Description: Steve Martin's play hilariously explores very serious questions about love and happiness and the meaning of life. It is rich with equal parts pain and slapstick humor, torment and wit. An imagined meeting of Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein in 1904 - when both men were in their twenties - it is a compelling examination of science and art and their impact on a rapidly changing society, as the two men engage in a battle of ideas about probability.

Description: The Magrath sisters, Meg, Babe, and Lenny, reunite at Granddaddy's home in Mississippi after Babe shoots her abusive husband. Past resentments bubble to the surface as they're forced to deal with assorted relatives and past relationships in this tragically comic Pulitzer Prize winner.

by Noah Haidle

Description:
"I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart." -William Butler Yeats.

Rag and Bone
By Noah Haidle
“Haidle is an engaging writer who creates startling theatrical conceits, intriguing themes and offbeat characters…his nonrealistic style is bold and imaginative”
____Variety
Feeling bored with your life? Your heart broken by false love? Not living the life you thought you would have in your youth? No thrills? Feeling too much….feeling too little? Just a bit player in the movie of your life? Well, Rag and Bone by Noah Haidle has the answer for you. Just come by Jeff and George’s ladder store and in a spy-movie-voice ask for that “special ladder because you hate being on the ground.” And for the right price a new, special, black-market human heart can be yours.

Rag and Bone is the latest production from one of Albuquerque’s most exciting and innovative theatre companies, Blackout Theatre. In this tale, equal parts absurdism and whimsy, brothers Jeff and George own The Ladder Store where you can buy “every ladder of today and some from yesterday.” Unbeknownst to the dim-witted but loveable Jeff, the Ladder Store is really a black market heart operation, where you can trade up to the heart you always wanted. Maybe you want a pediatrician’s heart so you can feel “an enormous sense of compassion and deserved righteousness?” Or perhaps the heart of a poet with which you’d “have a sense of empathy bordering on the clairvoyant?” But then again, you probably couldn’t handle the poet’s heart. Into this world of blood, dreams, and ladders, step The Poet, missing his heart, The Millionaire who would love to feel something, anything, and of course, a pimp and his hooker with a heart of gold. Join Blackout and legendary Albuquerque director Denise Schulz on this weird, delightful, and highly strange journey.

The play, says director Schulz, draws inspiration numerous places, including old gangster movies, Steinbeck novels, Disney songs and the theatrical aesthetics of Bertolt Brecht. “This is not realism,” she says. “The characters are stereotypes- the stereotypical capitalist, a hooker with a heart of gold. It’s our job to find truth in these characters.”
Blackout’s Artistic Director Jeff Andersen says: “It’s such a strange and wonderful script. It bounces back and forth between genres: sometimes it’s poetic, sometimes it’s incredibly silly, and sometimes it’s a little heartbreaking. I think that’s why it is so attractive to the company. How do you take all these wonderful moments and tie them all together so that they make sense?” It isn’t just the script that is exciting about this show. “Getting to work with Denise Schulz, who taught most of us at the University of New Mexico is such a treat. She taught us all so much and really inspired us, so to be able to work with her again is really rewarding.
To bring the whimsical and absurd world to life, Rag and Bone will feature live music from Monica DeMarco and designs by acclaimed Blackout designers Leonard Madrid, Josh Bien, and Lauren Poole. In addition to several Blackout members, the show will feature performances by fantastic Albuquerque actors Theo Hamblin, Nick Lopez, and Rhiannon Fraizer.
Rag and Bone opens September 17th and runs for only two weekends, closing September 26th. Friday and Saturday shows are at 8pm, Sundays at 2pm. Tickets are $12.00 for general admission, $8.00 for students, seniors at ATG members. All performances are at the Box Performance Space, 100 Gold Ave SW #112 (the southwest corner of 2nd and Gold). Parking is available for free on the street or for a fee in the parking garage. To purchase tickets and make reservations please visit http://www.theboxabq.com. Special online discounts available for the first weekend.






Blackout Theatre

Full Spectrum Theatre
Comedy. New Works. Heart.

Description: "Meet" the brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer who started the Exploratorium in San Francisco.

