For its 28th season, Washington Stage Guild presents “The Season of Dreams”, “four plays that examine the need to see beyond the mundane in order to create, to survive, to develop, to live.” The plays are by American playwright Steven Deitz, Londoner Simon Gray, Ingvar Ambjørnsen from Norway, and George Bernard Shaw.
“Art of any kind is imagination expressed, whether in words or images,” says Artistic Director Bill Largess. “This season we’ll focus on our need to dream things that are not real in order to make them so. Painters, poets, critics, scientists, and even a creative fraud or two will show up on stage at the Undercroft Theatre this year.”
The season begins with Steven Dietz’ Inventing Van Gogh (Oct 31 through Nov 24, 2013), “a time-twisting look at Van Gogh and his legacies, both real and fake, as a contemporary young painter is hired to forge a lost painting, but then must justify his decisions to Vincent himself.”
WSG stays in the world of art, moving to the business side with Simon Gray’s The Old Masters (Jan 2 through Jan 26, 2014), concerning art critic Bernard Berenson, a dealer and a painting now owned by the National Gallery of Art.
What will follow will be the most ambitious project in WSG’s history – presentation of the rarely seen play cycle Back to Methuselah by George Bernard Shaw, which will be presented over the next several years, ending with the company’s 30th anniversary celebration. “The cycle begins in the Garden of Eden and ends 30,000 years in the future, one of the first plays written that can truly be called science fiction.” This season they present In the Beginning (set at the time of Adam and Eve) and The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas (in the present.)
The season will close with the comedy Elling based on the popular novel by Ingvar Ambjørnsen (April 24 through May 18, 2014), “a touching and humorous story of two misfits who make their way through life together, and find that poetry gives them both a voice and a purpose.”
Interspersed throughout the season will be Washington Stage Guild’s popular reading season, all four readings nicely matched to the full productions on stage. Full details for the season and tickets are available here.
All performances take place at the conveniently located Undercroft Theatre of Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church , 900 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, DC.
