Distillery
Madison's Forward Theater Company has announced the three plays in its 2011-2012 season. It will be the third season for the company, which came into being just a few weeks after Madison Repertory Theatre collapsed in 2009. All the plays will be presented in Overture Center's Playhouse. The season also will feature two staged readings.
The season begins with The Farnsworth Invention (Nov. 3-20), about the inventor Philo T. Farnsworth, whose work was critical to the development of television. The play was written by Aaron Sorkin, the West Wing creator who knows a few things about television. His screenplay for The Social Network was nominated for an Oscar. The Farnsworth Invention is presented in collaboration with the UW's theater department.
Forward's season continues with A Thousand Words (Jan. 19-Feb. 15) by Madison-based playwright Gwendolyn Rice. A world premiere, the play features American Players Theatre's Sarah Day, and tells interlocking stories about the photographer Walker Evans and a collection of rare photographs. Forward is staging A Thousand Words with Milwaukee Chamber Theatre.
Finally there is Love Stories (April 12-29), a collection of three one-acts about, yes, love and relationships, by George Bernard Shaw, Dorothy Parker and Bertolt Brecht. The show stars APT's Colleen Madden and James Ridge, a real-life married couple. Madden also acted, with Day, in Forward's 2010 production of Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them, and she recently starred in Forward's acclaimed Going to St. Ives.
