2009 – 10 Season
Creative Loafing Best of the Bay
- Best Theater Company, Reader's Poll Runner-Up
Mainstage Season
And Baby Makes Seven
By Paula Vogel
Directed by Karla Hartley
Sep. 24 – Oct. 11, 2009
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Tickets: $24.50
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
Anna, Ruth and Peter await the arrival of their newborn child, but first they must rid the crowded apartment of their three imaginary children. Hilariously startling and brilliantly funny, Paula Vogel redefines the meaning of family and completely blurs the lines between illusion and reality, power and subjection, friendship and love, female and male.
Night Of The Living Dead
By Lori Allen Ohm
Based on the screenplay by George Romero
Directed by Chris Holcom
Extended! Oct. 22 – Nov. 15, 2009
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Tickets: $24.50
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
Held hostage by an impending mob of flesh-eating zombies, seven people are trapped in an isolated farmhouse. Their survival is doubly threatened when they begin to turn on each other as the dead encroach. A gripping, terror-filled, monochromatic play that brings all the fright of the cult classic to life. This blend of thrilling horror, laced with touches of black humor, envelops the audience in the action and unfolds into a shocking theatrical ending.
What The Butler Saw
By Joe Orton
Directed by Katrina Stevenson
Extended! Jan. 7 – 29, 2010
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm; extension days: Wed. – Fri. 8pm.
Tickets: $24.50
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
The premiere of Orton’s final play sent shockwaves through London audiences, who were scandalized by its lewd humor and madcap energy. Wild, risqué, and ferociously playful, Orton’s uproarious farce is one of the seminal works of modern comedy. When psychiatrist Dr. Prentice tries to seduce an aspiring secretary, his botched efforts leads to comic bedlam involving his insatiable wife, a randy bellhop, a befuddled police officer, and ultimately, the formidable manhood of Sir Winston Churchill.
Boom!
By Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
Directed by Kari Goetz
Mar. 11 – 28, 2010
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Tickets: $24.50
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
“Sex to change the course of the world…” A grad student’s personal ad lures a randy journalism coed to his subterranean lab, where he studies the sleep cycles of fish for signs of the apocalypse. Will their “intensely significant coupling” lead to another big bang, or is mankind’s fate in the hands of someone watching from outside the fishbowl?
Dead Man’s Cell Phone
By Sarah Ruhl
Directed by David M. Jenkins
Extended! Jun. 3 – 27, 2010
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Tickets: $24.50
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
An incessantly ringing cell phone in a quiet café. A stranger at the next table who has had enough. And a dead man — with a lot of loose ends. So begins Dead Man’s Cell Phone, a wildly imaginative new comedy by MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Sarah Ruhl, author of The Clean House and Eurydice. A work about how we memorialize the dead, and how that remembering changes us, it is the odyssey of a woman forced to confront her own assumptions about morality, redemption, and the need to connect in a technologically obsessed world.
Dog Sees God: Confessions Of A Teenage Blockhead
By Bert Royal
Directed by David M. Jenkins
Extended! Aug. 5 – 29, 2010
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Tickets: $24.50
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
When CB’s dog dies from rabies, he begins to question the existence of an afterlife. His best friend is too stoned to provide any coherent speculation. His sister has gone goth. His ex-girlfriend has recently been institutionalized, and his other friends are too inebriated to give him any sort of solace. But a chance meeting with an artistic kid, the target of this group’s bullying, offers CB a peace of mind and sets in motion a friendship that will push teen angst to the very limits. Drug use, suicide, eating disorders, teen violence, rebellion and sexual identity collide and careen toward an ending that’s both haunting and hopeful.
Encore Production
Pericles
Based on the play by William Shakespeare
Music by Joe Popp, Brian McCabe and Tylor Durand
Lyrics by Joe Popp
Book by Neil Gobioff & Shawn Paonessa
Directed by David M. Jenkins
Apr. 7 – 11, 2010
Wed. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Tickets: $15
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center
Apr. 15 – 17, 2010
Thr. – Sat. 8:30pm, Sat. 4pm
Tickets: $15
HERE Theater, New York
Jobsite Theater proudly makes their first Off-Broadway premiere with their rock musical based on William Shakespeare’s Pericles. Joe Popp brings his power-punk music and oddball sense of humor back to Tampa and teams up with perennial Jobsite contributors Neil Gobioff & Shawn Paonessa with this original work. Jobsite’s Pericles is a wholesale adaptation of Shakespeare’s play Pericles, Prince of Tyre – shifting in time and space to modern era United States. Perry, “Prince of Tires”, gets caught up in a web of intrigue, incest and the mafia as he tries to balance having a family while also running a “family.” As his epic journey reaches an end, he learns that saving both his biological family and his mafia family are rooted in truly understanding the value of loyalty, honor and love.
Ensemble
Job-side Productions
Last Call For Jazz: The Vocal Stylings Of Emilia Sargent
Oct. 9, 2009
Fri. 10:30 pm
Tickets: $15 advance through the ticket office, $5 student rush half hour prior to curtain;
FREE for Jobsite season ticket holders.
