MISS BENTON’S HISTORY LESSON

a play of Little Rock 1957

Little Rock Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957. A late October afternoon. There has been an incident in the cafeteria. Wayne Bob, a white student, has yelled racist slurs at Lorella Mae, a new female black student attending Central High under the federal protection of the local National Guard. Lorella Mae has dumped her bowl of red bean chili over Wayne Bob’s head. The obstacle: Wayne Bob is a fan of Miss Benton’s American History class and that lady’s unique perspective on the Negro Problem in America. Lorella Mae is out to change that. At home, Miss Benton faces an unexpected adversary.

A KIND OF MARRIAGE

For forty years British novelist E.M. Forster lived in an intimate domestic relationship with a London policeman Bob Buckingham and his wife May.  Sometimes love takes three.

SWIMMING AT THE RITZ

It’s Paris, 1995. The legendary Pamela Churchill Harriman, U. S. Ambassador to France, is alone in a suite at the Hôtel Ritz, except for Pietro her Italian hotel valet. Pamela, daughter-in-law of Sir Winston Churchill, adventuress, socialite, the maker of a U.S. President, and considered to be the most famous courtesan of the twentieth century, faces her most challenging crisis. You are cordially invited to Pamela’s sale of a lifetime–—which includes the Picasso, the Renoir, the Matisse and a sensational, no holds barred account of her amazing exploits. For the Queen of Survivors, it's that time again...SINK OR SWIM!

The 2010/11 UK Tour supported by The Arts Council England

www.swimmingattheritz.net

CHEZ RIKERS

Comedy-Drama.   An indefinite future.  Evening.  A prison cell on Rikers Island, New York City.  Meg and Sam Massey, a well-to-do couple in their sixties, find themselves and their neighbors held in protective custody as Manhattan streets rage with fire bombs and police sirens.  Meg and Sam are certain they will be placed in a limousine and returned to their Park Avenue apartment—as soon as the squatters are removed.  In the meantime, they experience a decidedly unsentimental education in class distinctions and urban politics.

THE ADOLF I KNEW

a play of collective memory

The city of Vienna, Austria, the winter 1909. A church courtyard.  The sound of convent bells ringing.  Young Adolf, 20, hatless, homeless, and destitute, joins the line of the shuffling unemployed at the convent soup kitchen.  Adolf longs to be an artist and to match the achievements of his idol Wagner, but circumstances, fate and the Vienna winter seem to have a different destiny in mind for him.  The citizens of Vienna remember him well.

DEATH & RESURRECTION IN CLEVELAND

Comedy-Drama.  Husband and wife actors, Edward Moorehouse and Mary Lawrence are on stage dressed for a funeral.  But for whom?  Mary suggests they improvise Edward’s life story while waiting for the corpse.  Joined by the theatre custodian, an amateur actress from the Huntington Drama Society, and a music student from the local high school, they set about playing Edward’s life.  A comedy of mortality that explores the healing powers of the theatrical imagination.

UNDERFOOT IN SHOW BUSINESS

Adapted from

the memoir by Helene Hanff

Comedy.  Helene Hanff, the celebrated author whose passion for books led her to 84, Charing Cross Road, relives her maddening and comic early years as a struggling playwright—and of her unrequited love affair with the Golden Age of the New York theatre.