A.R.T. Announces 2009-2010 Season

The American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts has announced its 2009-2010 season, programmed by new artistic director Diane Paulus.

The season begins in September with the interactive musical The Donkey Show, co-directed by Paulus and husband Randy Weiner, based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Up next, British company Punchdrunk will present Sleep No More, inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth, to be followed by Best of Both Worlds, an R&B-flavored musical by Paulus, Weiner, and Dierdre Murray, along with a production of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale starring the students from the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training.

In January, the company will present the first two parts of Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz, based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, followed in February by Daniel Fish’s production of Clifford Odets’ Paradise Lost. In May, Paulus will direct Red Sox Nation, a new musical with a book by Richard Dresser, music by Robert Reale, and lyrics by Willie Reale, that will trace the origin of the famed “Red Sox Curse” to a collision of three orphaned souls: Johnny O’Brien, a hard-luck right-hander on the 1919 Sox; his idol, the man-child Babe Ruth; and Daisy Wyatt, a dazzling African American blues singer and the love of Johnny’s life.

That month, A.R.T. will also join forces with the Huntington Theatre Company and the Institute of Contemporary Art to create Emerging America, an annual festival of performance and readings.

For more information, visit www.amrep.org.