Ensemble Theatre announces ambitious 2013-14 season

Ensemble Theatre's 2013–14 season promises to be an ambitious and exciting one. Celeste Cosentino, artistic director, has announced plans to expand Ensemble’s season to include summer and touring productions. In addition to its four mainstage productions, Ensemble will offer TheatreCLE in the company’s Playground Theatre, a small, 50-seat venue adjacent to the mainstage space.

Ensemble’s mainstage season begins Sept. 27 with “Animals Out of Paper” by Rajiv Joseph, which runs through Oct. 20. A finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” Joseph’s interest in theater began at Cleveland Heights High School and summers working in Cain Park.

Other mainstage productions include “Prelude to a Kiss” by Craig Lucas, the quirky play that inspired a movie by the same name; “Knock Me a Kiss” by Charles Smith, a fictional account of the ill-fated marriage between Yolande, the daughter of W.E.B. DuBois, and Countee Cullen, a poet of the Harlem Renaissance; and “Beyond the Horizon,” by Eugene O’Neill, about two brothers in love with the same woman. O’Neill won the Pulitzer Prize for this play.

Ensemble’s TheatreCLE opens Oct. 17 with Joseph’s “All This Intimacy.” Ty, a 30-year-old poet, doesn’t exactly exude animal magnetism. Yet his girlfriend, neighbor and one of his students all find him bedworthy. Uh-oh, where will this lead?

“Frankenstein,” adapted by Oakley Hall from Mary Shelley’s novel, makes an appearance through the Halloween weekend. Productions of two of Eugene Ionesco’s most popular plays, “The Chairs” and “Exit the King,” will run concurrently in January.

Still to be announced are the March dates for the annual Colombi New Plays Festival and the summer dates for TheatreCLE. For information and updates, go to www.ensemble-theatre.org or call 216-321-2930.