2011-2012 Season

NEW LINE THEATRE'S PREMIERE OF

ST. LOUIS, MO . . . New Line Theatre, "the Bad Boy of Musical Theatre," opens its 21st  season with the St. Louis premiere of the electrifying Broadway rock musical PASSING STRANGE, running September 22 through October 15, 2011, at the Washington University South Campus Theatre (formerly CBC High School), 6501 Clayton Road, just east of Big Bend. Tickets are on sale now through Metrotix, at 314-534-1111.

From Los Angeles to Amsterdam to Berlin and back, PASSING STRANGE takes musical theatre on a whole new trip. From singer-songwriter-performance artist Stew and his collaborator Heidi Rodewald comes a daring new rock musical that will take you on a journey across boundaries of place, identity and theatrical convention. Stew was commissioned by The Public Theater in New York to develop this heartfelt and hilarious story of a young bohemian who charts a course for "the real" through sex, drugs and rock and roll. Loaded with soulful lyrics and overflowing with passion, the show takes off from middle-class America on a worldwide quest for personal and artistic authenticity.

Variety said, "Passing Strange could join Hedwig and the Angry Inch as a rock musical milestone." The New York Times called the show "fresh, exuberant, bracingly inventive, bitingly funny, and full of heart." New York Magazine said it "smashes Broadway clichés with an electric guitar and the funniest libretto I can remember." The Wall Street Journalcalled it "the freshest musical in town! The songs rock harder than anything else on Broadway."

St. Louis singer Charles Glenn (King Herod in New Line Theatre's Jesus Christ Superstar in 2006) will star as the Narrator in New Line's premiere of this amazing rock musical. In addition to his regular rock and jazz gigs here and around the country, the Emmy Award winning Glenn has sung the national anthem for the St. Louis Rams, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the St. Louis Blues. The cast also includes Keith Parker (the Youth), Talichia Noah (Mother), Jeanitta Perkins (Sherry/Renata/Desi), Andrea Purnell (Edwina/Marianna/Sudabey), John Reed II (Franklin/Joop/Mr. Venus), and Cecil Washington Jr. (Terry/Christophe/Hugo). The show is directed by Scott Miller, with costume design by Amy Kelly, scenic design by Todd Schaefer, lighting design by Kenneth Zinkl, and music direction by Justin Smolik.

For more info about the show, visit http://www.newlinetheatre.com/strangepage.html

To read director Scott Miller's background and analysis about the show, go to http://www.newlinetheatre.com/strangechapter.html

Charles Isherwood wrote about the show in The New York Times, "A portrait of the artist as a confused young black man emerges in vivid colors in the fresh, exuberant and bitingly funny new musical Passing Strange. The biography of a songwriter on a wayward journey of self-discovery, this bracingly inventive show introduces an exciting new voice to contemporary musical theater, a witty wordsmith, composer and performer who goes by the single name Stew. . . Part concert, with an onstage band, part book musical with a full cast, Passing Strange defies generic categories. This is wholly appropriate, since the story being told doesn’t run in any of the familiar grooves of the African-American experience in 20th-century America. And if it does trace the classic story of the artist as a self-styled outsider at odds with mainstream culture (as personified by Mom), Passing Strange sets this boilerplate arc to a quirky new rhythm."

ABOUT NEW LINE THEATRE

New Line Theatre, "The Bad Boy of Musical Theatre," was created in 1991, at the vanguard of a new wave of nonprofit musical theatre being born across the country during the early 1990s, offering an alternative to the commercial musical theatre of New York and Broadway tours. New Line was created to involve the people of the St. Louis region in the creation and exploration of provocative, alternative, politically and socially relevant works of musical theatre – daring, muscular, intelligent theatre about politics, race, violence, drugs, sexuality, religion, art, obscenity, the media, and other contemporary issues.  

New Line has given birth to several world premiere musicals over the years and has brought back to life many shows that did not do well in their original New York productions. Altogether, New Line has produced 63 musicals and 5 concerts of theatre songs since 1991. New Line Theatre was recently given its own entry in the latest edition of the prestigious Cambridge Guide to American Theatre. New Line receives funding from the Regional Arts Commission, the Fox Performing Arts Charitable Foundation, and the Missouri Arts Council. For more about New Line, go to www.newlinetheatre.com/contact.html

PASSING STRANGE runs September 22-October 15, Thursday through Saturday evenings, at 8:00 p.m., at the Washington University South Campus Theatre (formerly CBC High School), 6501 Clayton Road, just east of Big Bend. September 22 is a preview. Tickets are on sale now through Metrotix outlets, including the Fox Theatre box office and the Edison Theatre box office at Washington University, or by calling 314-534-1111. PASSING STRANGE contains mature content and language.  

HIGH SCHOOL DISCOUNT: New Line has created a new ticket discount for high school students. Any student with a valid school ID can get a $10 ticket at any performance, with the code word for that show, which will be posted only on New Line's Facebook page, at http://www.facebook.com/NewLineTheatre

New Line also continues to offer the COLLEGE FREE SEATS, ten seats put aside for every performance, free to anyone with a valid college student ID, one ticket per ID. The Free Seats will be available at the theatre box office, from 7:00 p.m. to 7:55 p.m. on performance nights only.

EDUCATORS DISCOUNT: New Line now offers all currently employed educators half price tickets on any Thursday night, with work ID or other proof of employment. Not valid in connection with other discounts or offers, available only at the door, and subject to availability.

