GWC Theater Arts Department 2024 – 2025 Season

2024

SPECIAL EVENT: EVERY BRILLIANT THING

By Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe

Directed by Tom Amen

Starring Special Guest Artist Amanda Zarr

Friday September 13, Saturday September 14 at 7:30pm and Sunday September 15 at 2:00pm

Stage West Theater at Golden West College. Festival seating.

Tickets are $10 with all ticket sales to benefit the students in the GWC Theater Arts department.

Approximate Running Time: 75 Minutes (No Intermission)

NOTE: This production contains adult language and situations and is intended for mature audiences.

How many things can you name that make life worth living? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand? What about a million?

In an effort to rescue her mother from the iron grip of depression, a little girl begins to make a short list of everything that’s wonderful and remarkable about being alive. But as the girl grows into a woman the list takes on a life of its own.

In the process of unwrapping a child’s gift to her mom, Every Brilliant Thing sends both actor and audience on an interactive quest to rediscover the simple joys and tiny miracles that make up our daily lives.

Alternately unsettling, uplifting, unconventional, and unexpectedly funny, Every Brilliant Thing is a remarkable testament to the healing power of words and the enduring power of hope!

Note: Although Every Brilliant Thing celebrates all that is positive and hopeful about embracing each day while acknowledging the inherent difficulties of life, the play contains moments that explore depression, self-harm, and suicide, and is therefore recommend for mature audiences. If you or someone you know is struggling, please call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988.

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Production #1

Broadway musical

Title to be announced July 1, 2024

Directed and choreographed by Martie Ramm

October 4 – 13, 2024

Auditions: Wednesday August 21 and Thursday August 22, 2024

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INSPECTING CAROL

By Daniel Sullivan and the Seattle Repertory Co.

Directed by Tom Amen

November 8 – 17, 2024

Auditions: Wednesday September 4 and Thursday September 5, 2024

Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and Nikolai Gogol’s “The Government Inspector” collide in this rollicking backstage farce!

When a small Midwestern theater company mistakes a wandering, would-be actor for an inspector from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Soapbox Theater’s annual holiday production of “A Christmas Carol” is thrown into utter chaos! Fearing their NEA grant may be on the line, the management team decides to make an ally of an enemy and invite the wayward wannabe into the company. However, it’s not long before the aspiring actor becomes an absolute dictator! It’s also not long before the real inspector arrives on the scene, and Murphy’s Law ensues as the company struggles to stage an unintentionally hilarious version of the Dickens classic! Everything that can go wrong does, serving up a delightfully potent yuletide punch!

2025

THE NETHER

By Jennifer Haley

Directed by Tom Amen

March 7 – 16, 2025

Auditions: Wednesday December 4 and Thursday December 5, 2024

Part riveting crime drama, part thought-provoking sci-fi thriller, The Nether is a daring exploration of the darkest corners of human desire. Set in the near future, the play begins in an interrogation room in which a police detective is questioning the creator of a lurid online platform that offers total sensory immersion – simply log in, select an alternative identity, and indulge your private fantasies in a virtual playground free of all moral and ethical boundaries.

Raising more questions than it answers, The Nether is a timely, disquieting, and cautionary parable about the shadowy middle-ground between the strictures of a virtuous reality and a beckoning virtual realm in which anything goes.

NOTE: This production contains adult language and situations and is intended for mature audiences.

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THE SECRET GARDEN

Book and Lyrics by Marsha Norman

Music by Lucy Simon

Bases on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Directed and staged by Martie Ramm

April 25 – May 4, 2025

Auditions: Wednesday February 12 and Thursday February 13, 2025

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s enchanting children’s classic comes to life in this beautiful, Tony Award winning musical adaptation. When a young girl is orphaned in India, she is sent to live with her embittered and reclusive uncle on his Yorkshire estate, where she soon discovers that there are secrets everywhere. The curiosity of Mary Lennox leads to so many wonderful things including the most fundamental and unconscious understanding that people and things wither and die through neglect but that everything and everyone will thrive with attention, care, and love. Dramatic, highly theatrical, and supported by music of exceptional beauty, The Secret Garden is an elegant and moving story that both children and adults are sure to treasure.