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mainstage theatreanton in show business A madcap backstage comedy February 8-10, 15-17, 22-24 Pay-What-You-Can-Preview: Opening Night Reception: Beyond the Script: Tickets: 2006-2007 Media Sponsor: Bainbridge Island Review The “backstage comedy” is a wonderful tradition in theater and film. Anton in Show Business is the most recent example of this form of entertainment from the pen of the elusive playwright Jane Martin. But the depiction doesn’t really capture this play’s broader appeal or essence. Director Kate Carruthers says Anton “delivers an electric shock to this genre of comedy and brings it shrieking into the twenty first century.” Jane Martin, who is probably America’s best known, unknown playwright, has something relevant, and often irreverent, to say in Anton about the whole non-profit arts scene in America. The play focuses on the struggles of actors, in this case three women who are cast in Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters. The “play within the play” is slated for the Actors Express in San Antonio, but that’s just the set-up. These women must first pass muster in a New York audition and then try to retain some sense of purpose after toppling into the rabbit hole of the American non-profit theater scene – a scene teeming with arrogant directors, clueless producers, eccentric designers, competing agendas , nit-picking critics and of course, the audience. Anton both pays homage to the classics of theater and offers an equal opportunity satire of a theater system that has run amok in America. And the whole audience – from members who love theater, to those who hate it and those who are indifferent gets to have its say about it all. The elusive playwright Jane Martin first came to national attention for Talking With, a collection of monologues premiering in the 1982 Humana Festival, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in drama for Keely and Du in 1993. Beyond the Script: Beneath its veneer as a satirical comedy, Anton in Show Business takes serious aim at one of the main problems facing contemporary theatre: that the world of live drama is growing ever more estranged from the straightforward business of telling stories. Join a discussion by local theatre professionals on the myriad of economic, artistic, and personal forces – all hilariously portrayed in Anton – that threaten the relevance and existence of theatre today. The free Beyond the Script discussion takes place on Sunday, February 17, from 1:30 – 2:30 p.m., immediately preceding that day’s 3 p.m. matinee of Anton in Show Business. The Beyond the Script series is funded in part by a grant from Humanities Washington.
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By Jane Martin | 
