Meetings and Events

Contact Information

Alley Theatre
615 Texas Avenue
Houston, TX 77002

tel: (713) 228-9341
fax: (713) 222-6542

company website

Gallery

Alley Theatre

<< Prev Leisure, Nightlife and Attractions Next >>

Theaters Information

Yes

Press Release

Martin McDonagh's Volatile, Outrageous Comedy A Behanding in Spokane Opens the 2010-2011 Season at Alley Theatre

HOUSTON, TX - New York Times calls the play "perfect, demented, ecstatic, sadistic and imaginative." The Wall Street Journal promises that "You'll spend 90 minutes laughing nonstop." Martin McDonagh returns to the Alley with his first play set in America, the outrageously funny A Behanding in Spokane , recently on Broadway. The mysterious, gun-toting Carmichael has been searching for his missing left hand for decades. Enter two bickering lovebirds with a hand to sell, and a hotel clerk with an aversion to gunfire, and we're set for an uproarious ride of love, hate, desperation and hope. "Wildly entertaining...truly explosive," says The Daily News. The Wall Street Journal calls McDonagh "one of the finest playwrights in the English-speaking world." Martin McDonagh's plays include The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Alley production, January 1999), The Pillowman (Alley production, February 2006) and The Lieutenant of Inishmore (Alley production, January 2008). McDonagh won an Academy Award for Best Short Film for Six Shooter as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for In Bruges. Profanity, violence, mature situations. Recommended for mature audiences. A Behanding in Spokane, by Martin McDonagh and directed by James Black, begins performances Friday, August 27, opens officially Wednesday, September 1 and runs through Sunday, September 26 on the Neuhaus Stage. A Behanding in Spokane features Andrew Weems as Carmichael (Alley's Intelligence-Slave), Sean-Michael Bowles as Toby (Alley debut), Chris Hutchison as Mervyn (Alley's Intelligence-Slave, Our Town, The Farnsworth Invention) and Emily Neves as Marilyn (Alley's Boeing-Boeing, Harvey, Our Town). The design team for A Behanding in Spokane includes Scenic Design by Kevin Rigdon (Alley's Intelligence-Slave, Mrs. Mannerly, Our Town), Costume Design by Kelly James-Penot (South Coast Repertory's Rising Water Trilogy), Lighting Design by Clint Allen (The Farnsworth Invention, Rock 'n' Roll, Underneath the Lintel, A Christmas Carol), Sound Design by Pierre Dupree (Alley's Intelligence-Slave, The Man Who Came to Dinner) and Dramaturg Lauren Halvorsen (Alley's Mrs. Mannerly, Our Town, The Man Who Came to Dinner). A Behanding in Spokane is generously sponsored by Neuhaus Stage Season Sponsor Randall H. Jamail. The Alley Theatre is supported by the 2010-2011 season sponsor Continental Airlines, the official airline of the Alley Theatre. TICKET INFORMATION Tickets to A Behanding in Spokane start at $21. All tickets to A Behanding in Spokane are available for purchase at www.alleytheatre.org , at the Alley Theatre Box Office, 615 Texas Avenue, or by calling 713.220.5700. Groups of 10 or more can receive special concierge services and select discounts by calling 713.315.3346. The added convenience of reservations by phone or Internet is available for a nominal fee. Tickets purchased in person at the Alley Theatre Box Office have a $1 building restoration fee. CAPTIONED PERFORMANCE Saturday, August 29, 7:30 PM The Alley Theatre is pleased to offer open captioning for many of our productions throughout the season. To ensure that your seats will accommodate your needs, please call the box office 713.220.5700 when ordering tickets to this performance. Discounted tickets are available for groups of ten or more. Call 713.315.3346 for more information. TALKBACK Tuesday, September 7, 7:30 PM Members of the cast return to the stage following the performance to take questions from the audience. TalkBacks are led by a member of the Alley Artistic Staff.

