Nobel Prize winning playwright Harold Pinter?s The Homecoming is Featured Production
Seaside, FL ? The Seaside Repertory Theatre?s 9th annual Autumn Playwright Festival will celebrate the brilliant career of Harold Pinter, and will feature the playwright?s multiple Tony Award-winning drama The Homecoming. The Festival will take place October 7-17, and activities will include the main stage production, receptions, panel discussions, a movie screening, play readings, and a radio play broadcast on 30-A Radio. The production will take place in Seaside?s Meeting Hall Theatre, and the other activities will occur in various locations on Scenic Highway 30-A. For more information on the festival, and to order tickets, visit www.seasiderep.org.
One of the most important English playwrights of the last half of the 20th century and the most influential of his generation, Harold Pinter wrote what have been called ?comedies of menace.? Using apparently commonplace characters and settings, he invests his plays with an atmosphere of fear, horror, and mystery. His austere language is extremely distinctive, as is the ominous unease it provokes, and he possibly the only writer to have both an adjective (Pinteresque) and a dramatic device (The Pinter Pause) named after him and his unique style. He has won many prestigious honors, the crowning of which was the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature.
First published in 1965, the original Broadway production of The Homecoming won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for "Best Revival of a Play." Set in North London, The Homecoming is the story of an expatriate philosophy professor who returns home to introduce his wife of several years to his working-class family. What transpires is the subject of much debate among scholars and dramatists, but the actual sequence of events is of less importance than the fascinating interplay between the characters, which is at times hilarious, menacing, and absurd.
The Homecoming is directed by Rep Founding Executive Director Craige Hoover and will star Rep veterans Anne Marie Carroll, Bruce Collier, David Ebert, Don Goodrum, Dustin Harding, and Brook Stetler. Mary Kay Samouce will once again design the set.
?This is truly one of the great plays of the last half-century, written by one of the most influential and important playwright?s of all time,? says director Craige Hoover. ?The characters are all so wonderfully quirky, and this cast might be the best we?ve ever assembled.
In addition to the Homecoming, the festival will also includes a Sunday Brunch with Pinter, as well as a broadcast of a two of Pinter?s radio plays on 30A Radio. The Brunch will be held the Great Southern Caf? in Seaside at 11am on Sunday October 11. Actors will read selections from Pinter?s enormous canon of plays, short stories and essays, and Rep Artistic Director Craige Hoover will be on hand to discuss the life and influences of Pinter to modern dramatic literature. Tickets to the Brunch are $29 and can be reserved by emailing the theatre at info@seasiderep.org or by calling the box office at 850-231-0733. The Radio broadcast will occur on Monday October 8 at 8pm, and can be heard locally by tuning to 107.1FM, and online at www.30aradio.org.
The 2009 Rep season has been sponsored by Pizitz Home and the Cottage Rental Agency. The Autumn Playwright Festival is an Autumn Tides signature event. For more information on Autumn Tides, visit Northwest Florida Beach Vacation Guide - Beaches of South Walton
. I think it says something about a community whan you can actually do that and not have people take advantage of it. See ya there!!
