Music & Courage At Theatrical Outfit
By Doc Lawrence
ATLANTA-The
Light in the Piazza concludes with
well-deserved pomp and circumstance Theatrical Outfit’s amazing and
appropriately titled Season of Courage.
Two decades ago, Tom Key became Theatrical Outfit’s Executive Artistic Director, and brought to
the downtown Atlanta stage works of many of the best writers of the American
South: Truman Capote, Horton Foote, Harper Lee, Flannery O’Connor, Walker
Percy, Hank Williams, Tennessee Williams, as well as the new dramatists Carlyle
Brown, S.M. Shephard-Massat, Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder.All this as part of
Theatrical Outfit’s dedication to the live stage as a catalyst to creating
community.
The just announced 2016-2017 is themed A Season of Hope.
“Hope,” says Key, “is tough to achieve
and even tougher to sustain. We all want it. We all need it. It’s impossible to
have it or to keep it on our own.” An esteemed actor, playwright and director,
Key sees hope as part of a better future, a vehicle to create a global
community. “Hope for our world begins with the human longing for connection.
When we gather in a theater to hear the story of our neighbor, of the stranger,
of our lover, of our friend or of our enemy, and, in the end, understand better
who we really are, then hope begins within us.”
Directed by the renowned Richard
Garner, the mainstay of Georgia Shakespeare, The Light in the Piazza incorporates themes of sacrifice, destiny and the
effervescence of first love that, according to critics, ripple through this lush period
musical, winner of six Tony Awards. The
New York Times lauded the production as “worth the trip for
hopeful theatergoers still looking for love in a Broadway musical."
I’ll be there Sunday to
absorb all the magic and majesty. The word is out that the upcoming Season
of Hope includes the piano styling and
songs of jazz great and North Carolina native Nina Simone.
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