Michael Stebbins, whose eight-year tenure as Rep Stage Artistic Director ended earlier this month, will appear in next season’s production of the solo play, I Am My Own Wife, the company announced yesterday.
Stebbins will play Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (and over forty other characters) in the production, an East German transvestite who managed to not only survive the Nazis and the Communists but to prosper as well, becoming a well-known antiquarian whose collection was spectacularly risqué for the times. von Mahlsdorf, a real person, also survived the depredations of her own father, who she eventually killed. Among the characters Stebbins will play is the playwright Doug Wright, who interviewed von Mahlsdorf to create the work. Jefferson Mays whose performance earned him a Best Actor Tony, appeared here in the role in 2005. Tony Tsendeas will direct this production, which will run from October 30 to November 17, 2013.
Stebbins will also direct the season’s opener, Horton Foote’s A Young Lady of Property, which will run from September 11 to 29 of this year. A Young Lady of Property tells the story of a fifteen-year-old girl who has inherited the family home from her mother. However, her father lives there (the girl lives with her aunt) and when he decides to remarry he also decides to sell the house.
Rep Stage will kick off 2014 with Julia Cho’s The Piano Teacher, a mystery which the New York Times’ Charles Isherwood calls “an effective little chiller.” The Piano Teacher tells the story of Mrs. K., an elderly lady who has taught piano for many years and whose stream of quotidian reminiscences are gradually interrupted by a darker, more hidden, history. You should not confuse Cho’s The Piano Teacher, which will run from February 5 to 23, 2014 under the direction of Kasi Campbell, with the movie by the same name, which is about a Viennese piano teacher’s obsession with one of her students.
The company will close out its season with The Fantasticks, the Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones musical which had a run of 17,162 off-Broadway performances. The Fantasticks is a tale of a couple thrown together by their fathers’ feigned efforts to keep them apart; when they discover the parental deception they go their separate ways to discover the wicked world – a decision they have cause to regret. The Fantasticks, under the direction of Nancy Tarr Hart, will run from April 30 to May 18 of next year.
More details can be found here. Tickets go on sale for Rep Stage’s 21st season on July 1, 2013.
