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After months and months of play reading, hours and hours of discussions and meetings, Colonial Players’ hard-working play selection committee has settled on a slate for the 2016-2017 season! See below for more complete information on each play, and be sure to put February 27, 2016 on your calendar! That’s the date of our traditional season Sneak Peek at the theater, with rehearsed readings from each of the plays and a song or two from the musical!

If you are interested in directing a play at Colonial Players, please note that only one of the seven in this slate, the musical “Nine”, was selected as a “director/play package” and it will be directed by Ron Giddings. The other six plays are open for director applications, due March 3. For complete director application info, click here.

 Our hearty thanks to the following CP stalwarts for serving on this year’s play selection committee: Mickey Lund (CP artistic director), Jim Gallagher (play selection chair), Shannon Benil, Nathan Bowen, Ben Carr, Jeannie Christie, Chris Haley, Andy McLendon, and Jamie Miller. Thank you all!

The Colonial Players 68th Season
2016-2017

The Cripple of Inishmaan

By Martin McDonagh
Performance dates: September 9 - October 1, 2016

Set in 1934 on the Aran Islands at the mouth of Galway Bay in western Ireland, this play focuses on inhabitants of the island of Inishmaan, who are excited to learn of a Hollywood film crew's arrival on neighboring Inishmore to make a documentary about life on the islands. "Cripple" Billy Claven, eager to escape the gossip, poverty and boredom of Inishmaan, vies for a part in the film, and to everyone's surprise, the orphan and outcast gets his chance . . . or so some believe.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf

By Edward Albee
Performance dates: October 21 - November 12, 2016

George, a professor at a small college, and his wife Martha have just returned home, drunk from a Saturday night party. Martha announces with liberal profanity that she has invited a young couple—an opportunistic new professor at the college and his shatteringly naïve new bride—to stop by for a nightcap. When the couple arrives the charade begins. The drinks flow and inhibitions melt. It becomes clear that Martha is determined to seduce the young professor, and George couldn't care less. But underneath the edgy banter lurks an undercurrent of tragedy and despair provoked by a secret that has seemingly been the foundation for their relationship. In the end, the secret is exposed revealing the degrading mess they have made of their lives.

A Christmas Carol

By Rick Wade and Dick Gessner
Performance dates: December 1 - December 11, 2016

This classic production takes place, as Mr. Dickens himself would have it, in the streets of Victorian London and in the counting house and bedchamber of Ebenezer Scrooge. In the revelations of his visitors and in his memory, we are transported to times and places of Scrooge's past, present, and future. A Christmas Carol has been produced by Colonial Players of Annapolis since 1981.

The City of Conversation

By Anthony Giardina
Performance dates: January 13 - January 28, 2017

In 1979, Washington D.C. was a place where people actually talked to each other—where adversaries fought it out on the Senate floor and then smoothed it out over drinks and hors d'oeuvres. But it was all about to change. In this play, spanning 30 years and six presidential administrations, Hester Ferris throws Georgetown dinner parties that can change the course of Washington’s politics. But when her beloved son suddenly turns up with an ambitious Reaganite girlfriend and a shocking new conservative worldview, Hester must choose between preserving her family and defending the causes she's spent her whole life fighting for.

Calendar Girls

By Tim Firth
Performance dates: February 17 - March 11, 2017

After Annie's husband John dies of leukemia, she and best friend Chris resolve to raise money for a new settee in the local hospital waiting room. They manage to persuade four fellow members of the local Women’s Institute to pose nude with them for an "alternative" calendar.  The news of the women's charitable venture spreads like wildfire, and hordes of press soon descend on the small village of Knapeley in the Yorkshire Dales. The calendar is a success, but Chris and Annie's friendship is put to the test under the strain of their new-found fame.

Nine

Book by A. Kopit, Music and Lyrics by M. Yeston, Adapted from the Italian by Mario Fratti
Directed by Ron Giddings
Performance dates: March 31 - April 30, 2017

Nine is the story of a film director, the celebrated Guido Contini, and his attempts to come up with a plot for his next film as he is pursued by hordes of beautiful women, all clamoring to be loved by him and him alone. Flashbacks reveal the substance of his life, which will become the material for his next film: a musical version of the Casanova story.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

By Christopher Durang
Performance dates: May 19 - June 10, 2017

Vanya and Sonia rarely leave the confines of their childhood home in Bucks County, Pa., while their sister Masha has been gallivanting around the world as a successful actress. A surprise visit from Masha and her 20-something boy toy, Spike, throws the normally quiet household into utter upheaval as its residents and visitors get swept up in an intoxicating mixture of lust, rivalry, regret, and the sudden possibility of escape. Some of the show's elements were derived from works of Anton Chekhov, including several character names, the play's setting in a cherry orchard, and the theme of the possible loss of an ancestral home.