Alley Theatre Offers Second Summer Play St. Nicholas, A Vampire Story For Mature Audiences

HOUSTON, TX - St. Nicholas, by Conor McPherson, will run July 15 - August 8, 2010 on the Neuhaus Stage this summer opposite the ExxonMobil Summer Chills series production of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap. In the vampire story St. Nicholas, Tony Award-winning Irish playwright Conor McPherson weaves a mesmerizing tale about a theatre critic who falls in love with an actress and becomes a servant to the vampires. The New York Times says, "Like the best of fairy tales, spooky campfire recitations and the self-aggrandizing myths spun in barrooms, this shaggy vampire story touches on primal concerns beneath its lurid surface." James Black relates this mysterious narrative in a solo performance. Recommend for mature audiences, violent sexual content and strong language. St. Nicholas, written by Conor McPherson and directed by James Black, begins performances July 15, opens officially July 17 and runs through August 8 on the Neuhaus Stage. St. Nicholas will feature Alley Theatre Artist James Black in his first solo performance at the Alley Theatre. James Black is proud to be celebrating his 22nd consecutive season at the Alley where as an actor and occasional director, he has been involved in over one hundred productions. Recent appearances include Harvey (Elwood P. Dowd) Mrs. Mannerly (Jeffrey), Our Town (Stage Manager), The Farnsworth Invention, Rock 'n' Roll (Max), The Man Who Came to Dinner (Sheridan Whiteside), A Christmas Carol (Mrs. Dilber/Jacob Marley), Cyrano de Bergerac (Le Bret), Othello (Iago), Arsenic and Old Lace (Jonathan Brewster), Treasure Island (Long John Silver), Hitchcock Blonde (Hitch), A Moon for the Misbegotten (James Tyrone Jr.), Orson's Shadow (Olivier), Journey's End (Lieutenant Osborne), A Christmas Carol (Scrooge), The Crucible (Proctor), After the Fall (Quentin), Black Coffee (Hercule Poirot), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Marcus Lycus), Twelfth Night (Sir Toby Belch), Sherlock Holmes (Moriarty), Hamlet (Claudius), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (George), One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (McMurphy), How I Learned to Drive (Uncle Peck), A View From the Bridge (Eddie Carbone), and Not About Nightingales (Butch O'Fallon) among others. He has also directed Doubt, Death on the Nile, Glengarry Glen Ross, Deathtrap, Dial "M" for Murder, Our Lady of 121st Street, The Foreigner, Of Mice and Men and As Bees in Honey Drown. His film and television credits include Olympia, The Man with the Perfect Swing, Houston: The Legend of Texas, Fire and Rain, Challenger, Night Game, and Killing in a Small Town . He received a Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway Debut and a Drama Desk nomination for Best Actor for Not About Nightingales, and a BackStage West Garland Award for his appearance as Eddie Carbone in the Alley's production of A View from the Bridge. TICKET INFORMATION Tickets to St. Nicholas start at $21. Tickets will go on sale to subscriber beginning May 13, 2010. Tickets will go on sale to members of the Alley Theatre's Email Club on May 20, 2010 and tickets will be available for the general public on May 27, 2010. All tickets to St. Nicholas are available for purchase at www.alleytheatre.org , at the Alley Theatre Box Office, 615 Texas Avenue, or by calling 713.220.5700. Groups of 10 or more can receive special concierge services and select discounts by calling 713.315.3346. The added convenience of reservations by phone or Internet is available for a nominal fee. Tickets purchased in person at the Alley Theatre Box Office have a $1 building restoration fee.

World Premiere of Kenneth Lin's Intelligence-Slave Begins May 23 on the Alley Theatre's Neuhaus Stage

