Department of Performing Arts

The 2010-11 A Season Named Desire features four faculty-directed mainstage productions, as well as an array of special events including visiting international companies and leading professional guest artists, student-written and directed work, and much more.  The centerpiece of the season is our Tenn Cent Fest, a deep and sustained celebration of the work and legacy of Tennessee Williams on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth.  Running throughout the Spring semester and produced in partnership with our friends in the American Studies Program and Arena Stage, the Festival focuses on the extraordinary legacy of the work and life of this infinitely complex and indelible American writer—and on those who influenced him and whom he has influenced.  A Season Named Desire offers an explosion of riches, diverse in form, content, and style.

Throughout the year we will engage work that explores and embodies desire in all its forms, bringing to the fore issues of sexuality, violence and trauma, race and justice, history and the American South, and tolerance. As we explore a remarkable array of plays, fiction, poetry, film scripts, memoirs and letters, the theme of desire emerges in our season not only as content—an expression of our wishes and dreams, yearnings and appetites—but also as a living acknowledgement of the legacy of a writer who inspires us to experiment and take risks, to find new expressive forms, and to not settle for the tried and true.

This sense of experimentation and risk-taking, rooted in rigor and collaboration, is a hallmark of our work at Georgetown—in our classrooms and on our stages.

Order your Flex Pass today (good for four tickets to any combination of the four mainstage shows below) at just $50 for the general public (up to 30% savings), $40 for faculty/staff/alumni/senior (up to 33% savings) and $20 for Georgetown University students (up to 50% savings). 
More information in our box office section.

Blood Wedding
By Federico García Lorca
Based on the translation by Langston Hughes
Directed by Professor Nadia Mahdi
In this elemental reimagining of a classic tragedy, new love is celebrated, an old passion is rekindled, and lovers desperately flee through a moonlit forest where supernatural forces vie for control. Lorca’s sensuous and deeply conflicted exploration of desire, rebellion, and retribution comes to life in this ensemble-driven production based on the Langston Hughes translation.

Thursday-Saturday, October 14-16, 2010 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 2 p.m.
Wednesday-Saturday, October 20-23, 2010 at 8 p.m.
DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE

The Glass Menagerie Project
By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Professor Derek Goldman
This fresh re-envisioning of Williams’ legendary masterpiece, his most autobiographical play, is presented as part of our Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival. Featuring an artistic team comprised of Georgetown students, young alumni,
and faculty, including Professor Sarah Marshall as Amanda Wingfield, the production of this haunting memory play, filled with fragility and stifled yearning, is the centerpiece of The Glass Menagerie Project. The project’s diverse range of events will include readings, adapted work from Williams’ fiction (including Portrait of a Girl in Glass), letters, screenplays, and memoirs, as well as an interactive multimedia installation which uses the scenic world of The Glass Menagerie as an embodied, sensory window into Williams’ life and work. The production and surrounding events are presented at Georgetown and then in June at the new Mead Center for American Theater as part of GU’s partnership with Arena Stage.
Thursday-Saturday, February 24-26 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, February 27 at 2 p.m.
Thursday-Saturday, March 17-19 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, March 20 at 2 p.m.
Wednesday-Sunday, March 23-27 (times TBA due to festival programming)
DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, GONDA THEATRE


Tenn Cent Fest is produced in partnership with Georgetown’s American Studies Program and C74.

Suddenly Last Summer
By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Professor Maya E. Roth
This riveting American gothic classic unfolds as a shocking mystery, probing the haunting death of a poet visiting Europe with his cousin, a young woman now charged as being insane. Creative and destructive forces collide in Williams’ controversial, expressionistic play which probes the violence of human nature and homophobia with charismatic characters and poetic force. Presented as part of our Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival (Tenn Cent Fest) and, at selected
performances, paired with resonant performance excerpts from playwright Adrienne Kennedy and from Williams’ own writings on memory and yearning.
Thursday-Saturday, April 7-9, 2011 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, April 10, 2011 at 2 p.m.
Thursday and Friday, April 14 and 15, 2011 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, April 16, 2011 at 2 and 8 p.m.
DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE

Tenn Cent Fest is produced in partnership with Georgetown’s American Studies Program and C74.

The Omnivore's Dilemma
Based on the book by Michael Pollan
Written, Conceived, and Directed by Natsu Onoda Power
Professor Natsu Onoda Power (Madness & Civilization, Trees and Ghosts) once again brings her singular vision
as an adapter, director and designer to transform a powerful non-fiction text into an unconventional and memorable performative event. This ensemble-based stage adaptation of Michael Pollan’s best-selling book moves from the corn fields of Iowa, to a small organic farm in Virginia, to America’s dinner tables, grocery stores, and fast-food emporiums. The production engages the question: “What should we have for dinner?” — a quandary which Pollan says has confronted us since man discovered fire, and the answer to which may well determine our very survival as a species.
July 27-30, 2011 (Times TBA)
DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, GONDA THEATRE 

In addition to the mainstage shows, read more about the 2010-11 special events, including Theater and Performance Studies Senior Thesis Projects, DAH Teatar, The Underpass, the Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival, and additional Arena Stage partnership events.