Silent Sky at Long Beach Playhouse

MISS BENNET: CHRISTMAS AT PEMBERLY Will Be Coming to the Long Beach Playhouse

'Welcome to the Pemberley Estate where the family is gathered for the Christmas holiday. There is joy, jealousy, love notes and juxtaposition of the Bennet sister's agendas. Mary Bennet yearns for her place in this world. Is it to be found in music, books or maps? Is it a solitary and invisible life to be hidden between pages and musical refrains? Will she ever find someone who understands her for what she truly is?' These are the words of Phyllis Gitlin, director of Miss Bennet: Christmas as Pemberley describing the storyline.

Long Beach Playhouse Stages MISS BENNET: CHRISTMAS AT PEMBERLEY

The holidays are upon us filled with good cheer and family traditions. What better family to spend some time with than the Bennets from Pride and Prejudice? Lamenting a shortage of new plays for the holiday season, playwrights Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon decided to take on the challenge.

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE Opens At The Long Beach Playhouse

The Long Beach Playhouse opens its 2019 - 2020 season with The Haunting of Hill House. The play is adapted by F. Andrew Leslie from the novel written by Shirley Jackson in 1959. The story focuses on Dr. Montague (a paranormal researcher), an isolated and creepy old house with a bad reputation, a collection of his guests chosen for their susceptibility to the supernatural, a quirky relative of the mansion's owner and the strangely disquieting house staff. As the foreboding and creepiness grows we must ask the question, 'What can be done when the malevolent presence isn't in the house but is the house?'

EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEAR Coming Soon To The Long Beach Playhouse

The Long Beach Playhouse opens its 2019 Studio Season with Lauren Gunderson's play entitled Exit, Pursued by a Bear. The play's subtitle is 'A Revenge Comedy.' It's a play that feels like a mashup between Shakespeare and the Coen Brothers. The protagonist, Nan, is trapped in an unhappy marriage with a man named Kyle. She and her best friend, Simon, along with a stripper named Sweetheart, cook up a plot to reenact scenes from Nan and Kyle's miserable marriage in hopes of helping Kyle understand the ways he's failed her.

SILENT SKY Opening At The Long Beach Playhouse

Lauren Gunderson's play, Silent Sky, is based on the true story of astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. Nearly 20 years before American women could vote, Henrietta Leavitt graduated from Radcliff College, took a job in Harvard's Observatory and, working from slides because women weren't allowed to touch the telescopes, she discovered the amount by which the star's brightness is dimmed by distance allows the star's distance from the earth to be calculated. Leavitt turned a two-dimensional picture of the sky into a three-dimensional one.

SILENT SKY Announced At The Long Beach Playhouse

Lauren Gunderson's play, Silent Sky, is based on the true story of astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. The play opens in 1900, when Leavitt is working in the Harvard Observatory in the 'woman's room.' These women 'computers,' are tasked with measuring and cataloging stars. They work from photographic plates because women were not allowed to touch the telescopes. The astronomer for whom they work calculates projects in 'girl hours,' has no time for the women's probing theories and has no problem taking credit for their ideas.