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Posted on Tue, Mar 27, 2012 : 10:03 a.m.

Carriage House Theatre announces summer 2012 lineup

By Jenn McKee

Carriage House Theatre of Ann Arbor—a new community theater troupe launched last year—has announced a five-show lineup for the summer of 2012, with all performances happening at an antique carriage house at 541 Third St.

Admission to Carriage House shows are free, with a suggested donation of $10. Here is the lineup, with descriptions provided by the theater:

"Brilliant Traces," by Cindy Lou Johnson; directed by Joseph Fournier; June 1-2 and 7-9.

A lost runaway bride shows up at the door of an Alaskan hermit. Both have been wounded and embittered by life, both are refugees from so-called civilization. Trapped in the snowbound cabin, they slowly must find common ground, exploring each other's, and their own, lives and pasts.

"The School of Good Personhood," devised and directed by Esme Vaandrager, June 21-23 and 28-30.

This show will use poetry, dance, and theatre to explore censorship of artists. As she devises this show, Esme is researching the House Committee of Un-American Activities and the effects of patriarchy on love.

"Buried Child," by Sam Shepard, directed by Martin Hutchinson, July 5-7 and 12-14.

The setting is a squalid farm home occupied by a family filled with suppressed violence and an unease born of deep-seated unhappiness. The characters are a ranting alcoholic grandfather; a sanctimonious grandmother who goes on drinking bouts with the local minister; and their sons, Tilden, an All-American footballer now a hulking semi-idiot; and Bradley, who has lost one leg to a chain saw. Into their midst comes Vince, a grandson none of them recognizes or remembers, and his girlfriend, Shelly, who cannot comprehend the madness to which she is suddenly introduced. The family harbors a dark secret, which needs must, ultimately, be forced into the light.

"Office Hours," written and directed by Griffin Johnson, July 26-28 and August 2-4.

His college may be deep in debt, but so far Professor Stephen Steinway, the chair of philosophy, has kept his department afloat in spite of lazy undergrads, Machiavellian grad students, ham-handed administration, and the looming menace of romance - which is why it feels so unfair when he discovers that the department is being sold to a mysterious financial corporation and its sociopathic CEO. As Professor Steinway struggles to keep the sludge of business out of his ivory tower, his well-kept department quickly goes mad around him in a caustic black comedy about love, language, politics, fish, and whether it's ever safe to cast the first stone when you call someone a parasite.

"Mary Rose," by J.M. Barrie, directed by Forrest Hejkal, August 16-18 and 23-25.

When her parents took her on a vacation to the Scottish isles as a young girl, Mary Rose inexplicably disappeared on a small island. Given up for dead, she returned three weeks later, with no memory of being gone, or of any time having passed. As she grows up, she maintains an unusual childlike nature. She marries her childhood sweetheart and has a son, both of whom she loves greatly, but perhaps the call of the island is greater still.