Special Engagement:  Red Moon Rising
By Dwayne Yancey
Featuring Bill Armstrong
August 7 & 8, 2009 at 8PM sharp
Additional matinee on Saturday at 2PM
General admission, $15 (Students and Seniors $12)
Synopsis: Do you know the man in the picture? Do you know that he changed your life - and the lives of every American in the 20th Century? His name is Sergei Korolev and you'll meet him in this extraordinary new play by Virginia playwright Dwayne Yancey, in this one man tour-de-force about Korolev, the father of the Russian Space program. It's a masterful blending of science, history, politics and humanity, witty and intelligent.

Shade of the Trees
By Kenley S. Smith
Directed by Pat Wilhelms
August 25-30, 2009 at 8PM sharp
Additional matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2PM
General admission, $15 (Students and Seniors $12)
Synopsis: In Civil War-era Virginia, a 12-year-old girl aids a young runaway slave and finds that she must choose between loyalty to her new friend and her perceived duty to her society. Told in flashbacks. Contains mature content and themes.

Elvis Blossom
By Sunny daSilva
Directed by Joe Banno
September 22-27, 2009 at 8PM sharp
Additional matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2PM
General admission, $15 (Students and Seniors $12)
Synopsis: Back in 1987, a beautiful young woman named Cherry Blossom is convinced she is about to bear the child of Elvis…the fact that Elvis died a decade before is only a minor inconvenience. This tender (but quirky) love story about the King of the Elvis Impersonators is sure to leave you all shook up!

Donnie and the Monsters
By Robert Gibbs
Directed by Cheryl Snodgrass
October 27 through November 1, 2009 at 8PM sharp
Additional matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2PM
General admission, $15 (Students and Seniors $12)
Synopsis: Donnie has a hard time at school and at home…what with the other kids picking on him and everything…and by everything we mean the sock puppet, the monster under his bed, Blackbeard the Pirate, and the talking toilet. This hilarious adult version of a children’s book is definitely NOT for children but we think audiences 16 and up will love this weird and wonderful lesson in how to deal with anger and fear.

Special Engagement:  The Center
a new play by Ed Falco
Directed by David Johnson
With Susanna Rinehart, Doug Chancey, and Earl Kingston
November 6 and 7, 2009 at 8PM sharp
General admission, $15
Synopsis: The Center is a play about counselors, chaos, and black snow. It is about the chaos at the heart of everything, which is to say the disorder that always precedes and follows any momentary order. Something terrible has happened at a place referred to in the play only as The Center, and it has had a significant effect on the lives of all the characters. Whatever happened, though never specified, clearly reminds of the Murrah Building bombing on April 19, 1995. Two of the characters, Terry and Allen, seem to know something about the event. A suspect seems to still be at large. The two other characters are Terry's and Allen's counselors, Ursula and Vincent, and they seem to be trying to figure out what Terry and Allen know. The play itself, in its structure and design, embodies some of the chaos it is exploring. Sometimes funny, sometimes not so funny, The Center asks the audience to step into the shadows and look around.

Yes, Svetlana, There is a Grandfather Frost
By Jeff Goode
Directed by Todd Ristau
December 7-13, 2009 at 8PM sharp
Additional matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2PM
General admission, $15 (Students and Seniors $12)
Synopsis: At a State-run newspaper in Communist Russia, a cynical journalist is asked to defend the Soviet Santa. "And even though your father turned out to be an embarrassment, and a traitor, you must still miss him, sometimes, at the holidays."

Ashville
By Lucy Thurber
Directed by Todd Ristau
February 9-14, 2010 at 8PM sharp
Additional matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2PM
General admission, $15 (Students and Seniors $12)
Synopsis: Ashville is a dark, sad little comedy about blue collar small town America, mothers, daughters, drug dealers and love. The kind of Valentine’s Day card you’d expect from Studio Roanoke.

Dear Abe
By Adam Hahn
Directed by Joe Banno
March 23-28, 2010 at 8PM sharp
Additional matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2PM
General admission, $15 (Students and Seniors $12)
Synopsis: Abe Mann, author of a widely syndicated advice column, has died. His two sons have inherited their father’s resort hotel on a tropical island and are forced by circumstance to come to terms with life, loss, and the meaning of humanity.

Under a Banner of Shadow
Written, directed and performed by Todd Ristau
with additional direction by Clinton Johnston
April 27 through May 2, 2010 at 8PM sharp
Additional matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2PM
General admission, $15 (Students and Seniors $12)
Synopsis:Not long before Adolf Hitler's suicide (65 years ago this month), he dictated his political testament. That action creates the spine of this one-person play, becoming an erratically connected series of fever dream flashbacks which reveal the twisted relationship between truth and deception in the mind of the most hated man in history.

The initial production received an invitation to perform at the prestigious Assembly Rooms as part of the 1991 Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it was called "brilliantly repellant" and "all too accurate" by the reviewer for the Scotsman. Peggy Houston, director of Iowa Elderhostel called it; "...deeply moving, extremely accurate, and vitally important in educating another generation about the horror of that period."

Devil Sedan
Written by Kenley Smith
Driected by Lorie Obradovich
June 22-27, 2010, at 8PM sharp
Additional matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2PM
General admission, $15 (Students and Seniors $12)
Synopsis:  One shotgun blast. Two young women. Two brothers. Four lives fatally intertwined. Devil Sedan unfolds as a tale of defied expectation, a journey into the deepest mysteries of faith and duty. The play took top honors at Barter Theatre’s 2008 Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights, won the 2009 Joe McCabe Memorial Playwriting Award (sponsored by WV Writers, Inc.) and was featured at the 2008 Great Plains Theatre Festival.

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