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Arts at ASU 2016-17 Season Subscriptions Available

May 27, 2016

Subscriptions are now available for Angelo State University’s 2016-17 Arts at ASU season, which will include six theatre productions and at least 10 music concerts and recitals by the ASU Symphony Orchestra, Wind Ensemble, Concert Choir and various other ensembles.

Subscriptions cost $30 per person and allow admission to all Arts at ASU events. Subscribers also have the option of reserving seats for theatre productions two days before the general public. Dinner theatre events are an additional $15 per person to cover the cost of the meal, and subscribers are offered the option of skipping the meal and the extra $15 payment.

Theatre performances will include comedies, musicals and dramas, beginning with the summer dinner theatre production of “Baby With the Bathwater” June 30-July 3 and July 7-9 in the ASU Modular Theatre. A second summer dinner theatre, “Things My Mother Taught Me,” will run July 21-24 and 28-30 in the Modular Theatre, which is located in the Carr Education-Fine Arts Building, 2602 Dena Drive.

Written by Christopher Durang, praised as one of “theatre’s most provocative and inventive writers,” “Baby With the Bathwater” takes a sharply satiric look at parenthood. The play, which premiered in 1983, opens with new parents so inept they are embarrassed to check on their child’s gender, and then follows the trials and tribulations of that child, a boy named Daisy. It has been staged from New York City to Brisbane, Australia, to critical acclaim.

Described as “funny and touching,” “Things My Mother Taught Me” is a contemporary comedy first staged in 2012. Written by Katherine DeSavino, the play opens with a couple moving into their first apartment, only to find all their parents have shown up to help. This generational look at relationships will remind the audience of how parents often pass their best lessons on to their children without even meaning to.

Mike BurnettAsst. Director, University Theatre Mike Burnett
Asst. Director, University Theatre
The first theatre production of the fall semester will be William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy set in ancient Rome, “Julius Caesar,” which will run Oct. 7-9 and 14-15 in the University Auditorium. The play, adapted by Dr. Erin Ashworth-King of ASU’s English faculty, is a memorable tale of power, ambition and betrayal that focuses on the fall of Julius Caesar, slain in a conspiracy and avenged after the stirring “friends, Romans, and countrymen” speech by Mark Antony. The auditorium is located in the Mayer Administration Building, 2601 W. Avenue N.

Arts at ASU’s traditional Holiday Dinner Theatre will be a comedy based on the popular novel “Little Women” and will run Dec. 1-4 and 8-10 in the Modular Theatre. Playwright Peter Clapham has faithfully adapted the adventures of Civil War-era sisters Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy from Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel. A highlight is the Christmas scene in which the girls spend their own holiday money on presents for their mother.

The 2017 spring semester will feature two productions made famous on both stage and screen. The first, “Spitfire Grill,” will run Feb. 16-19 and 23-25 in the Modular Theatre. The musical drama by James Valcq and Fred Alley is based on the 1996 film of the same name directed by Lee David Zlotoff, featuring a feisty parolee finding a place for herself at a depressed town’s only eatery, the Spitfire Grill. The musical premiered Off-Broadway in New York in 2001,

The final production of the 2016-17 season will be “Doubt, A Parable” by John Patrick Shanley, which will run April 27-30 and May 4-6 in the Modular Theatre. The play, focusing on a nun’s suspicions about a priest’s behavior toward a student at a Catholic school, won both the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. It was adapted into a 2008 film starting Philip Seymour Hoffman as the priest and Meryl Streep as the nun. 

Arts at ASU’s musical events are scheduled during the fall and spring semesters and include concerts by such performance groups as the ASU Symphony Orchestra, Wind Ensemble, Jazz Ensemble, Concert Chorale and other ensembles, as well as recitals by faculty members and students. More details will be available after classes begin in August and January. The schedule will also be available online at www.angelo.edu/arts.