Forum Theatre’s fifteenth season will include a revival of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Forum’s sensational hit from its 2007-2008 season, from May 22 to June 14.
“We anticipate that we will have about 50% of the (original) cast” for next year’s production, Managing Director Julia Harman Cain said. She pointed out that some members of the original cast had left the area.
Guirgis, whose Motherfucker with the Hat is currently running at Studio, here writes a story about the day, nearly two thousand years after his death, that Judas Iscariot finally gets his day in court to defend himself against the charge that he betrayed Jesus Christ. Mother Theresa and Sigmund Freud appear as witnesses to debate the concepts of sin and personal responsibility, and Satan and Jesus also appear. It is not until nearly the end of the play that we begin to understand what truly is happening, and who is really on trial.
Judas Iscariot’s visit to purgatory is not the only bit of travelling Forum will be doing next season. In its season opener, Agnes Under the Big Top, people from Liberia, India, and Bulgaria have come to New York to brighten their dingy dreams; things do not work out as planned. The New York Times’ Sylviane Gold called the Steinberg-nominated Agnes “rich in feeling, wide in scope, teeming with poetry and sprinkled with Bulgarian.” It will run from September 5 to 28, 2013.
The world premiere of Meena’s Dream takes us to the South of India, where a seven-year-old girl prays for her mother’s recovery by day and by night dreams that the Lord God Krishna has enlisted her in His fight against the Worry Machine. Meena’s Dream, by the Washington-are playwright Anu Yadav, has received significant recent development at Arena Stage and the Clarice Smith Center. It will run from January 8-19 of next year.
Finally, with Steve Yockey’s Pluto, Forum will go to – well, not Pluto exactly, but some place equally weird. A single mom wants to reset her relationship with her withdrawn son, but the intervention of a talking dog, angry appliances and the like are getting in the way. Forum’s production of Pluto, scheduled for February 20 to March 14, 2014, is part of a National New Play Network sponsored rolling premiere.
Forum’s fifth production, slated for July of next year, has not been announced.
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