For Immediate Release: June 2, 2006
Media Contact: Megan Wendell, for The Wilma Theater, 215.242.6393

Artistic Directors Blanka Zizka and Jiri Zizka are thrilled to announce the exciting 2006-2007 season at The Wilma Theater. The season kicks off with the Philadelphia Premiere of Martin McDonagh’s stunning, award-winning play The Pillowman – a Broadway hit, nominated for a Tony® Award and winner of the Olivier Award for Best Play in London; followed by My Children! My Africa!, Athol Fugard’s stirring play set against the backdrop of 1984 South Africa; the World Premiere of Sarah Schulman’s brilliant stage adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Enemies, A Love Story (featured in the Philadelphia New Play Festival); and the American Premiere of a new translation of Bertolt Brecht’s modern classic The Life of Galileo. The Wilma’s popular annual dance festival, DanceBOOM! closes out the season in the spring.

“We are extremely excited to present the upcoming season that will take our audience on a theatrical journey across the globe,” said Jiri Zizka, “from the humorous The Pillowman set in an unidentified Eastern European country to South Africa on the brink of an inevitable societal change; from Brooklyn teeming with love-struck immigrants to the passionate debate among the powers that be in Galileo’s Italy.”

The Season

The Pillowman (Philadelphia Premiere)
October 4 - November 5, 2006
By Oscar® Winner Martin McDonagh
Directed by Jiri Zizka

The season's sensational, “wickedly funny” (New York Daily News) opener, The Pillowman, tells the breathtaking and gripping story of a writer who is being questioned on a series of murders echoing his unpublished stories. Is he involved? Are his ideas too dangerous to publish? Nominated for 6 Tony® Awards including Best Play and a winner of the Olivier Award for Best Play in London, The Pillowman is a humorous, suspenseful, and “spellbinding stunner of a play.” (The New York Times)

My Children! My Africa!
December 6, 2006 – January 7, 2007
By Athol Fugard
Directed by Blanka Zizka

My Children! My Africa! tells an unforgettable tale unfolding against the backdrop of 1984 South Africa. At the twilight of apartheid, a mob targets African “collaborators.” A humble and humane teacher who believes in the power of ideas, not stones, inspires the minds of a white schoolgirl and black schoolboy and changes their lives forever. The play is a timeless and powerfully poetic work about race, justice, fundamentalism, freedom, and self-knowledge by a master playwright who “could be a primary candidate for either the Nobel Prize in Literature or the Nobel Peace Prize." (The New Yorker)

Enemies, A Love Story (World Premiere)
February 7 - March 11, 2007
From the novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Adapted for the stage by Sarah Schulman
Featured in the Philadelphia New Play Festival: Where Theatre Begins, a program of the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, February 8-18, 2007.

Set in 1949 New York, a Holocaust survivor finds himself suddenly involved with 3 women – his current wife, a married woman with whom he is having a passionate affair, and his long-vanished wife, whom he thought was killed during the war but has suddenly reappeared. Adapted from the novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Enemies, A Love Story is a bittersweet, realistic and poignant tale of loss, love and redemption. This World Premiere stage adaptation by Sarah Schulman will be featured in the Philadelphia New Play Festival.

The Life of Galileo (American Premiere)
April 11 - May 13, 2007
By Bertolt Brecht
Translated by David Edgar
Directed by Blanka Zizka

David Edgar, author of the Tony® and Olivier winning The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, has written a brilliant new translation of Brecht’s masterpiece about reason, religion and power that The Daily Telegraph calls "crystal clear, breathing vitality into the question of science's relation to ethics...the issues are more relevant than ever." Are there limits to the freedom of inquiry? Galileo strives to bring reason to a world in which power is concealed as faith. In an age of fundamentalism, cloning, and climate change, his epic struggle continues to resonate across the centuries.

DanceBOOM!, the Wilma’s annual dance festival celebrating the best of contemporary Philadelphia dance, returns for its sixth consecutive year and closes out the season, running May 24 – June 10, 2007.

During the 05-06 season, over 600 theater lovers attended the Wilma’s free reading series, Season Teasers. The series will return again next season, offering audiences previews of plays, chosen from the best new writing from the U.S. and abroad, which are under consideration for future Wilma seasons. Six readings will take place in the fall of 2006 on October 9, 16, 23, 30; November 20; and December 18; all at 7:00 p.m.

Subscription prices range from $32-$190 and are available by calling The Wilma Theater box-office at 215-546-7824 or online at www.wilmatheater.org. Special discounts are available for seniors, students, educators, and groups of 10 or more. Special series are also offered, including Stage Write, Coffee Chat, and Behind the Footlights – all of which are accompanied by a discussion with available Wilma directors, designers, actors and moderated by the Wilma dramaturg, Walter Bilderback.

Coventry First, Corporate Synergies and The Sporting Club at The Bellevue are 2006-2007 Season Sponsors.

To request more information, please contact: Megan Wendell, Canary Promotion office: 215-242-6393, cell: 267-304-2391, email: megan@canarypromo.com

The Wilma Theater is a member of the Theater Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, a membership-based service organization dedicated to building audiences and promoting positive awareness of theatre in greater Philadelphia. For information about go to www.theatrealliance.org.

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