The Lyric Stage Company of Boston

CONTACT:

140 Clarendon Street
Boston, MA 02132
617-585-5682
www.lyricstage.com

Sara Glidden, Managing Director

DESCRIPTION:

The Lyric Stage is currently in a period of greatness—their 2005-06 season was the most successful, highest acclaimed, and highest attended in their 32-year history since 1974. For his distinguished accomplishment in the past seven years, Artistic Director Spiro Veloudos received the 2006 Elliot Norton Award for Sustained Excellence. In those years the Lyric has won 13 Elliot Norton Awards for theatre excellence, and 31 “IRNE” (Independent Reviewers of New England) Awards — six last year alone. Their programming combines diversity with timeliness—this season ranges from George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man through the patriotic musical 1776 to 9 Parts of Desire, a contemporary play about Iraqi women, with digressions along the way for a clown comedy and children’s theatre. Theatre companies are not easy businesses — in the Lyric’s case requiring month-long runs of seven productions in a 240-seat theatre, producing over 60% of their budget from ticket sales. This income is supplemented by equally dynamic and interesting theatrical training and schools programs, to inspire and prepare artists and audiences of the future. But even that is not enough, so philanthropy must do the rest. Catalogue readers: see the plays, and lend your further support with a gift.

(2006: CULTURE: Arts: Performing: Theatre and Film)