Banyan Theater Company announces 14th summer season

Though it is the middle of the whirlwind of creativity that is the theatrical winter season, the smoldering summer months are all but a desert for theater opportunities as the majority of Sarasota’s theater companies take that time to prepare for the next theatrical season. However, for the last 14 years the Banyan Theater Company has thrived on taking the blank space of the summer to present some of the most intimate and inventive plays of the last century.

This summer the Banyan Theater Company returns to the Jane B. Cook Theatre at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts and with three engrossing and provocative plays from some of the stage’s most inspiring playwrights and dramatists.

"I read around 50 to 75 plays in the selection process each year in order to achieve the balance that we’re looking for,” says Jerry M. Finn, executive director of the Banyan Theater Company.

Opening the company’s 14th season is Yasmina Reza’s statement on art and relationships: “Art.” Best known for her two couple showdown “God of Carnage,” the French playwright first made her mark in the theater world in 1994 with this work. The play depicts three lifelong friends Serge, Marc and Yvan as they discuss the artistic merits of a piece of modern art that Serge just purchased that is completely white. However, the conversation about the seemingly blank painting escalates into an argument about the three men’s very relationship and history together. Translated into English by Christopher Hampton, the play was a riveting success when it opened in London’s West End in 1996 and ran for an impressive eight years. It was brought to Broadway in 1998 and ran for 600 performances and starred Victor Garber, Alan Alda and Alfred Molina. This discourse on the tricky “art of friendship” runs from June 25 to July 12.

The Banyan Theater Company’s middle play running from July 16 to Aug. 2 is a smoldering look into an often-misunderstood community as it grapples with the real life tragedy. “The Amish Project” by Jessica Dickey focuses on the Amish community’s reaction to the West Nickel Mines School shooting that took place in Oct. 2006 in Lancaster Co., PA where ten girls were shot and five were killed by a gunman who would commit suicide before the police could intervene. Instead of a large ensemble portraying this Amish town, actress Katherine Michelle Tanner will portray all seven characters as they deal with the grief and fiery emotions after such a violent tragedy.

Closing out the summer stock of drama is “My Old Lady” by the godfather of off-Broadway theater: Israel Horovitz. “My Old Lady” was recently adapted into a film starring Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas and directed by the playwright in his feature film directorial debut. Running from Aug. 6 to 23, “My Old Lady” tells the story of 55-year-old Mathias “Jim” Gold who is financial and emotional straits as he travels to Paris to sell the apartment he inherited from his recently deceased father. Unbeknownst to Mathias, there is a resilient 94-year-old lady Mathilde Giffard residing in the spacious Paris apartment. While trying his hardest to sell the apartment while the elderly woman lives there, Mathias discovers his self and overcomes the ghosts of his past and his parents.

"I spend a lot of time going to other theaters around Florida and make a selection of something I think is appropriate for our audience and this company," says Finn. "I just really want to challenge our audience."