The Huntington Theatre Company announces today that Arthur Miller's Tony Award winner ALL MY SONS and Craig Lucas' modern classic PRELUDE TO A KISS will complete its 2009-2010 Season, creating a bold, diverse, and entertaining lineup of American stories. David Esbjornson, Miller's last living director, helms All My Sons; Huntington Theatre Company Artistic Director Peter Dubois will direct Prelude to a Kiss.
Previously announced Huntington titles include August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Fences; Huntington Playwriting Fellow Lydia R. Diamond's groundbreaking and moving family portrait Stick Fly, Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel's A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration; pop icon Maureen McGovern's musical memoir A Long and Winding Road, and Gina Gionfriddo's acclaimed comedy Becky Shaw, a 2009 Pulitzer Prize finalist.
This is the first season in the Huntington's 27-year history comprised entirely of American plays.
"Arthur Miller and Craig Lucas felt like the right two voices to complete a season designed to reflect a compelling range of American writing," says DuBois. "From classics and contemporary masters to new voices, each play explores diverse viewpoints of the American experience."
The plays in the American Season relate to one another through stories of opportunities lost and found, intergenerational struggles and successes, and the most intimate of personal relationships. Drawn from some of the best writing the country has to offer - Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning dramatic pillars of the 20th century, contemporary masters, and fresh new voices - the Huntington will engage its audience in a season-long conversation about issues of race, class, values, and a shared American experience.
Arthur Miller's ALL MY SONS is set in the peaceful backyard of successful business owner Joe Keller. Two years after the end of World War II, his family still suffers the war's aftershocks, with one son part of the family business and another still missing-in-action. This classic play about a family's struggle resonates as strongly today as ever as Miller asks us to consider to whom we owe our greatest responsibility: our family or our country. Winner of the 1947 Tony Award for Best New Play, this first commercial success catapulTed Miller into the ranks of America's greatest playwrights.
"I am especially thrilled that David Esbjornson will be joining us to direct All My Sons," says DuBois. "David was Arthur's director of choice late in life, staging the premieres of his last two plays, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan and Resurrection Blues, and he'll now bring his tremendous talent to bear on Miller's earliest masterpiece at the Huntington." Esbjornson's other credits include the world premieres of Edward Albee's The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?, Tony Kushner's Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, and Suzan-Lori Parks' In the Blood.
PRELUDE TO A KISS is the modern classic by Tony Award winner Craig Lucas and will be directed by Huntington Artistic Director DuBois. After a whirlwind courtship and a storybook wedding, a young couple's life is abruptly changed by a mysterious elderly man's kiss. This life-affirming comedy, a 1991 Pulitzer Prize finalist, explores the enduring power of love and the nature of commitment. "Craig's play makes my heart race," says DuBois. "It quite literally takes my breath away. I am thrilled to be introducing this contemporary master playwright to the Huntington Theatre Company."
THE COMPLETE 2009-2010 SEASON LINEUP
· FENCES, the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner by August Wilson, directed by Kenny Leon, September 11 - October 11, 2009 at the Huntington's main stage, the Boston University Theatre;
