Our 2010/11 Season

THE  PEAR’S  AMERICANA  SEASON

Join us for the Pear’s greatest adventure yet!  Our ninth season will explore the American experience in an unforgettable array of peerless classics and provocative contemporary works. Be there to see the sparks fly.

Download the season brochure (pdf - 33 MB)

Performance Calendar

Angels in America (Part One): Millennium Approaches  by Tony Kushner

  • September 17 –October 16

Our Town  by Thornton Wilder

  • September 24 – October 17 

For the first time (ever), two American theatrical treasures will be teamed: Angels in America and Our Town  will be performed at the Pear in repertory, with the same cast and stage setting.  These brilliantly contrasting works embody ideas about our nation at different times in its history. Wilder’s beloved Our Town leads us gently back to a quieter, steadier America.  Kushner’s searing Angels in America propels us to a time of upheaval, but also tentative hope. Two iconic plays brought together in a bold and startling way. Learn More.

 

CTRL + ALT + DELETE  by Anthony Clarvoe

  • November 5 - 21

At the beginning of a new century, Silicon Valley’s prime mover and shaker is looking to market the Next New Thing. A young man pitches what seems to be a tantalizing but impossible concept: a miraculous “gizmo” that is part cell phone, part computer, addictive as all get out. Never mind that such a contraption cannot be made. (Or can it?) A wildly funny play by the author of Pick Up Ax.   

 

No Good Deed  by Paul Braverman

  • January 14 - 30

The year is 1962.  Boston may be celebrating "Camelot", but under the surface, there's another, grittier world filled with greed, lust, and violence.  That's Frankie Payne's world.  She is a female private detective but, as one character notes, "Frankie Payne is no lady."  Gin-soaked but not quite washed up, Frankie fights demons both inside and out to find redemption.  Set in the midst of the Irish gang war, this stunning new play is told with a classic film noir feel.

 

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

  • February 25 – March 20

This iconic and moving work, widely regarded as THE defining American drama, is the heartbreaking story of an ordinary man with extraordinary, and ultimately self-destructive, expectations. Called a “working –class Oedipus Rex,” Miller’s play led all others in a recent nationwide survey of playwrights, scholars, and educators asked to name the ten most important American plays.   

 

Pear Slices 2011  by the Pear Playwrights Guild 

  • April  8 - 24

More Pear Slices, please!  This new batch of deliciously varied short plays will work their magic on the season’s Americana theme. And there’s one more reason to celebrate:  Slices 2011 will mark the Pear’s sixtieth production—celebrate with us! 

 

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (Dramatized by Diane Tasca)

  • May 13-29

Twain's wisecracking hero finds himself zapped from 1880 to the Middle Ages, from industrial America to medieval England. Yankee can-do spirit enables this crafty time-traveler to drag a backward culture kicking and screaming into the modern era--but only for a while. Breathtaking, hilarious-- and shockingly relevant to 21st century America.

 

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

  • June 24 - July 10

Our Americana season ends with a play about beginnings - Lorraine Hansberry's startlingly fresh masterpiece about an African-American family claiming their piece of the American Dream: a home of their own. The first play by an African-American woman ever to be produced on Broadway, this resilient, moving, witty work breathes fire and radiates hope, today more than ever.