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Olivia Vinall in "The Hard Problem" at the National Theatre. (Photo by Johan Persson)

Wilma Theater’s Season to Feature New Stoppard, Collaboration With Greek Theatre

A newly devised ‘Antigone’ and Stoppard’s ‘The Hard Problem’ join ‘An Octoroon’ and ‘The Christians’ on the theatre’s slate.

PHILADELPHIA: The Wilma Theater has announced the four plays of its 2015–16 season, ranging in topics from burials rites to altruism to the legacy of slavery to contemporary evangelical theology.

First is a unique new version of Sophocles’s Antigone (Oct. 7–Nov. 8), devised in collaboration Attis Theatre of Athens, Greece, and its director, Theodorus Terzopoulos. As part of a new initiative called the Wilma Hothouse, Terzopoulos will lead an ensemble of eight local actors and four Attis actors to collaboratively a new version of the classic, in a translation by Marianne McDonald.

Next is a new production Tom Stoppard’s latest play, The Hard Problem (Jan. 6–Feb. 6, 2016), about young psychology student applying for a coveted position with a brain-science institute who passionately explores the blurred lines between science and psychology with her colleagues and her sometime lover. It will be directed by Wilma artistic director Blanka Zizka.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon (Mar. 16–Apr. 10, 2016), his acclaimed deconstruction of Dion Boucicault’s 1859 melodrama set on an antebellum plantation in the Deep South, follows. Joanna Settle will direct.

Closing the season with an amen is Lucas Hnath’s The Christians (May 11–June, 2016), about a megachurch pastor who divides his congregation when he makes a marked departure from conventional theology. A coproduction with Syracuse Stage, it will be directed by Syracuse’s artistic director, Timothy Bond.

With its new season, the Wilma will continue its effort to make theatre affordable and available with Wilma WynTix, a program subsidized by the Wyncote Foundation that makes all tickets available to students and theatre artist for just $25 and $10.

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