Theatre Arts Department announces 2024-2025 season

The Furman Department of Theatre Arts will present four shows for its 2024-2025 season. All productions are open to the public and take place in The Playhouse on campus. Tickets are $15 general admission and $5 for students. A season flex pass for all four shows is $30. Flex pass holders may purchase additional tickets for $5 per ticket. Single tickets for each show go on sale two weeks prior to opening night.

Furman Department of Theatre Arts
2024-2025 Season
The Playhouse

a ghost story
“Language of Angels”
by Naomi Iizuka
directed by Caroline Jane Davis
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct.1-Saturday, Oct. 5
2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 6

While partying with her friends in the deep dark meandering caves of a rural North Carolina town, Celie disappears. What ensues is an investigation of the fate of the friends who outlive her. Naomi Iizuka’s eerie play is an exploration of love, loss, memory, guilt, mortality and the intricate web of agency, accountability and fate.

a boundary-breaker
“What the Constitution Means to Me”
by Heidi Schreck
directed by Maegan McNerney Azar
co-produced with Lean Ensemble Theater
7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 17- Saturday, Oct. 19, and Thursday, Oct. 24-Saturday, Oct. 26
2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20, and Sunday, Oct. 27
Sponsored by the Furman Humanities Center, The Riley Institute, Department of Politics and International Affairs, Department of History, Department of Communication Studies, and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony Nominee for Best Play breathes new life into our Constitution and imagines how it will shape the next generation of Americans. Fifteen-year-old Heidi earned her college tuition by winning Constitutional debate competitions across the United States. In this hilarious, hopeful, and achingly human new play, she resurrects her teenage self in order to trace the profound relationship between four generations of women and the founding document that shaped their lives.

a new play
“Sparta”
by Seth Milton Jones ’25
directed by Katie McDaniel ’25
co-produced with The Order of Furman Theatre
mentored by Professor Aaron Ballard
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 4-Saturday, Feb. 8
2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9

Win, survive or break, the Trussup County Spartans, a team of high school wrestlers, are hungry for victory. As the days until regionals are counting down, the coach’s expectations for the team to perform rise to a new extreme, making everyone on the team vie for a way to go to state, even as their world turns into a pressure cooker. Manchester and Charlie’s sibling rivalry is at its all-time high, self-proclaimed alpha guy Athens is about to fight everyone on the team, and a secret relationship tries to navigate the battlefield of high school wrestling. But is it worth it? Everyone on the team wants to win, but at what cost? “Sparta” is a new play that dives into the contemporary life and ideas of high schoolers as they clash through their perceptions of themselves and each other. They do so by exploring masculinity and how it has affected social norms, competition and family in the world of American athleticism in public high schools.

a comedic masterpiece
“Tartuffe” or “The Imposter”
by Molière
translated by Prudence Steiner
directed by Rhett Bryson
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 8-Saturday, April 12
2 p.m. Sunday, April 13

Prudence Steiner’s lively prose translations remain close to the original French, giving us the speech of the characters in a slightly compressed and formalized language that echoes the effect created by Molière’s verse. Prim and devout Orgon invites Tartuffe, a charlatan par excellence, into his bourgeois household, laying the scene for equal parts domestic disruption and social outrage. Banned for decades by civil and religious authorities who found the play too close for comfort, this masterpiece from perhaps the most beloved comic playwright of all time is a searing and hilarious study in how we collaborate in our own deception.

For more information, contact the Department of Theatre Arts at 864-294-2125, or visit https://www.furman.edu/academics/theatre-arts/performances/.