UA News

During its 2008-2009 season, the UA's theater arts students will perform "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Love's Labour's Lost."

The acclaimed “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tennessee Williams, is the season headliner for The University of Arizona’s theater arts training company.

The production is one of six shows in the 2008-2009 season of the UA’s School of Theatre Arts Arizona Repertory Theatre. Williams earned a Pulitzer Prize for the play, which is considered a masterpiece. A film of the play was released in 1958 starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman and has since been made into a Broadway production, now being performed in New York.

The production is about a family full of problems, resulting in one brother – with help from his wife – figuring out how ways to take over his dying father’s inheritance. Meanwhile, the other brother is consumed with alcohol to avoid his broken marriage to Maggie, or “The Cat.”

The season’s schedule is:

• June 15-29: “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” by Tennessee Williams at the UA Marroney Theatre.
• Sept. 3-14: “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” by Tennessee Williams at the UA Marroney Theatre.
• Oct. 12-Nov. 2: “Love’s Labour’s Lost” by William Shakespeare at the Tornabene Theatre.
• Nov. 9-Dec. 7: “Company,” by George Furth with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim at the Marroney Theatre.
• Feb. 8-March 1, 2009: “Medea” by Euripides at the Tornabene Theatre.
• March 1-29: “Leading Ladies” by Ken Ludwig at Marroney Theatre.
• April 12-May 3: “The Music Man” by Meredith Willson at the Tornabene Theatre.

Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” is a romantic comedy about a king and three lords who decide to pursue their studies while remaining celibate for three years. Ultimately, the men fall in love with a princess and her three ladies.

Furth’s “Company” is about a 35-year-old single man who lives in New York and is surrounded by friends who are married. The novel became a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical.

“Leading Ladies” is a comedy about Shakespearean actors who pretend to be relatives of a dying millionaire in order to try to steal her fortune. “The Music Man” is about Harold Hill, a con man who earns money by promising to teach children music, but never keeping up his part of the bargain. Hill always leaves town after he is paid, but everything changes after he arrives in Iowa.