Dallas Theater Center's New Season

The 2011-'12 season for Dallas Theater Center has been announced, and the six shows (not including the standby A Christmas Carol) have been divided into "classics" and "new plays" sections.

The classics begin with—no surprise here—a Shakespeare romance (The Tempest), then move into an adaptation of one of the 20th century's most famous novels (To Kill a Mockingbird) and onto a new musical adaptation of another mid-20th century novel, Edna Ferber's Giant.

Those all happen in Fall and Winter of '11 and '12, and then the new plays kick in for Spring 2012. Interestingly, none of the new works will be in the Potter Rose Performance Hall in the Wyly Theatre. One, the area premiere of Kim Rosenstock's Tigers Be Still, happens in the Wyly's Studio Theatre; and then the other two, the regional premieres of Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage and Geoffrey Nauffts' Next Fall, will run in rotating repertory at the Kalita Humphreys Theater.

Those last two will feature one set on one side of the Kalita's turntable, and the other set on the other side.

Also of note with this season: Mockingbird is a co-production with Fort Worth's Casa Mañana, and Giant is a co-pro with New York's Public Theatre. It's the second DTC/Public collabo, after The Good Negro in 2008.

And the playwright of Tigers, Kim Rosenstock, has been commissioned to write a play for DTC in the future.

"We're not only producing great plays, we're doing so in the most surprising and meaningful ways we can imagine," DTC artistic director Kevin Moriarty says in a news release.

Here's more about the lineup:

• Shakespeare's The Tempest at the Wyly Theatre. This will be Moriarty's third Shakepeare show to direct at DTC since he arrived, following A Midsummer Night's Dream and Henry IV. Sept. 9-Oct. 9
• Christopher Sergel's stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird at the Wyly Theatre, in a co-production with Casa Mañana. The production will also run in Fort Worth (dates to be announced). Directed by Wendy Dann. It's in Dallas Oct. 21-Nov. 20
• The annual production of A Christmas Carol at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. Directed by Joel Ferrell. Nov. 25-Dec. 24
• The regional premiere of the musical Giant, music and lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa and book by Sybille Pearson, directed by three-time Tony nominee Michael Greif (Rent, Grey Gardens and Next to Normal on Broadway). It's based on the Edna Ferber novel about a ranching family in West Texas, which was famously made into a 1956 movie with James Dean, Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. Co-production with New York's Public Theatre. At the Wyly Theatre. Jan. 18-Feb. 19
• Tigers Be Still by Kim Rosenstock, in the Studio Theatre at the Wyly. The comedy is described as putting "the fun in dysfunction with endearingly neurotic characters, pop-culture high jinks and escaped carnivorous cats." March 2-April 15
• Rotating repertory productions of Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage and Geoffrey Nauffts' Next Fall at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. Carnage deals with two sets of parents trying to have a civilized conversation about their 11-year-old sons' playground fight. Next Fall is about two men, one a Christian and the other an atheist, who fall in love. April 26-May 20

For subscription info, visit www.dallastheatercenter.org.

Here's the video DTC has produced to announce the new season: