join them on their journey from
innocence to experience as they explore their emerging sexuality in a country
where women are not allowed that freedom, a journey which exposes them to great
tenderness and almost incomprehensible savagery at the hands of those who love
them. With poetic beauty, Hartman challenges us to look beyond headlines
directly into the glare of how women are being treated around the globe. Directed by Lisa Lawrence Holland.
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