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
Featuring: Tampa Jazz Greats, James Crumbly (Piano), T.J. Glowacki (Bass) and Thomas Ziegelhofer (Trumpet). Funny, sexy, and poignant, Last Call for Jazz entertains with a spectrum of beloved standards from the Great American Songbook, Broadway hits, and original music by James Crumbly. Songs include favorites such as “You Hit the Spot,” “‘Deed I Do,” “Peel Me a Grape,” “If I Were a Bell,” “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” “Bewitched,” “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To,“ ”More Than You Know,” “Get Happy,” “The Frim Fram Sauce,” and many others.
On The Way To O’Neill’s: JFK In Ireland
By Ann G. Bauer & David Beckett Jobsite Presents a Silver Meteor Gallery production Directed by James B. Rayfield Mar. 21 – 23, 2010 Sun. – Tue. 7pm Tickets: $7 at the door; FREE for Jobsite season ticket holders. Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts “On the Way to O’Neill’s: JFK in Ireland” is an alternate history play that imagines the later life of former President John F. Kennedy, who survived that fateful day in November 1963 but lost both his wife and the Presidency. The year is 1999 and Kennedy, now 82 years of age, has come to Wexford, Ireland to mourn the recent death of his son. His reverie is interrupted by an interview request from Gemma O’Leary, a local newspaper reporter with a voice eerily similar to Kennedy’s late wife Jackie. Somewhat shaken, he agrees to a meeting with Gemma, who helps him make sense of both his life and the losses he’s suffered. Meanwhile, a remarkable parallel to the Cuban Missile Crisis is occurring on the other side of the globe, and once again, Kennedy’s diplomacy is required.
Tick, Tick… Boom!
By Jonathan Larson
Directed by Karla Hartley
Music Direction by JP Kavanaugh
May 21 – 29, 2010
Fri. – Sat. 11pm
Tickets: $15, FREE for Jobsite season ticket holders.
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
A musical look at the courage it takes to follow your dreams, Tick, Tick… Boom! is Jonathan Larson’s autobiographical tale of a young composer on the brink of turning 30 and falling into oblivion. His girlfriend wants to get married and move out of the city (Tick,), his best friend is making big bucks on Madison Avenue (Tick…), yet Jon is still waiting on tables and trying to write the great American musical (Boom!). Containing fourteen songs, ten characters, three actors, and a band, Tick, Tick… Boom! takes you on the playwright/composer’s journey that led to the Broadway blockbuster, Rent.
Set in 1990, this traditional book musical is filled with instantly appealing melodies and a unique blend of pop and musical theatre styles. Everyone, regardless of age, will love this youthful, endearing, and thoughtful piece, and will surely embrace the universal ideal of holding onto your dreams through life’s most difficult challenges.
This production is a benefit for the American Cancer Society.
Cowboy V. Samurai
By Michael Golamco
Directed by Richard Kennedy
Aug. 13 – 16, 2010
Fri. – Sat. 10:30pm, Sun. – Mon. 7:30pm
Tickets: $5 at the door; FREE for Jobsite season ticket holders.
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
Cowboy v. Samurai is a contemporary retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac set in the American West.
Jobsite is once again helping the Asian Pacific American Scene, Inc. (APASI) with a Job-side Production. APASI is a Florida not for profit corporation started in 2007 that is committed to connecting people of all communities to Asian Pacific American culture and experiences by producing thought provoking and entertaining art about Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander descent. The last show done with Jobsite’s Job-side program was Bondage in 2008, written by David Henry Hwang and directed by Ami Sallee Corley.
Job-side Staged Readings
Maria Kizito
By Erik Ehn
Directed by Lori Shannon
Mar. 15, 2010
Mon. 7:30 pm
Tickets: $5 at the door; FREE for Jobsite season ticket holders.
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Lori Shannon
Mar. 30, 2010
Tue. 7:30 pm
Tickets: $5 at the door; FREE for Jobsite season ticket holders.
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
In this 2010 incarnation of a timeless tale of emotional dishonesty and sexual tension, Brick is on the down low, Big Daddy is sick and well Maggie is Maggie. Featuring an all African-American cast and a soundtrack featuring everything from Prince to Donny Hathaway and Maxwell, this special staged reading stars Ranney Lawrence, Theresha Griffin, Josh Goff, Talitha Coverson, Antonio Nelson, featuring Cedric Darius and Tia Jemison as Brick and Maggie.
Nerve
By Adam Szymkowicz
Directed by Lori Shannon
Jul. 19, 2010
Mon. 7:30 pm
Tickets: $5 at the door; FREE for Jobsite season ticket holders.
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
Put a scary control freak with a puppet fetish on an online date with a nymphomaniac that likes to cut herself, put them both in a dive bar during eighties night. I think you get the idea.
Chapel Perilous
Written and directed by Christen Hailey
Aug. 9, 2010
Mon. 7:30 pm
Tickets: $5 at the door; FREE for Jobsite season ticket holders.
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
Fraternal twins Mae and Jake own a dodgy beach bar and massage parlor. When they learn a hurricane is on the way, they do what comes naturally – throw a party and sing some karaoke. However, the forces of chaos, destruction, unrequited love, and poisonous hotdogs threaten to destroy everything. Can our heroes overcome insanity and mortal peril, ride the storm, and emerge unscathed?
