THEATRE + COMEDY

Leave it to Generations: A Theatre Company, now in its fifth year, to offer Houston audiences “A Patriotic Summer” unlike any other. In this heated election year, proclaimed by so many as a momentous turning point in our country’s history, Artistic Director George Brock is pairing two plays that couldn’t be more wholeheartedly American.

Opening June 14 for 10 performances at Rice University’s Hamman Hall is Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning masterpiece OUR TOWN, described by playwright Donald Margulies as “a great American play – possibly the great American play.”

From the famous opening stage directions of “No curtain, no scenery” to its transcendent final act, OUR TOWN presents a timeless “microcosm of the human family, genus American” that also captures the mysterious yet universal truths of life itself.

“This is the way we were,” Wilder’s immortal Stage Manager tells us, “in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.”

But what would a Generations summer be without something, well, a little wild? This year it’s the Houston premiere of the Wild West rock musical BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON, opening July 12 and running for 15 performances.

This off-Broadway sensation, a “runaway downtown hit” at New York’s Public Theater just three years ago, is a funhouse-mirror look at American politics, American celebrity, and the American way of choosing our leaders. It’s history presented as a raucous, rip-roaring carnival ride. It’s our seventh president as you’ve never seen him before.

The New York Times called it a “shaggy, devastatingly insightful show . . . likely to remain a true reflection of these United States for many years to come.”

Brock loves to challenge his audiences at the same time that they’re laughing or crying – both of which you’ll likely be doing at these two very different, very American plays. Generations specializes in new ideas and new ways of thinking about what Houston performers both young and old are capable of when they work and learn together. This is the same company that brought us the regional premiere of SPRING AWAKENING last year, prompting the Houston Press to rave about those “moments in theater when your heart seems to stop and you don’t dare breathe, lest you miss the power on stage.”

It’s all part of the Generations philosophy: provide unique opportunities for Houston’s next generation of theater artists to learn, to collaborate, and to show this town what fabulous talent grows up right in our own backyard.

Pictured above from left to right: Graham Parker (George); Philip Lehl (Stage Manager); Stephanie Styles (Emily).