Main Street Theater -
Rice Village
2540 Times Blvd.
Performances
March 15, 2012
March 18, 2012
Thursday - 7:30pm
Sunday - 11:00am
Special Extension of The Coast of Utopia:
You'll be able to see all 3 plays consecutively
over 3 days AND ALL 3 PLAYS IN ONE DAY!
Please refer to our calendar for the exact performance schedule.
The Coast of Utopia Part 2:
Shipwreck By Tom Stoppard 2nd US Production
Directed by Rebecca Greene Udden
Main Street Theater -
Rice Village
2540 Times Blvd.
Main Street Theater -
Rice Village
2540 Times Blvd.
Performances
March 16, 2012
March 18, 2012
Friday - 8:00pm
Sunday - 3:00pm
Special Extension of The Coast of Utopia:
You'll be able to see all 3 plays consecutively
over 3 days AND ALL 3 PLAYS IN ONE DAY!
Please refer to our calendar for the exact performance schedule.
The Coast of Utopia Part 3:
Salvage By Tom Stoppard 2nd US Production
Directed by Rebecca Greene Udden
Main Street Theater -
Rice Village
2540 Times Blvd.
Preview February 23 at 7:30pm
Performances
February 24 - March 11, 2012
Thursdays - 7:30pm
Fridays and Saturdays - 8:00pm
Sundays - 3:00pm
Sunday, March 18 - 8:00pm
Extended!
Main Street Theater -
Rice Village
2540 Times Blvd.
Performances
March 17, 2012
March 18, 2012
Saturday - 8:00pm
Sunday - 8:00pm
Special Extension of The Coast of Utopia:
You'll be able to see all 3 plays consecutively
over 3 days AND ALL 3 PLAYS IN ONE DAY!
Please refer to our calendar for the exact performance schedule.
Shipwreck and Salvage will be playing in repertory starting on February 24. Please refer to our calendar for the exact performance schedule.
Call 713-524-6706 for Tickets
For groups of 10 or more, please call Andrew Ruthven, Director of Audience Services, at 713-524-3622 x102
Stoppard’s magnificent trilogy chronicles a group of real-life Russian intellectuals dreaming of revolution. Spanning 1833 to 1866, the three plays are anchored by the presence of anarchist Michael Bakunin, literary critic Vissarion Belinsky, literary giant Ivan Turgenev, and revolutionary thinker Alexander Herzen, four men who came of age under Tsar Nicholas I and whose passion for political and intellectual change is mirrored in their personal pursuit of love and happiness. As the arcs of their lives intersect repeatedly, the seeds of the great social revolutions of the late nineteenth century are sown.
In Voyage, Stoppard creates a Chekhovian portrait of life on a Russian estate as he introduces the Bakunin family: Michael, his four sisters, his parents, their social circle, and his growing intellectual circle.
Shipwreck shifts the focus to philosopher Alexander Herzen and the location to Paris against the backdrop of the Revolution of 1848. Herzen articulates the search for a Utopia, but even as he strives to reach it, it eludes him in a series of personal catastrophes.
In Salvage, a disillusioned Herzen finds solace in London within a community of political émigrés which includes Karl Marx and Bakunin, who has escaped from Siberia.
Recommended for mature audiences.
Children under the age of 5 are not allowed in the theater.
Special Events
On January 23, Rice University Prof. Terrence Doody will give a lecture on Stoppard and Chekhov at MST - Chelsea Market at 7pm. Professor Doody is the author of Confession and Community in the Novel and Among Other Things: A Description of the Novel. He has received NEH and Mellon grants as well as several prestigious teaching awards at Rice. He teaches courses in the modernist period, the novel and narrative theory, and contemporary literature, and he is working on a book on the literature of the city. $15 per person to attend.
February 27 there will be a screening of The Captivating Star of Happiness, a 1975 Lenfilm historical drama sympathetic to the failed 1825 Decembrist uprising against Tsar Nicholas I. The film is dedicated to “the women of Russia,” and centers on the wives of the military officers involved in the doomed revolt as they decide whether or not to follow their husbands into Siberian exile. This event is free and will be at MST – Rice Village at 7pm.
March 5 MST will offer a Poetry and Philosophy Night featuring the writings of Herzen, Belinsky, Bakunin, Pushkin, Turgenev, Gogol, and George Sand. The reading is free and will be at MST – Rice Village at 7pm.
Other events include our Post-show Discussion Series on Sunday afternoons with artists and special guests:
Schedule:
Jan. 15 – Jeffrey Church
Jan. 22 – Robert Shimko
Jan. 29 – Jeffrey Church
Feb. 12 – Production talkback with members of the cast
Feb. 19 – Gale Stokes
Mar. 11 – Gale Stokes
Speakers:
Dr. Jeffrey Church, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Houston
Jeffrey Church is a political theorist whose research area is the history of modern political thought, with particular interest in Continental thought from Jean-Jacques Rousseau through Friedrich Nietzsche. His work examines the reflections of past philosophers on freedom, individuality, education, and culture, and shows how these reflections can inform contemporary liberal and democratic theory. He also teaches and writes about the value of literature and film to help us understand crucial political problems.
Dr. Robert Shimko, Assistant Professor of Theatre History and Dramaturgy, University of Houston
Dr. Shimko’s research interests include seventeenth-century theatre historiography, political drama in the English Restoration period, and dramaturgical theory. In 2008, he received the Robert A. Schanke Theatre Research Award from the Mid-America Theatre Conference and recently concluded a two-year term as co-chair of MATC’s theatre history symposium. Dr. Shimko’s scholarly writing has been published in Theatre History Studies, Theatre Journal and Theatre Topics as well as in the books Theater Historiography: Critical Interventions and Querying Difference in Theatre History. He is currently co-editing a book of essays connecting theatre history with public sphere theory. He regularly presents papers at national and international conferences including ASTR, MATC, ATHE and PSI and has been an invited guest lecturer at Louisiana State University, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Rienzi Museum, and Hamline University.
Dr. Gale Stokes, Mary Gibbs Jones Professor Emeritus of History, Rice University
Professor Stokes is past Dean of Humanities, chair of the history department, and a three-time winner of the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching at Rice University. He specializes in the history of Eastern Europe, Balkan history, and nationalism. Dr. Stokes is the author of From Stalinism to Pluralism: A Documentary History of Eastern Europe Since 1945 (1996), The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe (1993), Three Eras of Political Change in Eastern Europe, and The West Transformed (1996). He received the 1994 Vucinich Prize for the best book in the field of Russian, Eurasian and East European studies from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. In 2003, professor Stokes served as president of the AAASS.
