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Stage Planner: Jobsite looks ahead, 'Sex and the City' looks back

 
Jobsite Theater extends a collaboration with playwright Israel Horovitz, opening his Man in Snow March 9, 2018.
Jobsite Theater extends a collaboration with playwright Israel Horovitz, opening his Man in Snow March 9, 2018.
Published April 12, 2017

BRECHT TO 1984: JOBSITE 2017-2018

This season Jobsite Theater continued its relationship with playwright Israel Horovitz, above, and took Shakespeare into the schools as an extension of As You Like It. In 2017-2018, the resident theater company of the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts will reach into that well again with The Tempest (Jan. 19-Feb. 18) and Man in Snow (March 9-April 1), one of Horovitz's newer plays. That story follows a father who tries to cope with the loss of his son by visiting Mount McKinley, which he had climbed 25 years earlier. This time he's playing tour guide to Japanese honeymooners who are seeking ultimate romance.

The season opens with The Flick (Sept. 1-24), by Annie Baker, whose ear for dialogue and willingness to break convention helped this show win a 2014 Pulitzer. The play zeroes in on three employees in one of the last movie theaters in Massachusetts using 35-millimeter film projectors. (Baker also authored The Aliens, seen earlier this year at Stageworks Theatre and directed by David Jenkins, Jobsite's producing artistic director.) Rounding out the season are the musical theater adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera (Oct. 20-Nov. 12) and an adaptation of George Orwell's 1984 (April 27-May 20, 2018).

It finishes with Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa (June 15-July 8, 2018), a 1992 Tony winner for best play about an unconventional family of five sisters and a 7-year-old boy in 1936 Ireland, and the outside influences that disrupt their world. Shows are at the Shimberg Playhouse at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts, 1010 N MacInnes Place, Tampa. (813) 229-7827. strazcenter.org.

SEATS GOING FAST: CHRIS ROCK

He's funny and fearless, prolific and highly successful. So it's actually not surprising that Chris Rock would respond to a sellout of one concert by booking another. The former SNL fixture and creator of Everybody Hates Chris had this to say about hosting the 2016 Academy Awards: "The only acting you ever see at the Oscars is when people act like they're not mad they lost." 8 p.m. Friday and 7 p.m. Saturday at the Straz Center, Morsani Hall. $125

POST-IT: SEX AND THE CITY

The more things change, the more Sex and the City gets new life. By some measures, the HBO show that ran from 1998 to 2004 captures today's world about as efficiently as a disposable camera. Remember Carrie Bradshaw's line: "I've spent $40,000 on shoes and I have no place to live?! I will literally be the old woman who lived in her shoes."

Me neither. But that defiantly, non-politically correct zeitgeist survives, even as it ages. Kerry Ipema plays the entire pack of gal pals in One Woman Sex and the City: A Parody of Love, Friendship and Shoes. There's a "mature tastes" advisory for the possibly offended. The show closes 7:30 p.m. Thursday, at the Straz Center's Jaeb Theater. $25 and up.

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IN THE PARK: HAIRSPRAY

Local theater's most entrenched extravaganza is almost here. This year's American Stage in the Park production, Hairspray, opens April 21 with the annual fundraising gala in Demens Landing Park. But you can also see what amounts to the final two dress rehearsals at a price you can afford.

The theater plans to give The Corny Collins Show, the television dance show set in 1962 Baltimore, the feel of an outdoor concert.

"It's going to be visually stunning," said director Shain Stroff. Musical director Michael Raabe will use a six-piece band to maximum effect, Stroff said. Read more about Hairspray in the next Weekend. Previews start at 8 p.m. April 19 and 20 at Demens Landing Park, St. Petersburg. Pay what you can. (727) 823-7529. americanstage.org.