Local troupe Immediate Theatre Project announces its upcoming season, including Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Press release from ITP:
Immediate Theatre Project’s 2015/2016 Season is their most ambitious yet. It includes one of American Drama’s most brilliant and beloved classics, a popular tradition, and a brand new adaptation.
Immediate Theatre Project, or ITP, is perhaps best known as the Partner Company in Residence at NC Stage, a position they have have proudly occupied since 2008. In that capacity they have produced plays as varied as The Glass Menagerie, Venus in Fur, and An Iliad as part of NC Stage’s Main Stage Season. Their Main Stage show this season has previously been announced by NC Stage: Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? will play April 6 – May 1, 2016.
“The company focuses largely on American classics,” says ITP co-founder Willie Repoley,”so we have had our eye on this play for a few years, but until now haven’t been able to include it in our season.” Partly, this is because Edward Albee maintains tight control of his most famous play, requiring companies to go above and beyond — submitting cast bios, set and costume sketches, and agreeing to a certain number of performance and rehearsal weeks, for example — to even submit an application. “Also, I don’t know that we were ready until now,” Repoley offers. “To try and pull off something this iconic and this emotionally challenging is terrifying; it’s a lot of responsibility. We’ve worked hard for eleven years to be ready for this.”
ITP last produced Albee’s work in 2004 with The American Dream. It was the company’s second produced play, part of NC Stage’s Catalyst Series. The company has considered several more of his plays over the years, including Seascape and The Goat, but kept coming back to Virginia Woolf. “We had all the right pieces in place at the right time,” says ITP Production Coordinator Catori Swann. “The actors, the technical ability. This was the right play for us, and for Asheville, this season.”
The company produces outside of the NC Stage season, as well, and this year Immediate Theatre Project has two additional offerings. The first is their yearly revival of Live From WVL Radio Theatre: It’s A Wonderful Life, produced for one night only, November 25th, at the Isis Restaurant and Music Hall in West Asheville. The venue has hosted the popular holiday show the last two years as part of ITP’s national tour of the play. The adaptation sets the action inside a struggling radio station which has to present It’s A Wonderful Life with only a skeleton crew in front of a live studio audience or shut their doors for good. “We love the dual story — the radio station can only be saved if George Bailey’s story succeeds,” says Repoley, who authored the adaptation. “It’s a way of doing something new with the story while still retaining the wonderful characters and generous soul of the original.”
After the overwhelmingly positive reception for It’s A Wonderful Life over the years, the company is currently working on another radio adaptation of a classic American movie: the screwball comedy His Girl Friday. “It’s a 180 degree turn from Wonderful Life,” says Repoley, “but we get to keep using this radio station, WVL, that we have invented, and we get to meet new characters and see some familiar ones, all in the service of something completely different. It’s a delightful challenge. And we finally get a chance to take some of the humor –that has only a supporting role in Wonderful Life– and bring it to the fore, which is going to be a lot of fun for audiences.” Although the details of when and where the play will be performed are still to be determined, it will be an important part of ITP’s coming season. They hope this new play will do well locally, and lead to a successful tour, following in the footsteps of It’s A Wonderful Life. Audiences can expect the quick banter, rich characters, and complex plot of the film, while also witnessing the radio crew create magic right before their eyes — and ears. More information will be available on the company’s website, www.immediatetheatre.org.
Are “His Girl Friday” and the play it’s based on, “The Front Page,” out of copyright and available for adaptation?