Quantum Theatre

Cymbeline

By William Shakespeare
Directed by Karla Boos
July 31–August 24, 2008
Outdoors in Mellon Park

Is it a comedy, a tragedy, a romance?  Like Quantum, Shakespeare’s Cymbeline breaks the rules and doesn't care. At its heart are many journeys. Broken families stumble back together and characters struggle through dense fog to emerge whole. Cymbeline is a tale about who we are, where we come from, and how we find our way home. Written late in Shakespeare’s life, this highly theatrical, no-holds Bard has a cross-dressing heroine, Machiavellian villains, tyrannical kings, long-lost children, a wicked queen, star-crossed lovers... and a Deus Ex Machina that resolves a plot with more ricochets than 'Desperate Housewives.'

Quantum’s 'Machina' comes with a special, local twist - a high-tech, outdoor design that includes collaboration with the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University.

The Museum of Desire

World Premiere

From a story by John Berger
Directed by Dan Jemmett
November 6–23, 2008
The Frick Art & Historical Center

John Berger is an elder statesman of the art world – critic, painter, and author best-known for his Booker Prize-winning novel G. and his book on art theory, Ways of Seeing. The Museum of Desire is Berger's unpublished short story, entrusted to director Dan Jemmett and Quantum Theatre for translation into a unique theatrical premiere. Staged in The Frick Art & Historical Center, a setting that perfectly evokes desire, Jemmett's devised production will suggest the obsession of everyman for a surreal museum guide who seduces with a private collection of fantastical objects and a promise of immortality.

Yerma

By Federico Garcia Lorca
Directed by Melanie Dreyer
January 29–February 22, 2009
Location to be announced

Yerma is a deeply musical folktale, blending song and poetic text into a modern story of unbridled yearning. We feel the rhythm of the feet of many generations in Yerma, a woman in a rural community who wields the forces of the earth against a man-made fate. Quantum unites this 20th century classic with the irrepressible art of flamenco from Lorca's native Andalusia. Carolina Loyola-Garcia, whose flamenco art enlivened Quantum's Red Shoes in 2007, collaborates with singers and dancers from Spain to bring us a story of an unrelenting passion.

Mouth to Mouth

By Kevin Elyot
Starring Karla Boos
April 2–26, 2009
Location to be announced

The homecoming of a son. The reunion of two brothers. A friendship more powerful than a marriage. Frank has made a surrogate family of Laura’s, safe in the refuge of her domesticity. But when does intimacy become betrayal? What’s unforgivable among friends? This brilliantly acerbic tragic-comedy exposes the pretension and narcissism of ‘people like us’ with unerring and hilarious accuracy. Kevin Elyot is winner of Britain’s Evening Standard and Olivier Awards for Best Comedy. His plays Mouth to Mouth and acclaimed earlier work My Night With Reg premiered at London’s Royal Court Theatre.

* Subject to change, rights pending