Theater News

Boston Playwrights’ Theatre Announces 2008-2009 Season, Zinn Fest

Boston Playwrights’ Theatre has announced selections for its 2008-2009 season, which will begin with Miss Margaret LaRue in ‘Milwaukee’, written & directed by Wesley Savick, October 9-26. The piece is an homage to all of our hometowns — the ones we abandoned for the bright lights and the fascinating, exciting lives we saw ahead of us.

Next up will be The Oil Thief (November 6-23), written by Joyce Van Dyke, directed by Judy Braha, and featuring Melinda Lopez as Amy, a petroleum geologist, and Will Lyman as her long-time partner Rex. The play explores the geological rift between lovers unexpectedly in crisis.

Howard Zinn’s Daughter of Venus, to be directed by Wesley Savick, will follow, January 22-February 8. Performed both at the C. Walsh Theatre at Suffolk University and at BPT, the work shows us a family in pain, a mother too fragile to carry the weight of her husbands desires, and a father and daughter emotionally distant to the point of despair.

The season will conclude with The Wrestling Patient (March 27-April 11), written by Kirk Lynn in collaboration with Katie Pearl & Anne Gottlieb, and directed by Pearl. Based on the true story of Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish writer, this extraordinary new play chronicles Ettys remarkable journey into the emerging science of psychology just as WWII engulfs her native Amsterdam.

In related news, Daughter of Venus will be produced in conjunction with Suffolk University’s “Zinn Fest,” a city-wid theater celebration of the work of Howard Zinn, who is a Visiting Professor in the Suffolk University College of Arts and Sciences in 2008-2009.

Additional “Zinn Fest” events will include Emma, a reading of Dr. Zinn’s play about controversial 19th-century anarchist Emma Goldman, directed by Marilyn Plotkins, October 28; Shouting Theatre in a Crowded Fire, inspired by the writings of Howard Zinn and written and directed by Wesley Savick, November 20-22; and a staged reading of Zinn’s Marx in Soho, directed by David Wheeler at Central Square Theater, March 6-7.