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As part of its ReDiscovery Reading Series, the Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) will stage a free reading of David Ives new play, The Panties, The Partner and The Profit: Scenes from the Heroic Life of the Middle Class, on Monday, May 7 at 7:30 p.m. at the Lansburgh Theatre. A discussion with David Ives will take place after the reading, providing the audience with the opportunity to learn more about the play before the full production arrives onstage at STC in the 2018–2019 Season.
Following the success of The Liar, The Heir Apparent, The Metromaniacs (currently playing at Red Bull Theater) and last season’s The School for Lies, David Ives gives his “translaptation” treatment to Carl Sternheim’s epic trilogy, Scenes from the Heroic Life of the Middle Class—transforming three full-length plays into a single brisk evening filled with panties falling, parents visiting, vast fortunes being made, and other signs of the looming near-apocalypse.
The reading features an impressive cast including: Greg Hildreth, who is currently playing Olaf in Frozenon Broadway; Kelly Hutchinson, recently seen Off-Broadway in The Government Inspector; Helen Cespedes currently in The Age of Innocence at Hartford Stage and, D.C. favorites Michael Glenn, Dorea Schmidt and Gregory Wooddell, who all appeared in David Ives’s The School for Lies at STC last season.
Now in its 25th season, the ReDiscovery Series aims to introduce audiences to new adaptations of great but lesser-known classic plays under consideration for STC’s mainstage seasons, and the readings are often the first step in bringing a new adaptation or an under-produced classic back into the spotlight.
“I’ve taken three full-length plays and condensed them into a single evening, moving early 20th-century German family life into America today, with what I hope is comparable comic and satiric effect,” says David Ives. “My aim is to bring to life on a modern stage the message, if not the warning that Sternheim was shouting from his era, right into our collective ear. We are looking at Sternheim’s comedy anew, through contemporary eyes, so it seems fitting that it should premiere as part of STC’s ReDiscovery Reading Series.”
Sternheim (1878-1942), a successful social satirist, is best known for a series of plays that he titled “From The Heroic Life of the Middle Class.” They tell the story of the Mask family, which moves from lower middle class to middle class to filthy rich over three generations of German society. In Ives new version, the series now begins in Boston in 1950 (“The Panties”), goes on to New York and Wall Street in 1986 (“The Partner”) and brings the Mask family up to date in our own day with the Mask grandchildren now rich in Malibu (“The Profit”).
The reading will be directed by STC Associate Artistic Director Alan Paul. The main stage production next season will be directed by Artistic Director Michael Kahn, in his final season leading STC.
Audiences wishing to hear Ives’ work can reserve their spot at http://www.shakespearetheatre.
For more information about the ReDiscovery series, visit ShakespeareTheatre.org/
