Cardinal Theatre Company Announces Winter Show!

The next Cardinal Theatre Company production will be Jane Anderson's Defying Gravity. Performances will be held February 25-27 6:00 PM at the Boston Center for the Arts in the South End.

In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after liftoff. It was the first spaceflight disaster for NASA, all the more devastating because it was the first time a civilian, teacher Christa McAuliffe, was chosen to become an astronaut and travel into space. Almost anyone who was alive in 1986 can tell you where they were and what they felt that day. It was a historic and tragic moment in U.S. history. Defying Gravity is an exploration of the 1986 Challenger disaster and the human fascination with outer space. Defying Gravity uses aspects of magical realism and fantasy while interweaving the past and the present with the lives of participants and bystanders. Anderson draws parallels of painter Claude Monet's artistic quest, the thrill of the teacher selected as the first civilian astronaut, the perspectives of her daughter, the dreams of elderly tourists who watch the takeoff and imagine hotels in space, the guilt felt by a NASA mechanic, and a bartender’s fear of heights. These stories are woven together and examine the wonder of life and of life’s quests. Defying Gravity asks us to think about what sacrifices we are willing to make and what the future might hold.

This March, the company will also take the production to the Massachusetts Educational Theatre Guild festival to compete with other high schools.