Theatre Port

American Falls
by Miki Johnson

May 25 - June 9, 2012

As much as any other work to which it might be compared, Miki Johnson's extraordinary debut play American Falls brings to mind Thornton Wilder's masterwork Our Town. Wilder's classic play depicted an epoch once present now past; American Falls is a slice of the times in which we live today. The two plays each feature the inhabitants of small towns and the ways in which their lives become entangled, the ways in which they are together and the ways in which they are apart. A sort of Our Town for our times, American Falls asks those ancient, unanswerable questions: What is it to live? What becomes of the child on the mysterious road to adulthood? What is it like to grow old? What does it mean to die?

Houston Family Arts Center Presents the World’s Longest Running Musical
The Fantasticks

May 25 - June 10, 2012

Love, adventure and magic are in the air as the award-winning Houston Family Arts Center (HFAC) presents the longest-running show in Broadway history, The Fantasticks. "Try To Remember" a time when this romantic charmer wasn't enchanting audiences around the world. The Fantasticks, book and lyrics by Tom Jones and music by Harvey Schmidt, is the longest-running production of any kind in the world, and with good reason: at the heart of its breathtaking poetry and subtle theatrical sophistication is a purity and simplicity that transcends cultural barriers. The result is a timeless fable of love whose charms nostalgic and universal...

My Wonderful Day
by Alan Ayckbourn

May 24 – June 17, 2012

When you put together a very pregnant woman, an over-the-top tv personality, his fiery wife, his mistress, his hungover best friend, and an all too wise 9 year old – well, it’s going to get crazy. Alan Ayckbourn’s rarely seen comedy My Wonderful Day fuses all of these characters into “…a startling play full of [the playwright’s] rueful, comic wisdom.” Nine year old Winnie Barnstairs observes the whirlwind at her mother’s workplace - a foul-tempered, TV personality, his baby-talking mistress, his vindictive wife, and his hungover friend – and finds herself with more than enough fodder for her homework, an essay entitled “My Wonderful Day...”

The Foreigner
by Larry Shue

May 4 - June 9, 2012

At a fishing lodge in rural Georgia, Staff Sgt. Froggy LeSueur and his buddy Charlie Baker settle in for a leisurely vacation. There is a small problem. Charlie is pathologically shy. He literally cannot talk to anyone. To keep the curious townsfolk from talking to Charlie, Froggy’s answer is to explain that his friend is from a foreign land and doesn’t speak or comprehend any English. Before too long, the simple solution becomes hilariously complicated. Thinking their secrets will be safe, people freely discuss their private affairs and personal scandals in Charlie’s presence and before long he finds himself deling with romance, corruption and the Ku Klux Klan!

I moved to Houston in 1966 from Tulsa, and since then have been heavily involved in Houston’s theatrical community, as producer, director, actor, writer, teacher and critic.
Having acted in close to 75 productions (including the male lead in the first production at Stages Repertory Theatre), and directing over 60. I’m most proud of several plays I staged at Holocaust Museum Houston, one being BENT. Also, at another venue, THE NORMAL HEART, (possibly my best reviewed production) and THE MOST FABULOUS STORY EVER TOLD, (my most successful), at the space on California, where I staged some wonderful productions for 4 years. I leave being especially proud of giving a break to a good many would be actors (something that a lot of theaters would not), that are now performing at theaters all over Houston and beyond.