One of the freshest and most acclaimed new theater companies to come on the scene in recent years is Josh Glover and company’s Upstart Productions. Upstart launched two years ago with an opening season capped with a wonderful production of Kenneth Lonergran’s This Is Our Youth. The Upstarts continued to produce some the area’s best loved productions in the 2009-2010 season, including two works by Eric Bogosian, Talk Radio and subUrbia. Alexandra Bonefield said that Upstart possessed the “creative cojones to embrace Talk Radio and make it their own, ” and Mark Lowery said Upstart performed subUrbia “insanely well, with tight ensembles and the kind of blistering, naturalistic acting that is all too rare on area stages.”

Upstart Productions promises to keep things interesting next season. The first production will be a mini “Pinterfest,” featuring an evening with three one-act plays by Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter (a nice move as the rest of the Dallas theater world turns its attention to works by Horton Foote). This is the second season that Upstart will focus on multiple works by a single playwright, and I hope it becomes a ongoing feature of the company. There is far too little of this kind of studied programming in this city, across all genres of art (besides FooteFest, of course). For the second performance, Susan Sargeant will direct Richard Greenberg’s The Violent Hour, a comic drama about a publisher which debuted on Broadway in 2003 to good reviews.  The full season release is after the jump.

PINTER: Art, Politics, Truth

Three One-Act Plays by Harold Pinter

A Co-Production with Project X: Theatre

October 27 – November 20, 2010

at The Green Zone

161 Riveredge Dr

Dallas, TX 75207

Upstart Productions opens its third season with a tribute to one of the most influential British playwrights and political activists of modern times, Harold Pinter. With a nod to the speech given by the 2005 Nobel Laureate for Literature entitled Harold Pinter: Art, Truth & Politics, Team Upstart presents the regional premiere of Pinter’s last play, Celebration (Art), One for the Road (Politics), and A Kind of Alaska (Truth). The three one-act plays will be presented in repertory each evening featuring a versatile cast of some of DFW’s brightest talent under the direction of Upstart’s Artistic Team.

Celebration (2000)

A Regional Premiere Directed by Elias Taylorson

London’s West End theatre district, home to patrons of the arts, and those who dine at ‘the best and most expensive restaurant in the whole of Europe’ serves as the stage for a study in gastronomy and gilded gawkers who wish to be seen and heard. From fowl to foul-mouthed, two brothers, self-described ‘Strategy Consultants’ and their spouses drink and dish over cuisine and each other while toasting their wedding anniversary. A five-star staff caters to the vacuous VIPs and other copulating clientele. Harold Pinter’s last stage play is a satirical yet sinister look at social behavior and the balance of power as the global elite ushered in a 21^st century Celebration.

One for the Road (1984)

Directed by Mason York

A family is helplessly detained and interrogated for unnamed offences by a sadistic, self-righteous official who extols ‘government is good’ propaganda and the virtues of a Godly world. Reveling in absolute power, the hard-drinking captor terrorizes each victim with totalitarian oppression while he pours himself another One for the Road.

A Kind of Alaska (1982)

Directed by Diana Gonzalez

Amber Devlin reprises her acclaimed portrayal of Deborah, a middle-aged woman roused from a twenty-nine year coma induced by sleeping sickness. Now wide awake, she strives to comprehend her frozen exile, childhood past and adult present in A Kind of Alaska.

The Violet Hour by Richard Greenberg

Directed by Susan Sargeant

A Co-Production with Project X: Theatre

March 30 – April 23, 2011

at The Green Zone

161 Riveredge Dr

Dallas, TX 75207

April 1st, 1919 – A young, independent Manhattan publisher must choose between the works of two authors. One is a sprawling manuscript written by an erratic, but brilliant, college friend whose future with an enchanting heiress rests on its publication. The other is the memoirs of the publisher’s own secret love, a popular black jazz singer.  His dilemma is further complicated when a mysterious machine arrives in the office anteroom and begins spewing reams of pages from never-before-published books that reveal haunting details about their very lives and relationships.  Richard Greenberg, the 2003 Tony Award-winning author of Take me Out and the 1998 Pulitzer-nominated Three Days of Rain, gives us a colorful and touching exploration of the ever-changing nature of history and the individual’s desire to leave a lasting mark on its pages, in that uncertain moment between dusk and sunset known as The Violet Hour.