25th Season 
Our Silver Anniversary
...Anything But Square
Carpenter Square Theatre is proud to announce the 2008-2009 season of shows!
CST brings you the shows you won't see at any other local theater.

Discover what everyone's talking about...as we celebrate 25 years of quality alternative theatre in Oklahoma City.

Ticket Information

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(Due to the nature of performing arts events, all titles subject to change.)
 

September 5-27, 2008
Come Back To The 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
a comedy-drama by Ed Graczyk

With a nod to CST’s first 25 years (we produced Jimmy Dean in 1985 & 1988), we meet "The Disciples of James Dean" fan club as they gather for their 20th reunion on a hot September day in 1975 inside a ramshackle West Texas dime store not far from where Dean filmed GIANT.

The center of the colorful collection of characters is Mona, who was once an extra on the film and has a son whom she says was fathered by her film idol. When a stranger arrives who seems strangely familiar, it sets off a series of confrontations. With flashbacks to their teen years in 1955, the plot becomes a richly textured mixture of obsessions, confessions and surprises.

"Full of home spun humor [and] surefire comic gems."
- NY Post

"Doubt is a lean, potent drama…passionate, exquisite, important and engrossing."
– NY Newsday

"Garrison Keillor meets "Topper" by way of "Fargo"!"
 – NPR

Two brothers, orphaned at a young age, live together in a shabby house in North Philly. Phillip is a wild-child innocent who stays indoors endlessly watching TV. His older brother Treat is a streetwise punk who supports the two of them by petty thievery. One night Treat brings home a drunken rich guy, hoping to roll him or hold him for ransom. Rich guy Harold is a con artist on the lam. After escaping Treat’s bonds, Harold sets up their home as a base of operations, and in a strange, hilarious and moving way, becomes the father figure the two "Dead End Kids" have always yearned for.
For mature audiences.

"The play skillfully walks a tightrope between a
comedy of menace and a plaintive study of abandonment."
– NY Times

On a cold, clear, moonless night in the middle of winter, all is not what it seems in the remote, mythical town of Almost, Maine. As the northern lights hover in the sky above, Almost’s residents find themselves falling in and out of love in unexpected and often hilarious ways. As nine tales of love play out, knees are bruised and hearts are broken, but the wounds heal. It’s a delightful midwinter night’s dream!

"…a whimsical approach to the joys and perils of romance.
Magical happenings bloom beneath the snowdrifts."
– NY Times

March 20 – April 11, 2009
The Left Hand Singing
a drama by Barbara Lebow

A new play from the writer of A SHAYNA MAIDEL (presented in CST’s eighth season), it focuses on the disappearance of three college students who head to Mississippi to register black voters during the summer of 1964, a time known as Freedom Summer. We see the students in flashbacks in the dorm room – one a black student, one an idealistic Jewish student, and the third a liberal Protestant boy – as they play and plan their trip south. Their story alternates with that of their parents, whom we see right after their children’s disappearance, then days later and many years later. The parents seem inescapably linked by their shared loss, but we see their relationships tested as the ideals of the 1960s give way to the cynicism of subsequent decades.

"…tells two interlinked stories from 1964’s momentous
Freedom Summer and tells both with affecting grace."
–Talkin’ Broadway

May 15 - June 6, 2009
The Clean House
a comedy by Sarah Ruhl

This fresh and funny play is imbued with a comforting philosophy that the messes and disappointments of life are as much a part of its beauty as romantic love and chocolate ice cream! It’s set in "metaphysical Connecticut" or, more specifically, the home of Lane and Charles, a married couple who are both doctors. Their new housekeeper, Matilde, is an aspiring comedian from Brazil more interested in coming up with the perfect joke than in house-cleaning. No matter. Lane’s eccentric sister is nuts about house work, so she secretly scrubs while Matilde works on her jokes. Trouble comes when Lane’s husband Charles reveals that he has found his soul mate in one of his patients.

"A rich work from a young playwright with an original and audacious voice."
– Variety

June 26 – July 18, 2009
The Little Dog Laughed
a comedy by Douglas Carter Beane

This Broadway and Off-Broadway hit of 2006 follows the adventures of Mitchell Green, a handsome young movie actor who is on the verge of major stardom. Although he is always photographed on the arms of beautiful women, he has a little secret that threatens his career as a Hollywood leading man. His agent can’t seem to keep him in the closet due to his "slight recurring case of homosexuality." And as if that’s not enough, he falls in love with his most recent "rent boy" and wants to announce it to the world. Helping him navigate Hollywood’s choppy waters, his shark of an agent Diane does everything she can to keep him away from the rent boy and the rent boy’s girlfriend (wait, the rent boy has a girlfriend?), but it’s not smooth sailing. Can Diane maneuver a happy ending before the final credits roll?
For mature audiences only.

"Devastatingly funny, with dizzy, irresistible writing that brings down the house."
– NY Times.

Season tickets now on sale. Phone (405) 232-6500 for more information.

Updated: August 24, 2008