Perseverance Theatre’s 2017-2018 Statewide Season

by Kristoffer Diaz
Directed by Shona Osterhout
JUNEAU: September 15 -October 7, 2017
ANCHORAGE: November 10 – 19, 2017
The Mace is brilliant, the best at his job. He’s so good that he’s paid well to lose. Mace is the ring name of Macedonio Guerra. He has to be better than all the champs in his pro-wrestling league so that he can make them look good. Even if he never gets credit for his skill, and his privileged bosses don’t care how good he is, he’s in love with what he does: taking a fall so the biggest champ, Chad Deity, always wins. But when he meets VP, his new friend whose charisma may be big enough to upend even Chad Deity, things start to get interesting. Audience members are ringside spectators to real pro-wrestling throw-downs and intimate, smart reflections from Mace as he’s revealed as the one spark of truth and honor in an industry based on mutual illusion and suspension of disbelief. The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity is a funny and quirky look at pro wrestling, geopolitics, and capitalism.

by Joel Bennett
Directed by Michael Haneyn
JUNEAU ONLY: October 27 – November 19, 2017
John Barrymore was the best known Hollywood actor of the 1930s with the largest yacht on the west coast. He could have travelled anywhere in the world, and he chose to visit an island in Southeast Alaska near Glacier Bay to spend time with a couple who had a fox farm and gold prospecting claim. What was his relationship with Muz Ibach–the woman choosing to live with her husband in the icy wilderness–and why did Barrymore return again and again to visit her? The play is a true story with a mystery at its heart.

by Arlitia Jones and Michael Haney based on the book by Charles Dickens
Directed By Tom Robenolt
ANCHORAGE ONLY: December 15 – 29, 2017
Witness Ebenezer Scrooge’s miraculous Christmas Eve transformation in Perseverance Theatre’s adaptation of Dickens’ famous book. Ebenezer Scrooge is a greedy businessman, with no place in his life for kindness, compassion, or charity, and destined to a lonely old age. But when four ghosts appear and warn him of a miserable afterlife, Scrooge is reminded of all the chances he had before to make different choices. Charles Dickens’ classic tale of redemption skillfully faithfully adapted by Arlitia Jones and Michael Evan Haney never ceases to please.

by Robert Harling
Directed by Carolyn Howarth
ANCHORAGE: September 29 – October 15, 2017
JUNEAU: December 1 – 31, 2017
Longtime friends in a small Southern town fill Truvy’s hair salon with laughter, gossip, and tears. Truvy’s new assistant Annelle, sociable M’Lynn, and her pretty daughter bride-to-be Shelby, as well as the hysterical bickering Ouiser and Clairee, support each other with love, laughter and beauty products. As hair is dried, dyed, and styled, women’s lives unfold and show the meaning of true friendship.

by Lucas Rowley
Directed by Randy Reinholz
JUNEAU: January 26 – February 17, 2018
ANCHORAGE: March 2 – 11, 2018
*A World Premiere*
William is an Alaska Native professional with a high-pressure job and demands at home too. To cope with his stress, he has formed a Native corporation inside his head, but the strategy backfires when his board of directors get out of control and start hijacking his real life. Though it costs him a relapse and lots of problems at home, he negotiates his politics to find the balance he needs. Getting there is both affirming and hilarious.

by Edmond Rostand. Translated and adapted by David Grimm
Directed by Eleanor Holdridge
JUNEAU: March 16 – April 14, 2018
ANCHORAGE: April 27 – May 6, 2018
*A World Premiere of this new adaptation.*
Cyrano de Bergerac–soldier, poet, and musician, is clever, charming, and disarming, but he’s ashamed of his appearance and believes he’ll never win the love of the beautiful Roxanne. To ensure her happiness, he helps his fellow soldier Christian to woo her. Panache–Cyrano’s word for living life with flair, honor, and eloquence–prevents Cyrano from ever telling Roxanne the truth about Christian and his own deep love for her, until it is too late. Panache undoubtedly killed Cyrano, but without it, he would not have found a life worth living in the first place.

by Jacqueline Goldfinger
Directed by Art Rotch
ANCHORAGE: January 12 – 21, 2018
JUNEAU: May 1 – 19, 2018
* An NNPN Rolling World Premiere *
After running out of a cloud of smoke and sirens with a large, slightly bloody bundle, a woman hides the package under the floorboards of her cabin, changes her clothes, and hides with the lights off until the sirens fade off in the distance. When the coast is clear, she sings songs with her father, packs for a long trip, and burns the cabin down to leave no evidence behind. Based in part on the myth of Electra, The Arsonists is the story of a woman who comes of age in the family arson business before an unexpected accident sends her out on her own.