Theater News

Works by Athol Fugard, Conor McPherson, Anna Ziegler Highlight Fountain’s 2009 Season

Conor McPherson
(© Joseph Marzullo/Retna)
Conor McPherson
(© Joseph Marzullo/Retna)

The Fountain Theatre has announced programming for its 2009 season of new plays. The theater is currently presenting August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, which has been nominated for 8 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards and continues through February 22.

Next up will be Anna Ziegler’s Photograph 51 (March 14-May 3), about Rosalind Franklin, a brilliant and passionate young scientist whose groundbreaking study led to the historic discovery of DNA. Simon Levy will direct this West Coast premiere.

In the summer, Fountain will present Athol Fugard’s Coming Home, in which the playwright returns to characters he created in Valley Song to take a contemporary look at his native South Africa. Stephen Sachs directs Ovation Award-winner Deidrie Henry and LADCC Award nominee Adolphus Ward. Morlan Higgins and William Dennis Hurley will star in the Los Angeles premiere of Conor McPherson’s Shining City, a modern-day ghost story set in Dublin. Stephen Sachs will direct this Fall 2009 production.

In addition, the Fountain’s ongoing production of Forever Flamenco! will receive a special event at the Ford Amphitheatre on August 1. It will also remount its hit from last season, Bernard Weinraub’s The Accomplices (April 24-June 14). Based on the true story of Jewish activist Hillel Kook (aka Peter Bergson), the play explores what the U.S. government and American Jews did and didn’t do to help Jews fleeing the Nazis during WWII.

For more information, call 323-663-1525, or visit www.FountainTheatre.com.