Synetic Theater has dialed up its customary quota of Silent Shakespeare productions for its 2018-2019 season, but the new theatrical year will also mark another production for Synetic Family Theater and the company’s New Voices project.
The Synetic season will kick off with a reprise of its 2011 production of King Lear, which DCTS’ Jayne Blanchard said was “one of the most hauntingly beautiful things I’ve ever seen” when she reviewed it seven years ago. Synetic Artistic Director Paata Tsikurisvili will once play the monarch who unwisely took early retirement in a production which will run from October 17 to November 11, 2018.
Synetic’s Family Theater will hold the stage over the holiday season with My Father’s Dragon, a wordless adaptation of the 1949 Newberry Medal runner-up of the same name by Ruth Stiles Gannett. This is a story of a young boy who, upon the advice of a cat, travels to the fearsome Wild Island to rescue a dragon. If you’d like to check the story out to see if it’s one your young’un would like (Synetic suggests that it’s suitable for children from age five upward), it’s available for free via the Gutenberg Press. My Father’s Dragon will run from December 4 of this year until January 6 of the next.
Cyrano, Edmond Rostand’s story of a man whose wit, high-quality conversation and poetic utterances of love draw attention away from his immense nose, may seem a counterintuitive way for the movement-based Synetic to start the new year. But another one of Cyrano de Bergerac’s virtues was his incredible swordsmanship, and Synetic promises to use its “acrobatic prowess to tell the tale of this hopeless romantic.” Cyrano is most prominently remembered as a man who fed smooth romantic lines to a good-looking, tongue-tied dullard who was courting the woman Cyrano loved, thus becoming the first press agent in history. From February 6 to March 9, 2019.
The Bard assumes the stage once more for Synetic’s production of Richard III in May. In it, as per the usual, the last Plantagenet King of England acquires the throne through a dazzling combination of gleeful murders, misanthropic marriages and searing speeches… and, in Synetic’s version, without uttering a word. From May 18 to June 9 of next year.
Although Synetic specializes in wordless productions, it has room for new voices — specifically its New Voices initiative, which, Synetic says, “allows local DC area theater professionals to create, choreograph, cast, and direct an original adaptation.” The original adaptation this year will be of the Robert Louis Stevenson coming-of-age novel, “Treasure Island“, the tale of a young man who has discovered a treasure map in the belongings of a deceased guest of his father’s inn. Armed with the map and the company of some sturdy adults, Jim Hawkins thereafter battles mutineers and pirates for an equity stake in the loot. Synetic has not yet announced which local theater professionals will adapt and stage this production, which will run from July 17 to August 19 of 2019.
Synetic states that all of its shows except for My Father’s Dragon are suitable for ages thirteen and older. My Father’s Dragon is suitable for those five years and older.
Season tickets to Synetic are available by clicking here.
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