"The Game Of Love And Chance" To Open 1st Stage's Second Season

PRLog (Press Release) - Aug 15, 2009 -
McLean, Va. – “The Game of Love and Chance", a romantic farce by French playwright Pierre de Marivaux, will open the second season of Tysons Corner's 1st Stage Theatre.
   The play opens Sept. 12, leading off a season that will include the swashbuckling adventure “The Prisoner of Zenda”, which will be onstage during the holiday season.  In addition, 1st Stage will produce the Pulitzer Prize winning drama “Three Days of Rain” by Richard Greenberg, Marina Carr’s retelling of Medea, “By the Bog of Cats”, and the comedy “Humble Boy” by Charlotte Jones.
   “The Game of Love and Chance” was written in 1730, and is transported to the 1930s in this fresh new staging.  It is a comic comment on love and social class.  
   Unwilling to take a chance on an arranged marriage, two intended lovers switch places with their servants in order to size each other up from a less-privileged position.  Desire, agony, neuroses, and lust blend with wit, charm, surprise, and farce into romantic comic delight.  
   “It's a fun, sharp, funny way to open our second season,” said Mark Krikstan, 1st Stage's artistic director, who will direct the production.  “We're putting a new twist on a classic play.”
   The schedule for 1st Stage’s second season has each production running four weeks:

    The Game of Love and Chance   through Oct. 4
    Three Days of Rain            Oct. 30-Nov. 22
    The Prisoner of Zenda           Dec. 12-Jan.3, 2010
    By the Bog of Cats               Feb 5.-Feb. 28
    Humble Boy                   March 26-April 18

   1st Stage is a non-profit theatre located in Tyson’s Corner, Va.  It provides young artists a place to learn and to perform -- to launch and nurture their professional careers.  More than a dozen actors made their professional debuts during the theatre's inaugural season, which consisted of five productions and won broad critical approval.
   Its mission statement says 1st Stage “will work to create a strong cultural institution that complements the economic strengths of the community”.  One of 1st Stage’s key goals is to become a resource that “connects the county and community to fresh, imaginative interpretations of classic and contemporary theatre work.”

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Editors: Press night for “The Game of Love and Chance” will be Saturday, Sept. 12, at 8 p.m.