Boston Theatre Works Celebrates our Tenth Anniversary with a Slate of American Classics and a World Premiere Musical.
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Stephen Sondheim's debut as composer and lyricist, Tony Kushner's searing American epic, Arthur Miller's powerful and potent political drama and a new emo rock musical by Kyle Jarrow are all part of the Season 10 celebration.

[BOSTON, MA] Fall of 2007 marks the beginning of Boston Theatre Works 10th Anniversary Season. The company is celebrating this milestone with a stellar five-play line-up that includes their first full-scale musical undertaking, two great American plays by Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, and a new musical that BTW commissioned and will present in New York this fall before bringing to Boston next spring.

The season kicks off with Steven Sondheim’s classic A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. This sexy, bawdy musical is a hysterical romp through ancient Rome that has been re-envisioned by Director Erick Devine. New York audiences have seen Sondheim’s musicals reworked in recent years, but never has such an innovative production of Forum played on the Boston stage.

In January BTW will offer audiences the unique opportunity to see the Pulitzer Prize winning Angels in America Parts I and II, presented in its entirety in repertory for five weeks at the Roberts Studio Theatre. This phenomenally profound work, perhaps best known to this generation for the HBO mini-series adaptation, is every bit as relevant as when it took America by storm in the late 80s. BTW is proud to introduce Angels to a new generation of audiences as it is best experienced—in an intimate theatrical setting. Jason Southerland and Nancy Curran Willis, who co-directed the Elliot Norton Award-winning The Laramie Project, re-team along with Norton winners John Malinowski (lights) and Laura McPherson (sets).

In April, BTW presents Arthur Miller’s powerful and provocative The Crucible. Although it is one of the most well known plays of the 20th century, audiences rarely have the opportunity to this provocative piece performed by an award-winning professional company. In the carnival-like atmosphere of election season, BTW presents this politically charged and socially relevant play, directed by Jonathan Carr. The production will be offered to area middle and high school students at special student matinee performances as part of BTW’s Stages of Discovery educational programming. Every year, BTW reaches more than 1,500 students with matinees, unique curriculum and classroom visits from artists as part of its commitment to engage new audiences. Stages of Discovery is funded by Sovereign Bank and Citizens Bank.

BTW’s tenth anniversary season caps with Kyle Jarrow’s emo-rock musical, Love Kills. This is the world premiere of the newest work by this Obie Award-winning writer, considered to be one of the best among a new generation of American playwrights. The New York Times called Kyle Jarrow, “New York’s hipster playwright.” BTW commissioned Love Kills under The Playground, their new play development program that is funded by an anonymous donation. They will present Love Kills at the New York Musical Theatre Festival this September before bringing the production to Boston in May 2008.

In addition to the mainstage season, BTW will continue its tradition of developing new work with the 10th installment of their weeklong festival of new plays, BTW Unbound. Several new plays have been workshopped through Unbound and later debuted on BTW’s mainstage or stages around the country, including Conspiracy of Memory, Veronika Vavoom Volcanologist, and the 2002 Jefferson Award-winner (Chicago), Waving Goodbye.

“It’s a compelling five-play season that will encourage audiences to look at our current world with a critical but optimistic eye,” says Artistic Director Jason Southerland. “As Tony Kushner wrote in his notes on Angelsin America, ‘Given the bloody opulence of this country’s great and terrible history, given its newness and its grand improbability, its artists are bound to be tempted towards large gestures and big embraces.’ This year BTW brings ‘large gestures’ from America’s best playwrights into new and intimate environments. We hope that you will join us in seeing them like never before.”

Since the curtain rose on their first show in the fall of 1997, BTW has striven to live to their mission of being unbound by convention and driven toward discovery. They’ve made the familiar new again by offering risky productions of recognizable plays and presented new plays never before seen by audiences. They have re-imagined such evergreen shows as Our Town, The Tempest and last season’s Elliot Norton Award winner, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to rave reviews and they have launched regional and world premieres like Take Me Out, I Am My Own Wife, Emily Mann’s Meshugah, Bug (recently made into a major motion picture), and the Elliot Norton Award-winning productions of Not About Nightingales and The Laramie Project.