Valley Playhouse is pleased to announce:

“Stone Girl Dreaming” by Lisa Railsback

Free Staged Reading on Thursday, May 23 at 7 pm The Gathering Place

Valley Playhouse is pleased to announce that Lisa Railsback’s moving one act, “Stone Girls Dreaming” will be the second production in our Staged Reading Series.

Winner of the National Bonderman Playwriting for Youth Award, Stone Girl Dreaming has been performed for young adults around the country. Based on a true story, Stone Girl Dreaming takes place over three days in March 2002 and dramatizes the lives of two young girls living in the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Although war is an element of this play, its real focus is on humanity and hope as it examines the cultural pressures placed on two teenage girls: Rebekah, an Israeli, who dreams of being a photographer, and Aysha, a Palestinian, who dreams of being a journalist. Both girls show up at a supermarket in Jerusalem… ” Lisa Railsback

“What makes this play potentially timeless is the focus on self-conflict, not the issues in the Middle East. I can see this play being performed years from now when political leaders find the need to fight over another piece of dirt somewhere else in the world to serve their own self-interest or those of their cronies.” Avon Water, reporter with the Anderson Herald-Bulletin

This performance is free and open to the public. It will be performed on Thursday, May 23, 2013 at 7 pm at The Gathering Place, 841 Mt. Clinton Pike, Harrisonburg, VA 22802 behind the Bowl of Good.

Now that the Oscars are over, for those planning a spring trip to New York City, Valley Playhouse board members Tom and Kay Arthur have some live theater recommendations.

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Valley Playhouse is pleased to announce that our newest board member Mary Ruberry will be the director of “Enchanted April”, our March 2013 production.

Mary has performed numerous leading roles in Washington, DC, New York City, and Los Angeles. In addition, she has written, directed and produced plays, as well as coached professional actors. Her theater company memberships include the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in DC and the Open Fist Theatre Company in Los Angeles. She has founded her own theater companies in Washington, DC and LA. Mary studied acting with Herbert Berghof (HB Studio0 and Michael Moriarty, and has participated in countless workshops and seminars. Mary studied classical voice for 16 years, as well as modern dance and theater movement. She has had papers and articles published in international journals, and she is a published poet. Last summer, Mary played Mother Miriam Ruth in the Oak Grove Theater’s production”Agnes of God”.

We are excited to add her experience, guidance, and enthusiasm to the Valley Playhouse.

“Shortly after “Love Song” was originally produced, a New York Magazine reviewer observed that love in all of its complexity was at the play’s core. Kolvenbach’s “song” for the stage included “married love, imagined love, desperate love, withered love, love lost, love reborn, love as argument, love as phantasm, love as liberator, love as anarchic spark, love as sanity, love as self-knowledge, love as a gateway to the senses”

The reviewer noted however that where love is in the picture, so too are loneliness and a certain madness. The cast and crew of “Love Song” have come to especially respect this combustible combination while working on this vital and poetic script. And not to put too fine a point on the matter but we have loved preparing this modern play on a subject treated in antiquity for area audiences. As a later reviewer said about an Adirondeck Theatre Festival presentation, “Love Song” not only gets into your head but “your heart too and refuses to leave.” We hope you will feel that way as well after participating as an audience member in this Valley Playhouse production.”

Tom Arthur

Director

Enchanted April by Matthew Barber

Directed by Mary Ruberry

March 7 – 17, 2013

Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 pm, Sundays at 3pm

Thursday, March 14 is “Pay What You Will” night.

THE STORY: When two frustrated London housewives decide to rent a villa in Italy for a holiday away from their bleak marriages, they recruit two very different English women to share the cost and the experience. There, among the wisteria blossoms and Mediterranean sunshine, all four bloom again—rediscovering themselves in ways that they—and we—could never have expected.