Press Release

‘Virginia Woolf’ to complete PlayMakers’ Mainstage Season

CHAPEL HILL – PlayMakers Repertory Company has announced that Edward Albee’s marital slugfest “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” will complete its 2011-2012 Mainstage Season. The professional theater in residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will present the Tony Award-winning play Nov. 30-Dec. 18, 2011.

It’s been said that love is a battlefield. Meet two of the struggle’s consummate contenders in this knock-down, drag-out love story from the savagely wicked, surgically acute pen of a master American playwright. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” won the Tony Award for Best Play (1963), but was considered so scandalous that the Pulitzer Prize committee chose it to receive its award for drama, then back-tracked and didn’t present an award that year.

PlayMakers producing artistic director Joseph Haj says “Virginia Woolf” will “definitely be a change of pace for the holidays. Take the worst family get together you can imagine, add a fifth of scotch, and chase it with some of the best one-liners in American theater for a truly unforgettable performance.”  

Longtime PlayMakers company members Ray Dooley and Julie Fishell, seen earlier this season as another less-than-functional theatrical couple in PlayMakers’ production of “Happy Days,” will play George and Martha. Join them for an alcohol-soaked evening of fun and games and one dazzlingly nasty fight to the finish.

The New York Times said “Virginia Woolf” has “abundant alarming humor that finds the gut-wrenching factor in belly laughs.” Variety called the play “entirely engrossing … relentlessly intense.”

“Virginia Woolf” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. nightly, except Mondays, and 2 p.m. Sundays and Saturday Dec. 10. Tickets are currently available as part of the theater’s 2011-2012 season subscription packages. For the lowest subscription prices of the season, new and renewing subscribers can take advantage of PlayMakers’ early bird discount rates through May 6. For more information, call the PlayMakers box office at (919) 962-PLAY (7529) or visit www.playmakersrep.org. PlayMakers’ shows are presented in the Center for Dramatic Art on Country Club Road.

During its 2011-2012 main-stage season, PlayMakers also will present Sarah Ruhl’s insightful comedy “In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)” (Sept. 21-Oct. 9), the world premiere of “The Parchman Hour: Songs and Stories of the ’61 Freedom Riders” written and directed by Mike Wiley (Oct. 26-Nov. 13) and “The Making of a King – Henry IV & Henry V” by William Shakespeare (performed in rotating repertory Jan. 28–March 4, 2012). The season finale will be Michael Frayn’s uproarious farce “Noises Off” (April 6-24, 2012). 

The theater’s PRC2 second stage series will include Caryl Churchill’s drama “A Number” (Sept. 7-11) and the world premiere of “Penelope” written and performed by Ellen McLaughlin with music composed by Sarah Kirkland Snider (April 25-29, 2012). PlayMakers is finalizing plans for the third play in the PRC 2 series, to be staged Jan. 11-15, 2012. The title and more information will be posted at https://playmakersrep.org when available.

Based in the College of Arts and Sciences, PlayMakers is the Carolinas’ premiere resident professional theater company. New York’s Drama League has named PlayMakers “one of the best regional theatres in America.”

PlayMakers contact: Connie Mahan, (919) 428-1744, cmahan@email.unc.edu
College of Arts and Sciences contact: Kim Spurr (919) 962-4093, spurrk@email.unc.edu