Three World Premieres Set for SCR’s 2001-02 Season

The world premiere of a new play by Horton Foote, the 85-year-old Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award winner from Texas, will highlight a truncated 2001-02 season at South Coast Repertory.

The Costa Mesa theater will cut back from its customary 11 new productions to nine because of construction of its 336-seat house--due to open in October 2002--and renovations on its two existing theaters. The holiday season staples “A Christmas Carol” and “La Posada Magica” will return for their annual revivals.

But the reduction of adult-play offerings will continue after the expansion is complete. Instead, two slots now devoted to adult works will give way to shows for children as part of a three-play, $300,000-a-year children’s theater initiative beginning in 2002-03.

The work to be done in the coming season includes three world premieres, including Foote’s “Getting Frankie Married--and Afterwards” (April 5-May 5, 2002). The others, both commissioned by SCR, are “Hold Please,” by Annie Weisman, a 27-year-old from San Diego (Sept. 21-Oct. 21), and “Nostalgia,” by Londoner Lucinda Coxon (Nov. 2-Dec. 2).

Also in the offing is the West Coast premiere of “The Dazzle,” by Richard Greenberg (March 29-April 28, 2002). The play, based on the true story of hermit brothers who accumulated 136 tons of useless junk before they were found dead in their New York City mansion, is the sixth play by the New York-based Greenberg to be produced at SCR.

The season’s revivals are “The Circle,” a 1921 drawing-room comedy by W. Somerset Maugham about infidelity (Sept. 7-Oct. 7); “The Homecoming,” a 1965 black comedy by Harold Pinter about a morally corrupt family (Oct. 19-Nov. 18); and Moliere’s “The School for Wives” (Jan. 11-Feb. 10). Two other titles have yet to be announced.