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The Piano Lesson August Wilson (25 Sept.-21 Oct.)
Indoor/Outdoor Kenny Finkle (30 Oct.-18 Nov.)
Fully Committed Becky Mode (22 Jan.-17 Feb.)
Much Ado About Nothing William Shakespeare (26 Feb.-23 Mar.)
Magnetic North William Donnelly (1-20 Apr.)
Doubt John Patrick Shanley (29 Apr.-25 May)
Portland Stage Company opened its season with August Wilson's Pulitzer-Prize winning play, The Piano Lesson. The play was directed by Ron O. J. Parson with a design team that consisted of Anita Stewart as set designer, Jacqueline Firkins as costume designer, Bryon Winn as lighting designer, and Gregg Carville as sound designer. The plot centers around a former slave family's heirloom, a hand-carved piano. The piano is now the shared possession of two feuding siblings, Berniece Charles (Tyla Abercrumbie) and her brother Boy Willie (Ronald Conner). "In this excellent, dynamic production, the sibling tension is merciless and exhausting; Conner swaggers, cajoles, coerces, and inveighs tirelessly against Abercrumbie's focused smolder" (Megan Grumbling, "A Valley of Rift," Portland Phoenix 3 Oct. 2007 <http://thephoenix.com/Portland/Arts/48561-PIANO-LESSON/>).
Indoor/Outdoor by Kenny Finkle, is a humorous play about what might happen if we could actually talk back and forth with our pets. A high energy cast starred J. T. Arbogast and Susan Louise O'Connor as Shuman and Samantha, the two humans in the...