MILITARY DISCOUNT: New Line now offers all active duty military personnel half price tickets on any Thursday night, with ID or other proof of active duty status. Not valid in connection with other discounts or offers, available only at the door, and subject to availability.

For other information, visit New Line Theatre's full-service website at www.newlinetheatre.com. All programs are subject to change.

NEW LINE THEATRE ANNOUNCES

THREE ROCK MUSICALS,

AND TWO PREMIERES,

FOR ITS 2011-2012 SEASON

ST. LOUIS . . . New Line Theatre, "the Bad Boy of Musical Theatre," will open the company's 21st season of rock theatre September 22-October 15, 2011 with the St. Louis premiere of PASSING STRANGE, the all-black Broadway musical about a young man searching for meaning and authenticity in our contemporary world. Conceived and written by singer-songwriter and performance artist Stew and his collaborator Heidi Rodewald (who were just here in St. Louis recently with their band The Negro Problem), loaded with soulful lyrics and overflowing with passion, this daring, often very funny new musical takes us from Los Angeles to Amsterdam to Berlin and beyond, on a journey towards personal and artistic authenticity, across boundaries of place, identity and theatrical convention. A popular performer at Joe's Pub in New York, Stew was commissioned by The Public Theater to develop this heartfelt, funny story of a young bohemian who charts a course for "The Real" through sex, drugs and rock and roll. The show was nominated for seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Score, and it won the Tony for Best Book of a Musical.

Stew says on the show's website, "We have G.W. Bush to thank for this play. Seriously. When I found out that he had never been to Europe in his youth (or in his adulthood until he became prez!!!) I immediately knew I wanted to write a play about a kid who wanted to go to Europe. That fact about Bush said a lot to me about America's lack of interest in anything foreign except that which it can exploit (always to exploit – never to learn from). Can you imagine an uber-privileged billionaire's son from any other country that would not have been curious enough to travel to a foreign country or two or three or twenty? Especially when you're talking the kind of money where you already own a few airplanes yourself? As someone whose experience abroad informed and shaped my very being and consciousness about everything from sexuality, politics, culture, language and human nature, I became obsessed with this factoid and decided this incuriosity was at the heart of the war. I realized that we are actually suffering the results of Bush's and his cronies' incuriousness… their dimwitted foreign policy time and again shows that beneath it all these fuckers don't even care about trying to understand the world they wish to dominate."

New Line's season will continue March 1-24, 2012 with the American regional premiere of the rockabilly Broadway musical CRY-BABY, which The Wall Street Journal called "the funniest new musical since Avenue Q." The musical is based on the cult classic John Waters film starring Johnny Depp. The original creative team is reworking and re-orchestrating the show for New Line, to make it a smaller, more intimate musical, and it will run here for four weeks in spring 2012.

CRY-BABY has a score by David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger, and a book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan. O'Donnell and Meehan also adapted John Waters' Hairspray for the musical stage. CRY-BABY focuses on teenager Allison Vernon-Williams in 1954 Baltimore, right at the birth of rock and roll, who wanders across the tracks from her square boyfriend and finishing-school life into a relationship with the orphaned Wade "Cry-Baby" Walker, the leader of a pack of "bad kids." The musical premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in November 2007 and opened on Broadway in April 2008. It was nominated for four Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Choreography. It was also nominated for Best Musical by the Drama League and the Outer Critics Circle Awards.

The season will close May 31-June 23, 2012 with the return of one of New Line's biggest hits, HIGH FIDELITY, with a book by David Lindsay-Abaire, music by Tom Kitt (Pulitzer Prize-winning composer of "Next to Normal"), and lyrics by Amanda Green. In 2008, New Line presented the American regional premiere of the show, which won raves all around. Mark Bretz of The Ladue News named it the best local show of the year. New Line was the first company outside New York to produce this smart, funny show about America's new Lost Generation and the music they live their lives to. This is a genuine rock and roll score, inspired by and peppered with musical references to some of the great rock and pop artists of our time, the muscular American rock sound of Bruce Springsteen, the raw rage of Guns N' Roses, the Eastern experiments of George Harrison and The Beatles, the intellectual playfulness of The Talking Heads, the fierce defiance of Aretha Franklin, the smoky groove of Percy Sledge, the naked emotion of Ben Folds, the driving cynicism of Billy Joel.

Since New Line produced High Fidelity in 2008, more than a dozen other companies around the country have come to New Line to get in contact with that show's creators to secure production rights. New Line brought this brilliant show back to life after its rejection by the New York critics, and we hope to do the same for Cry-Baby.

Tickets for the 2011-2012 season will go on sale in August 2011.

New Line Theatre is a professional company dedicated to involving the people of the St. Louis region in the exploration and creation of daring, provocative, socially and politically relevant works of musical theatre. New Line Theatre was created in 1991 at the vanguard of a new wave of nonprofit musical theatre just starting to take hold across the country. New Line has given birth to several world premiere musicals over the years and has brought back to life many shows that did not do well in their original New York productions. Altogether, New Line has produced 60 musicals and 5 concerts of theatre songs since 1991. New Line Theatre was recently given its own entry in the latest edition of the prestigious Cambridge Guide to American Theatre. New Line receives funding from the Regional Arts Commission, the Fox Performing Arts Charitable Foundation, and the Missouri Arts Council. For more about New Line, go to www.newlinetheatre.com/contact.html

For other information, visit New Line Theatre's full-service website at www.newlinetheatre.com. All programs are subject to change.