Theatre News Wire

Lookingglass Theatre proudly announces its 2010-2011 season, featuring three new productions by Ensemble Members Laura Eason and David Kersnar and Northwestern University's Amanda Dehnert.  Lookingglass' 23rd season features Peter Pan, Ethan Frome, and The Last Act of Lilka Kadison. 

The season kicks-off with Amanda Dehnert's bombastic, playful and darkly funny adaption of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan,complete with innovative theatricality and aerial arts. Laura Eason, the writer and director whose Around the World in 80 Days has played across the country, has written a smoldering adaptation of Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Age of Innocence.  Finally, The Last Act of Lilka Kadison, written by Nicole Behrman, David Kersnar and Abbie Phillips, directed by David Kersnar, is a hilarious and profoundly moving play that spans a woman's life from 1939 Warsaw to contemporary Los Angeles. 

"We're thrilled to offer a season that covers a full range of age and experience, and offers all the characteristics that have always defined Lookingglass- physical daring and grace, literary depth and beauty, invention, wit, and heart," comments Artistic Director Elect Andy White.  "Our first show, Peter Pan, looks at life through the prism of childhood-with wonder and awe, yearning for flight, fear of pirates and fearsome crocodiles, and all the delight and terror that might accompany any child's dreams. Ethan Frome drills deep into the choices made in middle age, and the fierce passions and regrets that accompany those choices and their consequences.  And The Last Act of Lilka Kadison brings us an older woman looking back at her life, her loves, and her losses-a woman who is simply trying to make peace with the secrets and stories that have haunted her past."

The 2010-2011 Lookingglass Season includes:

Peter Pan
World Premiere
Adapted for the Stage by Amanda Dehnert
From the books by J.M. Barrie
Directed by Amanda Dehnert
Previews: October 20-29, 2010
Regular run: through December 12, 2010

Nationally-known director Amanda Dehnert will direct her adaptation of Peter Pan, the classic tale from J.M. Barrie's books of the boy who wouldn't grow up. Bombastic, playful, and darkly comic, Dehnert's adaptation brings innovative theatricality, aerial arts, and a soulful understanding of yearning and regret to this legendary childhood adventure of pirates, fairies and fantasy. Amanda's student production was developed at Northwestern University's Theatre and Interpretation Center in 2009 and resulted in a sold-out run on campus.  For Lookingglass, Amanda is creating a new adaptation that will feature Lookingglass Ensemble members.

Ethan Frome
By Edith Wharton
Written and directed by Laura Eason
A World Premiere of the Lookingglass Original
Previews: February 23-March 4, 2011
Regular run: through April 17, 2011

Fervent desire burns just beneath the surface of a snowy New England farm. Stoic farmer Ethan Frome trudges through a joyless marriage with his ailing wife, Zena, until they hire her young cousin to tend to the house. Her vibrant spirit awakens a passion in Ethan that neither of them dare acknowledge.  This classic, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Age of Innocence, is a deeply poetic story about the staggering beauty of true love and the desolation of the unalterable life choices we make.  Award-winning Ensemble Member Laura Eason (Around the World in 80 Days) directs this new, smoldering adaptation.

The Last Act of Lilka Kadison
A World Premiere of the Lookingglass Original
Written by Nicola Behrman, David Kersnar and Abbie Phillips
Directed by David Kersnar
Previews: June 1-10, 2011
Regular run through July 24, 2011

The season closes with an original story about a spirited woman in the twilight of her life. Now in her 87th year, Lilith Kadison (Lilka) is struggling to reconcile with her distant son, fend off ghostly visitations from her irreverent artistic partner and lover from 1939 Poland, and relinquish her independence to Menelik Moses, an Ethiopian caregiver from Jewish Family Services. A classic hoarder of both objects and memories, Lilka now faces the universal dilemma of what to cling to and what to let go in this powerful piece about art and survival.

For tickets and for information visit lookingglasstheatre.org.