Season Schedule
We’re getting the band back together!
Four of your favorites from Smokey Joe’s Café return with a
few new friends!
There's no better way to spend a summer evening than to be dancing in the aisles, entertained by Five guys named Moe and one named Nomax! Five Guys Named Moe will do just that with favorite songs like Caldonia, Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying, Saturday Night Fish Fry and Push Ka Pi Shi Pie. With more than 20 songs in a jam-packed evening, there will be toes tapping, loads of laughs, and maybe even some audience involvement!
About 5 Guys: Nomax, whose girlfriend has left him and who is at rock bottom, finds Big Moe, Four-Eyed Moe, Eat Moe, No Moe, and Little Moe emerging from his radio to pull him out of his misery and teach him some life lessons through the hit songs of songwriter and saxophonist Louis Jordan, whose new slant on jazz paved the way for rock and roll in the 1950s.
What happens when the funniest Russian from the 19th century meets the funniest American from the 20th century?
Two Comic Masters.
One Hysterical Night!
From the comic genius who gave the world The Odd Couple and The Sunshine Boys, Neil Simon has concocted another hysterical night in the theatre! Using the whimsical stories of Anton Chekov for inspiration, Simon gives us an evening of unbridled hilarity as we meet such characters as a dentist at his first day on the job, a lowly employee who makes the mistake of sneezing on his boss' head and the greatest lover of all time!
Ivy League-educated businessman Harmond Wilks could become Pittsburgh’s first African American mayor. But will secrets from the past derail him from his country club future?
How can African Americans achieve success in a country where they still are a minority in numbers and wealth? That’s the intriguing issue posed by Radio Golf, the last play in August Wilson’s twentieth century cycle.
Harmond Wilks is a real estate developer who intends to use his newest and biggest project as a platform for a campaign to become Pittsburgh’s first African American mayor. He, his business partner Roosevelt Hicks, and his wife Mame prepared to gain power and prestige through the front door, in contrast to Sterling Johnson's approach, an entrepreneurial lone construction worker who gets by through the back door in life.
One of America’s greatest playwrights weaves a tragic story about two families torn apart in the aftermath of World War II.
Arthur Miller's Tony Award-winning masterpiece tells the story of two families in the days after World War II. Joe Keller and Herb Deever were once united in business but now torn apart by an unspeakable crime. When Joe's son, Chris, proposes to Herb's daughter, Ann, he unleashes a flood of family secrets and hidden skeletons that will forever change both families.
Cole Porter’s wit meets Shakespeare’s humor in one of American theatre’s most beloved musical comedies.
Sparks fly onstage and off in this raucous and romantic backstage story!
Cole Porter’s wit meets Shakespeare’s humor in one of American Theater’s most beloved musical comedies. Kiss Me Kate is the raucous and romantic backstage story of a musical out of town in 1948. It's "Too Darn Hot" in Baltimore where formerly married actors Fred and Lilli are cast opposite each other in a musical version of "The Taming of the Shrew." The sparks fly onstage and off using a classic score which includes "So in Love," "Another Op'nin', Another Show," "From This Moment On," and "Brush Up Your Shakespeare."
Come spend an evening at the Grand Hotel Berlin. It’s 1928, and the optimism between World Wars is in full swing.
For some.
Based on the novel by Vicki Baum and subsequent MGM feature film, the seamless musical captures the high life and optimism of Berlin in 1928 through a powerful and sweeping score. The world's most expensive hotel brings together a collection of rich characters, both wealthy and poor, where "one life ends while another begins", and "one heart breaks while another beats faster".
When machines do everything for us, what will we do with ourselves?
Inspired by the
modern classic R.U.R.
by Karel Capek
And as our technology evolves, what might it become? Gizmos, alternate beings neither human nor machine, born to serve. In the upcoming Penn State Centre Stage production of Gizmo, the new play by award-winning playwright Anthony Clarvoe, your gizmo could be “your loved one. Returned to you. Permanent. Immortal life.” So says, Faber, the soulful, young artist played by Lance Beilstein. Meanwhile, a driven engineer (Carrie McNulty) designs ever-more-powerful beings (“This is a tool. My tool. I made it… The hammer did not drive the nail.”), and a visionary scientist (Kira Lace Hawkins) works to hack the system that shackles their intelligence (“They can do so much, just processing data. Think what they could do with knowledge.”). All the while, gizmos continue to develop beyond what anyone believed possible, and they want only one thing: to serve “users”, their human masters. But as Shakespeare cautioned: “If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work.” Or, put another way: “Be careful what you wish for."
