Local theater company Playground 630 announced Thursday that they would be postponing the two-man show Topdog/Underdog, which was slated to open April 28 at PFW’s Kettler Hall.
In a press release, director Thom Hofrichter said: “The reason is that 8 days before opening (actors) Tony (McCarroll), Danny (Reese), and I do not feel that we can honor the brilliance of Suzan-Lori Parks’ magnificent script in time for an April 28 opening. The specific reason is that we did not schedule enough rehearsal. As the director, I didn’t recognize the difficulty of Parks’ script. Her language is akin to Shakespeare’s, and I didn’t provide enough rehearsal time for the difficulty of the work. Simply stated, we ran out of time. And although we could get through it, we decided we would rather spend more time in rehearsal with this very special script. This is not a cancellation, only a postponement. When we are ready for public performance we will reschedule our performance dates – hopefully for late fall/early winter.
“In the future, Playground 630 will no longer schedule seasons. We will work on one script at a time—not plan seasons, only projects. Our next project is still Topdog/Underdog. We will schedule performances when we feel it’s time to add the audience to our collaboration. For now, we will continue to work on this amazing piece of dramatic literature.”