Forward Theater just announced its 2015-16 season, including the 2014 Pulitzer-winning play, The Flick, demonstrating the six-year-old company’s commitment to plays that inspire thought-provoking questions about the human condition.
The Wisconsin Wrights New Play Festival opens the season in September, featuring readings of three new plays by Wisconsin-based playwrights. Forward’s artistic director Jennifer Uphoff Gray says putting new works in front of audiences is key to the development process. “The Madison audience is really smart,” says Gray. “When art is created in a community, it has more relevance. I think things just resonate.”
In November, Forward will host the Midwestern premiere of Lauren Gunderson’s Silent Sky, based on the true story of Henrietta Leavitt, the woman responsible for one of the most critical breakthroughs in modern astronomy. Before women were allowed to operate an observatory telescope, Leavitt was hired at Harvard University’s Observatory as a “computer,” recording star observations from pictures. After making an important discovery, Henrietta must balance feelings of love, obligation and righteousness as she fights for recognition in a male world. It is a “girl-power play,” says Gray, that “beautifully merges art and science and history.”
Forward has formed a partnership with UW Space Place and the Wisconsin Science Festival to present Silent Sky, and the groups are hoping to bring in the playwright to speak at the festival. Gunderson has been a prominent voice in the movement to bring science and art closer together in the past decade.
The Flick by Annie Baker, which opens in January, follows the lives of three employees at one of the last movie theaters in Massachusetts to run 35-millimeter film. “What I really appreciate with [The Flick] is bringing in bigger issues through the dramas of day-to-day life,” says Gray, adding she thinks the play is a perfect fit for Madison. “Madison audiences are hungry for authenticity — as long as they’re not being preached to.”
Closing Forward Theater’s season will be Mr. Burns (A Post-Electric Play). The play takes place immediately following the catastrophic failure of the world’s nuclear plants as several of the survivors try to remember a specific episode of The Simpsons. The play fast-forwards seven years, then 75, and what started out as a simple conversation evolves into the mythos of a new society. Because it is staged in three separate time periods, Gray says Mr. Burns is an ambitious undertaking. Despite the play’s fantastic physical challenges, Gray says she is excited by the questions the play raises: “What do we save? What do we keep from right now?”
Forward Theater 2015-16 Season
Wisconsin Wrights New Play Festival, Sept. 2015 (date TBD)
Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson - Nov. 7-22, 2015
The Flick by Annie Baker - Jan. 28-Feb. 14, 2016
Mr. Burns (A Post-Electric Play) by Anne Washburn - March 31-April 17, 2016