More about Gizmo. . .
Gizmo is a play that takes place in the future. How far in the future depends on whom you believe... 100 years? There are still bars, and homes, and public spaces, but our technology has developed so far that we've gone from smart phones to smart people, or machines if you will, that we've created to store all of our information, handle our tasks, process our data. But what happens when we continue to add more variables, more apps, more human functionality? Gizmos are flesh mechanisms, manufactured to serve. We see three generations of increasing fluency and superficial semblance to humanity. They do not aspire to be real live people. They are not cute, or sentimental, or evil. They are other than that.
As to the people: We've become a slaveholding society. Cavalier recklessness, pride and high honor, entitlement and the ever-present risk of terminal indolence. The antebellum South, feudal Japan, imperial Rome.
What it's like to work on a new play. . .
Anthony Clarvoe:
“Anytime you have a scene where the scene partners want vastly different things from each other really urgently there’s a lot of potential for drama.. and for comedy. I think one of the fun things about it has been to discover how much humor there is in these relationships where there’s this constant misunderstanding, this constant frustration, this constant miscommunication and this sort of helpless dependency. These are all ingredients for comedy.”
(Carrie McNulty and Erik Raymond Johnson rehearse a scene from GIZMO.)
Dan Carter:
“I think it’s been great to work with the actors and I think it’s been a good experience for them too because in addition to working on the characters, the individual characters they’ve been working on, they’re also understanding how a play comes together. I mean it’s easy to dissect an existing play and say what makes this play so great? What is it now? But to see how it comes together and then how it changes, and how what they bring to the table actually impacts the rewriting. It all just doesn’t come sprung full-blown from Anthony’s head, but some of it is in response to the revelations that we get through seeing them and hearing their words and their voices. In just this trip there were a number of pretty profound – simple, but profound changes, and I think that’s hopefully one of the differences in being someone who’s quote “just an actor” and someone who is a person of the theatre. An educated person of the theatre as well as an actor, to say “Ok well, hmm this used to be my favorite line and now it goes to somebody else but this is why it’s better, this is why these changes are made, and I just got to experience a play getting better.”.
Penn State Downtown Theatre Center
Created by Larry Gallagher
Directed by Amy Anders Corcoran
Last seen on our stage in 2001 . . .Who can get enough of Beehive?
Six wailing women, a hot six-piece band, fifty outrageous costumes and wigs, and fifteen cans of hairspray a week can only mean one thing–BEEHIVE, the ’60s musical sensation, is back on our stage!
Beehive is a high-energy musical revue tracing the legendary music of the 1960s through thirty-seven popular hits of the girl groups and solo singers of the era. The Chiffons, The Supremes, Tina Turner, and Aretha Franklin are just some of the pop stars portrayed by the super talented cast. Hear such favorites as “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “One Day,” “Where the Boys Are,” “Downtown,” “Proud Mary,” and “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”
Penn State Downtown Theatre Center
Book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro and music by Jimmy Roberts
Directed by Cary Libkin
Last seen on our stage in 2003 . . .It’s time for a refresher course in LOVE!
What could be better than a return smash hit musical comedy about everything you have ever secretly thought about dating, romance, marriage, lovers, husbands, wives, and in-laws, but were afraid to admit?
Off-Broadway's longest running musical, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change is a musical comedy about love in suburbia. It has been described as "Seinfeld set to music." The talented comedic actors play over 40 roles as they explore the various ups and downs of love and different types of relationships. From single life to dating to marriage to the end of relationships, this play explores the whole cycle with humor, emotion, and insight. Perfect for anyone who's ever experienced the ups and downs of modern romance, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change has inspired at least 57 proposals in its own audience, each of them answered with a "yes." Come see this inspiring, laugh-out-loud funny musical celebration of relationships.
Penn State Downtown Theatre Center
By Liz Flahive
Directed by Robert W. Schneider
An uproarious and uplifting contemporary comedy!
The Barretts wish their family could make it through one day unnoticed, but that’s going to be hard now that their son has to publicly apologize to his entire high school for publishing his enemies list. A contemporary new comedy about the highs and lows of family life!
Kenny Barrett did something that has everyone worried. He wishes he could just make it through the rest of his senior year unnoticed, but that's going to be hard since he has to publicly apologize to his entire high school. At home, his mother is struggling with a rocky start to her second marriage and a surprise visit from her estranged sister. A new play about a family limping out the door in the morning and coming home no matter what.
PG 15