HOUSTON, TX - Intelligence-Slave, by Kenneth Lin, is the third of the Alley Theatre's world premieres this season and will run May 23 - June 20, 2010 on the Neuhaus Stage. Kenneth Lin's new play, Intelligence-Slave , tells the story of Curt Herzstark, a concentration camp prisoner who is being kept alive by the Nazis because he has invented the world's first hand-held four function calculator. What will happen when he completes the invention, his talents are no longer required, and he becomes dispensable? Curt's survival plan takes a turn when the Nazis introduce him to a wunderkind member of the Hitler Youth with a soul that might be salvageable. Recommended for mature audiences due to language and subject matter. Playwright Kenneth Lin became "fascinated with the Curta calculator, which required no batteries, but ran on a series of gears, almost like a clockwork" and further "fascinated with the dramatic tension inherent in a character who is being kept alive because he has invented something truly extraordinary." Lin says, "I also loved that the most difficult problem in creating the calculator was the problem of performing subtraction. I thought that was a profound metaphor to employ in the construction of a play about the Holocaust." Lin wrote Intelligence-Slave in residence at the Nassau County memorial and Tolerance Center. Intelligence-Slave, by Kenneth Lin (Alley Debut, Yale School of Drama graduate) and directed by Houston-native Jackson Gay (Alley Debut), begins performances Sunday, May 23, opens officially Thursday, May 27 and runs through Sunday, June 20 on the Neuhaus Stage. (Rehearsals are starting later than was originally planned and therefore performances will begin on May 23 instead of May 21, as was previously announced.) Intelligence-Slave features Alley Theatre Artists James Belcher as Fritz Engelhardt, Chris Hutchison as Bruno Clemens and Todd Waite as Hermann Pister. The cast for Intelligence-Slave also features Steven Louis Kane as Finn Frey (Alley Debut, New York Musical Theatre Festival's Academy) and Andrew Weems as Curt Herzstark (Alley Debut, Broadway's Inherit the Wind). The design team for Intelligence-Slave includes Scenic and Lighting Design by Kevin Rigdon (Alley's Mrs. Mannerly, Our Town, Sherlock Holmes and The Crucifer of Blood, Mauritius), Costume Design by Blair Gulledge (Alley's Mrs. Mannerly, Sherlock Holmes and The Crucifer of Blood, The Santaland Diaries, Underneath the Lintel), Sound Design by Pierre Dupree (Alley's Sherlock Holmes and The Crucifer of Blood, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Santaland Diaries, Secret Order), Dramaturg Mark Bly (Alley's Our Town, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Harvey ) and Fight Director Brian Byrnes (Alley's Cyrano de Bergerac, Othello, The Pillowman, Deathtrap). NEW PLAY INITIATIVE The Alley Theatre's New Play Initiative facilitates the creative collaboration between playwrights, directors, actors, designers and dramaturgs during all stages of a new play's development. Central to this Initiative are readings, workshops, commissions, Affinity Series Symposiums and residencies. Three world premieres have been developed through this Initiative this season: Rajiv Joseph's Gruesome Playground Injuries, which ran October 16 to November 15, 2009, Jack Murphy, Gregory Boyd, and Frank Wildhorn's Wonderland , which ran January 15 to February 14, 2010, and Kenneth Lin's Intelligence-Slave , which will be on the Alley Theatre Neuhaus Stage in May 23 to June 20, 2010 (opens May 27, 2010). In producing these new plays, we intend to give each the fullest production values and support to bring forth and enhance the theatrical poetry and imagination that the playwright has poured into the play. This is the primary focal point and purpose of the entire New Play Initiative at the Alley Theatre - for the artists and audience to come together within the imagination of a living, working playwright and to help create a first production that will launch the new work to become what we all believe it will be - a play destined to become a classic for the future. Intelligence-Slave is generously sponsored by Neuhaus Stage Season Sponsor Randall H. Jamail. The Alley Theatre is supported by the 2009-2010 season sponsor Continental Airlines, the official airline of the Alley Theatre. TICKET INFORMATION Tickets to Intelligence-Slave start at $40. All tickets to Intelligence-Slave are available for purchase at www.alleytheatre.org , at the Alley Theatre Box Office, 615 Texas Avenue, or by calling 713.220.5700. Groups of 10 or more can receive special concierge services and select discounts by calling 713.315.3346. The added convenience of reservations by phone or Internet is available for a nominal fee. Tickets purchased in person at the Alley Theatre Box Office have a $1 building restoration fee. AFFINITY SERIES SYMPOSIUM Saturday, May 29, 2:30 PM As part of the recently launched New Play Initiative, the Alley Theatre will present an Affinity Series Symposium for each world premiere this season featuring the playwright and dramaturg to discuss the genesis of the play, the Alley Theatre rehearsal process, and the larger societal issues raised by the play. The third Affinity Series Symposium will occur in conjunction with the world premiere of Kenneth Lin's Intelligence-Slave on Saturday, May 29th, immediately following the 2:30 PM performance and is open to those holding a ticket for this performance. For Intelligence-Slave, the Affinity Series Symposium will feature playwright Kenneth Lin and Alley Theatre Senior Dramaturg and Director of New Play Development, Mark Bly. CAPTIONED PERFORMANCE Sunday, May 30, 7:30 PM The Alley Theatre is pleased to offer open captioning and audio description for many of our productions throughout the season. To ensure that your seats will accommodate your needs, please call the box office 713.220.5700 when ordering tickets to this performance. Discounted tickets are available for groups of ten or more. Call 713.315.3346 for more information. TALKBACK Tuesday, June 1, 7:30 PM Members of the cast return to the stage following the performance to take questions from the audience. TalkBacks are led by a member of the Alley Artistic Staff.