Long Wharf Theatre has announced the productions for its 2012-2013 season, which will begin with Terry Teachout’s Satchmo at the Waldorf (October 3-November 4). This one-man play focuses on the complex relationship between trumpet player Louis Armstrong and his longtime manager, Joe Glaser. Gordon Edelstein will direct the production, which stars John Douglas Thompson.
Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award-winning comedy of manners without manners, God of Carnage (November 28 – December 23), translated by Christopher Hampton, will be next. In it, a shoolyard scuffle between two kids takes on epic proportions when their parents get involved.
Eric Ting will direct the world premiere of Laura Jacqmin’s January Joiner (January 9-February 10, 2013), which takes a look at the denizens in a “Total Xtreme Weight Loss Boot Camp.”
Judith Ivey will star in Sam Shepard’s modern classic Curse of the Starving Class (February 13-March 10), directed by Edelstein. The play centers on the dead broke Tate Family, where Dad and Mom hatch schemes, independent of each other, to sell the family farm out from underneath their two children.
The world premiere of William Mastrosimone’s Ride the Tiger (March 27-April 21), directed by Edelstein, is a dramatic interpretation of the events leading up to the election of John F. Kennedy as president.
The season will close with Bruce Norris’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Clybourne Park (May 8-June 2), directed by Ting. Inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun the first act is set in 1959 as a nervous group of neighbors trying to talk their friends out of selling their home to a black family, and the second is set 60 years later, as a white family attempts to move into the now predominantly African-American neighborhood.