by Thornton Wilder

Directed by Yaga Brady

Nov. 27,28,29(sold out) Dec 3,4,5,6,10,11,12,13

As our second offering this season we proudly bring to you Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker, a joyous, sprawling, and rollicking farce, one of the most enduring and endearing classics of the American stage. The Matchmaker marks the 500^th production at The Stagecrafters.

Set in Yonkers and New York City near the end of the nineteenth century, the action takes place in the course of a single day... and what action it is! Love makes the world go ‘round, but a little money will grease the wheels – so proclaims canny marriage broker, Dolly Gallagher Levi. Engaged by rich, wife-seeking widower Horace Vandergelder, she artfully conspires to snag the man for herself and, in so doing, sets off a whirlwind of assorted missteps, mishaps, mistaken identities, and romantic entanglements that befall a dozen-or-so inter-related characters, each in their way primed to experience something new and invigorating in their lives.

by Charles Fuller

Directed by Marilyn Yoblick

Feb 5,6,7,11,12,13,14,18,19,20,21,25, 26,27,28

The first production of the new year at The Stagecrafters theater is the riveting mystery-thriller, "A Soldier’s Play" by Charles Fuller. The action deals with the investigation of the murder of a black sergeant at an army base in Louisiana in 1944 during World War II. As the inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the killing proceeds, the psychological complexities of the case come to the forefront, and easy stereotypical judgments become questionable and are, one-by-one, refuted. The play, which is flawlessly structured as a classic whodunit, provides a mesmerizing narrative and delivers at the same time a scorching commentary on ingrained bigotry, racism, and social injustice. Critic Frank Rich (N.Y. Times) noted that Fuller’s writing “... speaks to both blacks and whites without patronizing either [and embraces] volatile contradictions... to arrive at the shattering truth.”

Charles Fuller, born in Philadelphia in 1939, earned the D.F.A. degree at La Salle University in 1967 and co-founded the Afro-American Arts Theatre that same year in Philadelphia. In 1971 Fuller moved to New York City and, over the following decade with the Negro Ensemble Company, wrote and produced, among several plays, one of which, Zooman and the Sign (1980), won an Obie award. A Soldier’s Play, which opened at Manhattan’s Theatre Four in 1981, featured Adolph Caesar, Denzel Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson. A huge critical and popular success, it won Fuller the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for drama and the New York Drama Critics Award. He also adapted his script to the 1984 film, A Soldier’s Story, which won him the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Film Screenplay. After some twenty-five years the play indeed retains its power to engage theatergoers and to hold them spellbound.

★ Gripping • Shocking • Unforgettable ★

by Richard Greenberg

Directed by Patrick Martin

Apr. 9,10,11,15,16,17,18,22,23,24,25

Richard Greenberg’s The Violet Hour has variously been characterized as an eccentric ‘peering’ into the future, as a dark comedy with a twist of sci-fi, and as a “... luminous, mysterious, emotionally churning tragicomedy” – perhaps reflecting its many intertwined motifs and layers. The story takes place in the New York City of 1919 and concerns one John Pace Seavering, Princeton grad and returning veteran of the Great War, who has set himself up in the business of publishing ... but, just getting his feet on the ground, can’t afford to handle more than one book at a time. And therein lays the horns of a dilemma: whether to publish his secret lover’s memoirs, or his best friend’s ‘Great American Novel’. The immediate answer is his wistful lament, “If I could only see the future...”, scarcely aware how close his wish is to being granted!

The play received its Broadway debut in November, 2003, at the Manhattan Theatre Club in the freshly restored Biltmore Theatre. It saw its Philadelphia area premier in a well-received production by Theatre Horizon in 2006. The author, born in 1958, has penned over twenty-five plays, one of which, Take Me Out, earned the Tony award for Best Play in 2003. Greenberg commented on The Violet Hour in a recent interview, “... I’m interested in ambition and plans that go awry ....[and in] a highly ambitious guy... discovering the consequences of all the actions he’s ever going to take.”