For Immediate Release

Onstage at Theatre Three: The Light in the Piazza

Theatre Three’s 2008-2009 Season continues with the Tony Award-winning musical, The Light in the Piazza by Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas. Theatre Three’s forty-eighth season is a world tour of theater. Beginning with the comic mayhem of a garden festival at an English manor house, the season concludes with the harrowing drama of a South African courtroom. The shows between include a homegrown military drama, a romantic musical set in Florence, a witty Spanish Golden Age comedy, a modern French flirtatious farce, and a classic mystery set on the Nile River. The Light in the Piazza begins previews on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 and will close on Sunday, November 23, 2008. “Anyone meeting Clara for the first time usually finds this incredible, but...Well, Clara is not...She’s not quite as she seems. She’s very young for her age. Is...And, oh, I have managed in many tactful ways over the years to explain her and her situation to young men without wounding them. But...well, none of that should be necessary here, one would certainly hope. Never mind.” – Margaret Johnson in The Light in the Piazza. American Margaret Johnson is quite happy to show her daughter, Clara, around her favorite city in Europe: Florence, Italy. Before World War II, Margaret enjoyed her honeymoon in Italy and showing her daughter the city reminds her of a special and romantic time in her life. Her trips changes suddenly when a breeze whisks Clara’s hat off of her head and into the hands of a young Italian man, Fabrizio. Clara and Fabrizio make an instant connection, but Margaret is wary. Clara suffered an injury as a young girl and her mental and emotional capacities have not fully developed. How will Margaret explain this delicate situation to a young man so obviously in love with her daughter? Or should she simply let her daughter try to find happiness in her own way? The winner of six Tony Awards in 2005, this is the musical that made Broadway swoon. About The Playwrights: Adam Guettel & Craig Lucas Adam Guettel: Guettel is a composer/lyricist living in Seattle, where he is Artist in Residence at the Intiman Theater. His newest musical, The Light in the Piazza (cast album on Nonesuch Records), with a book by Craig Lucas, premiered on Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater's Vivian Beaumont Theater in April 2005, following a world premiere at the Intiman Theater in Summer 2003, and a second engagement at Chicago's Goodman Theater in early 2004 (where it received three Joseph Jefferson Awards including Best Musical). The Light in the Piazza received six 2005 Tony Awards including two for Mr. Guettel — Best Original Score, and Best Orchestrations. Piazza also received 5 Drama Desk Awards, including two for Mr. Guettel — Best Music, and Best Orchestrations. He wrote music and lyrics for Floyd Collins (cast album on Nonesuch Records), which received the 1996 Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical and earned Mr. Guettel the Obie Award for Best Music. Floyd Collins has been presented at Playwrights Horizons, New York; Prince Theatre, Philadelphia; Goodman Theatre, Chicago; Old Globe, San Diego; Bridewell, London; and elsewhere. His other works include Love’s Fire, a collaboration with John Guare for The Acting Company, and Saturn Returns, a concert at Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival. Saturn Returns was recorded by Nonesuch Records under the title Myths and Hymns. Four of Mr. Guettel's songs were featured on Audra McDonald's Nonesuch Records album, “Way Back To Paradise” (1998), and two more appear on her 2000 album, “How Glory Goes” (including the title track). Mr. Guettel himself performed a concert evening of his work at New York’s Town Hall in 1999. Film scores include Arguing The World, a feature documentary by Joe Dorman, and the score for Jack, a two-hour documentary for CBS by Peter Davis (1994). Accolades for Mr. Guettel include the Stephen Sondheim Award (1990), the ASCAP New Horizons Award (1997), and the American Composers Orchestra Award (2005). Craig Lucas: His Lincoln Center Theater credits include The Light in the Piazza and God’s Heart. His other plays include Small Tragedy, Reckless, Blue Window, Prelude to a Kiss, The Dying Gaul, Missing Persons, Stranger and Singing Forest; his screenplays include Longtime Companion, Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless and The Dying Gaul, which he also directed. Lucas wrote the book for the musical play, Three Postcards, with music and lyrics by Craig Carnelia; the libretto for the opera, Orpheus in Love, for composer Gerald Busby; and he co-authored This Thing of Darkness with David Schulner. His awards include an Obie Award for Best American Play for Small Tragedy, the New York Film Critics Award for Best Screenplay for The Secret Lives of Dentists, an Obie for his direction of Harry Kondoleon’s Saved or Destroyed, the Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Laura Pels mid-career achievement award, Outer Critics, LA Drama Critics, Drama-Logue and LAMBDA Literary Awards as well as the Sundance Audience Award. He is the Associate Artistic Director at the Intiman Theater in Seattle.

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