Arts at ASU 2015-16 Season

Subscriptions are now available for Angelo State University’s 2015-16 Arts at ASU season that will include six theatre productions and 10 music concerts and recitals by the ASU Symphony Orchestra, Concert Choir and various 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 “Talley’s Folly” June 25-28 and July 2-4 in the ASU Modular Theatre. A second summer dinner theatre, “The Dinner Party,” will run July 30-Aug. 2 and Aug. 6-8 in the Modular Theatre, which is located in the Carr Education-Fine Arts Building, 2602 Dena Drive.

Winner of the 1980 Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, “Talley’s Folley” is a 1979 romantic comedy by Lanford Wilson, the second play in his “Talley Trilogy.” The one-act play is set in 1944 at an ornate, deserted Victorian boathouse on the Talley property in Missouri and follows one night in the courtship of an unlikely couple, the family’s uncertain daughter, Sally, and the bookish, erudite and funny Matt Friedman, an accountant from St. Louis.

“The Dinner Party,” by the master of comedy Neil Simon, serves up a chaotic dinner party among six unknowing guests at a first-rate restaurant in Paris. They don’t know why they have been invited but they have a sneaking suspicion the evening will forever change their lives. The one-act play premiered in Los Angeles in 1999, was staged at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., in 2000 and opened on Broadway that same year.

The first theatre production of the fall semester will be “keepingabreast,” a dramatic comedy by ASU alumna Jackie Rosenfeld, which will run Oct. 2-4 and 9-10 in the ASU Auditorium. The play, which premiered in New York in 2006, is a touching and deeply funny exploration of one woman’s journey after a diagnosis of breast cancer as she tries to define her breasts and herself. The ASU Auditorium is located in the Mayer Administration Building, 2601 W. Avenue N.

Arts at ASU’s traditional Holiday Dinner Theatre will be the comedy “Expecting Isabel,” which will run Nov. 12-15 and 19-21 in the Modular Theatre. Playwright Lisa Loomer won the 1999 American Theatre Critics Association Steinberg New Play Award for “Expecting Isabel,” which deals with a couple trying to have a baby – by any means necessary – as they negotiate the fertility trade, the adoption industry and their own families.

During the 2016 spring semester, the musical “Titanic” will run Feb. 18-21 in the ASU Auditorium. Featuring music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and story by Peter Stone, the show premiered on Broadway in 1997 and won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The sinking of  the Titanic on its maiden voyage in 1912 remains the quintessential disaster of the 20^th century, and the musical examines the causes, the conditions and the characters involved in this ever-fascinating drama.

The 2015-16 season will conclude with “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, winner of the 1953 Tony Award for Best Play. This drama about the Puritan purge of witches in old Salem, Mass., is both a gripping historical play and a timely parable of contemporary society.

Musical events are scheduled during the fall and spring semesters and include concerts by such performance groups as the ASU Symphony Orchestra, 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/dept/arts.

For more information or to subscribe, contact the Arts at ASU program at 325-942-2146 or go online to www.angelo.edu/dept/arts/theatre/theatre_schedule.php.