Description: The music of The Italian Girl in Algiers adds an exotic Eastern flair to Rossini’s elegant melodies and exciting rhythmic style. At the center of this boisterous comedy is the beautiful and fiery Isabella, on a quest to find her captured lover Lindoro. She becomes shipwrecked in Algiers – just in time to be found by Mustafa, the Bey, who has tired of his wife and is looking for an Italian woman to replace her. When Isabella finds Lindoro enslaved by Mustafa, she uses all her feminine charms to outwit the Bey’s advances, reunite him with his wife, and escape from Algiers with Lindoro. Filled with vocal fireworks and brilliant ensemble singing, this battle of the sexes will make you laugh out loud while you enjoy the gorgeous and lively music of one of Italy’s most celebrated opera composers.

Description: The action takes place in the Bronx at Mabel's Dress Shop at the height of the Great Depression. Behind Mabel's legitimate dress shop lies one of the most successful backroom gambling joints on the Eastern Seaboard. However, when people start winding up dead, one can only wonder why and if someone is trying to take over Mabel's territory. Original songs, Tommy Guns and murdering mayhem!



The Dress Shop Murders of 1933 is the latest Musical Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre to be presented by EMCT. Following on the success of locally-based, acclaimed playwright, composer, and musician Richard Atkins' previous hit shows for EMCT: Murder at the Swiss Chalet, Murder on the Turquoise Trail, and Murder on the Salty Dog, this all-new show will take us to the waning era of prohibition, speakeasies, and gangsters and molls. (Tell 'em Joel sent you.)

Doors open at 6:30 pm
Dinner served at 7:00 pm
Show starts at 7:15 pm

Description: Lonnie Wayne Burke can be a vicious criminal but lacks the vision to make it big like Ted Bundy or the Son of Sam. Enter Manny, a talent agent who sees Lonnie's potential and takes him under his wing. Together they craft the most devious serial murderer America has ever seen: The Halloween Killer. Complete with a costume and the all important catch phrase, Lonnie soon becomes the media darling he has dreamt he could be. Appearing on Talk shows, The Miss America Pageant and The Billboard Singles charts, The Halloween Killer can't be stopped---or can he?

Description: This benchmark of Broadway comedy produced one of the theatre's most beloved roles: unconventional Murray, uncle to precocious nephew, Nick. Tired of writing cheap comedy gags for "Chipper the Chipmunk", a children's television star, Murray finds himself unemployed with plenty of free time with which to pursue his...pursuits. Lectured by his conventional brother Arnold and hounded by "the system", Murray is paid a visit by bickering, uptight social workers, Sandra and Albert, and finds himself solving their problems as well as most of his own.
"Would be a standout comedy in any season. Filled with laughter and warmth and sweetness and inspired daffiness. One of the quintessential New York comedies."-NewYork Daily News

Description: Anaya's revered coming of age story, now brought to life in a fully stage production.

Description: A program note says that the time of the action is "an average day in the life of Charlie Brown." It really is just that, a day made up of little moments picked from all the days of Charlie Brown, from Valentine's Day to the baseball season, from wild optimism to utter despair, all mixed in with the lives of his friends (both human and non-human) and strung together on the string of a single day, from bright uncertain morning to hopeful starlit evening.

None of the cast is actually six years old. And they don't really look like Charles Schulz' "Peanuts" cartoon characters. But this doesn't seem to make that much difference once we are into the play, because what they are saying to each other is with the openness of that early childhood time, and the obvious fact is that they are all really quite fond of each other.

Description: La Traviata is the tragic story of a woman who, having been led astray by the fortunes, power and lust of rich men, is forced to abandon redeeming love and happiness by the rigid norms of 19th century Parisian society. In a departure from his earlier operas with larger political themes, Verdi paints unforgettable and intimate musical portraits of three characters: the free-spirited courtesan Violetta, the love-struck young bourgeois Alfredo, and his duty-bound father Germont. From the first act’s famous Libiamo chorus and Violetta’s Sempre libera, through the tension filled confrontation between Germont and Violetta, to the final tragic scene, this opera features some of Verdi’s most recognizable music. It is his most human of stories which has made it an audience favorite for 160 years.

Description: