ASU faculty, staff discounts for MainStage performances

The ASU School of Theatre and Film opens its 2010-11 MainStage season Oct. 8, with “26 Miles,” a coming-of-age-meets-road-trip drama by Quiara Alegría Hudes, the Tony-Award winning playwright of “In the Heights.”

ASU faculty and staff may purchase tickets for $10 for all Sunday-Thursday performances. The play continues through Oct. 16. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 8-9 and Oct. 14-16, with additional 2 p.m. performances on Oct. 9 and 16, in the Lyceum Theatre on the Tempe campus.

Guest artist Jerry Ruiz directs the play, which offers fast-paced dialogue and witty repartee to depict a conflicted young woman contending with the usual adolescent angst and estranged parents, but who is also torn between multi-ethnic identities. The daughter of a Cuban immigrant and a third-generation Ashkenazi Jew, Olivia struggles to find herself.

“26 Miles” is a play that explores distances -- between an estranged mother and daughter (Beatriz and Olivia), between Olivia and her cultural heritage, between the present and the past. The relationships in the family shift profoundly over the course of the road trip as the distance between them closes.

“Audiences will experience a production that matches the imagination and poetry of Quiara Hudes' writing, Ruiz says. "She takes us on a journey into America, into the great wide open. Our production design will take the audience on that journey by creating a fully engaging experience for the audience."

The 2010–11 MainStage Season comprises seven plays, including a dramatic re-visioning of works by Aeschylus and Franz Kafka, and a continuation of the popular New Works Series, as well as the annual Student Film Festival. The ASU staff and faculty discounts are available for the entire season.

The plays carefully were selected from a pool of works by international playwrights and represent a season that explores the ties that bind one person to another.

Audience members who embark on the MainStage journey experience the pain of a mother-to-be grappling with a horrible decision; visit a young boy as he ambles through his ancestral village; glimpse inside the mind of Charles Darwin as imagined by School of Theatre and Film students; watch as 50 Greek sisters flee from marrying as many brothers; and endure a traveler’s pain as he recounts his experience witnessing torture.

For more information contact the Herberger Institute box office, (480) 965-6447, or the School of Theatre and Film, (480) 965-5337. The Web site is http://mainstage.asu.edu.