Zeitgeist Stage '08 - '09 Season

Zeitgeist Stage Company will kick-off its eight season with the American premiere of the original three act version of Edward Albee's Seascape, October 3 through 25 at the Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theater.

Seascape is one of Edward Albee's most expressionistic works, depicting an encounter between a retirement age couple picnicking on a beach when they meet another couple, who happen to be lizards – as in reptiles – coming up from the depths of the ocean. Mr. Albee originally wrote Seascape as a three act play, and that version was presented in Vienna and The Hague prior to the show's Broadway premiere. The author was directing the original Broadway production, and he decided to cut it from three acts to two. As Mr. Albee told The New York Times in a 1975 interview, "At one point, part of it took place at the bottom of the sea. It was not necessary, too fantastic and very hard to construct a set that could transform itself. It was turning into a play about set changes." With the excision of the underwater act,Seascape became the well known two act version which went on to win the 1975 Pulitzer Prize. Zeitgeist Stage is pleased to have received permission directly from the playwright to present Seascape in its original three act version for the first time for an American audience. (Talk about a coup de theatre!)

Both the length and technical challenges of the three act Seascape are embraced by Zeitgeist Stage Company, renowned in Boston for their recent epic productions of Stuff Happens and The Kentucky Cycle, which both won Elliot Norton Awards for Outstanding Fringe Theater Productions. The Seascape cast features Peter Brown (Stuff Happens, The Kentucky Cycle) and Michelle Dowd (The Story, Bee-luther-hatchee) as the retirement age couple, with Claude Del (Flesh and Blood) and Emma Goodman (The Kentucky Cycle) as the lizards. The production will be directed by Zeitgeist Stage Company's Artistic Director, David J. Miller.

Bad Jazz, by Robert Farquhar, chronicles the lives of young artists in pursuit of a shared dream, as an actress takes a role that puts her sanity at risk, an actor struggles to remain true to his artistic ideals, and a director drives his company past the point of reason. When the lines between reality and performance begin to blur, relationships are tested and this group of desperate souls is forced to ask themselves how far they're prepared to go for art's sake. In The New York Times, Neil Genzlinger wrote, "The play is an all-out assault on pretentious theater directors and the idiot actors who follow their commands in the interest of realism. And Mr. Farquhar has a wonderful way of being droll and outrageous at the same time." Zeitgeist Stage will present the New England premiere of Bad Jazz from January 30 through February 21, 2009 in the Plaza Black Box Theater at the Boston Center for the Arts.

Spring Awakening, the play by Frank Wedekind, has been called the most censored play in theater history. The complete, unadulterated text was not performed until 1974, eight-two years after it was written in 1891. The play explores the conflict between repressive adulthood and adolescent sexual longings in a provincial town in Germany at the turn of the last century. Wedekind's play was the basis for the Tony Award winning musical of the same name. Zeitgeist Stage will be presenting Wedekind's original play in a new adaptation by Artistic Director David Miller based on a direct translation by Reinhold Mahler, who is both Mr. Miller's partner and a German native. The play will be presented April 17 through May 9, 2009 in the Plaza Black Box Theater at the Boston Center for the Arts. The run will overlap a few weeks with the musical Spring Awakening's National Tour which will play the Colonial Theater in Boston from April 28 through May 24, 2009.