The Curio Theatre Company has announced their 2012-2013 season and it will knock your socks off! It is rich in suspense plays, comedy, and also includes a world premiere by Curio’s Artistic Director Paul Kuhn. The new season begins October 11 with Milan Stitt’s The Runner Stumbles. Here’s the full show schedule:

The Runner Stumbles
By Milan Stitt
Directed by Gay Carducci
October 11 – November 10, 2012

The Real Inspector Hound
By Tom Stoppard
Directed by Dan Hodge
November 29 – December 29, 2012

Equus
By Peter Shaffer
Directed by Liz Carlson
January 17 – February 16, 2013

Madville
By Paul Kuhn
Directed by Rosemary Fox
March 14 – April 13, 2013

The Hound of the Baskervilles
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Adapted by Steven Canny and John Nicholson
Directed by Paul Kuhn
May 2 – June 1, 2013

Tickets are available on the Curio Theatre website. You can also subscribe to the season and see all five shows for the price of four.

“We’re going to need real magic to pull this show off, and we’ve got it!” says the Curio Theatre Company, of their latest production, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which opens this Friday, April 27. A revenge story featuring drunken clowns, political intrigue, a magical slave-driving wizard, and a father-daughter duo marooned on an island for twelve years, The Tempest is one of Shakespeare’s most compelling comedies.

Director Dan Hodge, co-founder of the Philadelphia Artists Collective, makes his directing debut with this production. “Ultimately The Tempest is about choice,” says Hodge, “and Prospero’s command of dark arts affords him an impossibly wide array of options.  The balance hangs on revenge and forgiveness.  And that’s a current that runs through nearly every character in the play.”

Paul Kuhn, Curio’s Artistic Director, has designed a “magical playground” for the production, rumored to include a rolling ocean, a ship, and a tropical island. The fifteen characters will be played by seven actors. Joining long-time company member Brian McCann as Prospero are Steve Carpenter, Liam Castellan, Robert Daponte, Aetna Gallagher, Ken Opdenaker, Eric Scotolati and Isa St.Clair.

Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Opening April 27. Curio Theatre, 4740 Baltimore Avenue. 215-525-1350.

Curio Theatre (4740 Baltimore Ave) has had a great season so far, hitting it off with both the public and critics with their first two shows – Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice and Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist. This week the theater presents the Philadelphia premiere of a work based on Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.

The show is directed by Jared Reed and features seven Curio actors (most of them from West Philly) playing some 40 characters. No one in this show remains the same for long, except the time traveling main character Billy Pilgrim. The dynamic sets (built by Curio’s Artistic Director Paul Kuhn) and cast will often change, adding to the confusion Billy experiences during his travels.

The show preview begins Thursday, Feb.2, and the official opening is February 10. All shows begin at 8 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. For more information and to buy tickets ($10-$20) visit this page.

Beth Nixon, a West Philly-based puppeteer and the founder of Ramshackle Enterprises, is presenting a new show at The Rotunda (4014 Walnut Street) beginning Sunday, Jan. 15. The show, Below and Beyond, is inspired by the long‐submerged Mill Creek of West Philadelphia, by current debate about fracking in Pennsylvania, and overall by what lies beneath our feet.

Beth and her colleagues will be using puppets, pulleys, movement, maps, and their imagination. Dozens of local artists contributed their talent to the creation of the puppets and props.

Below and Beyond is a collaborative performance experiment by Beth Nixon and Sarah Lowry of The Missoula Oblongata experimental theater company. Nixon and Lowry were inspired by interviews with Mill Creek residents, the “landscape literacy” research of Anne Whiston Spirn and Protecting Our Waters ‐ a local grassroots organization fighting against unconventional gas drilling in the region.

There are only four Below and Beyond shows scheduled: Sunday – 7:30 p.m., Monday – 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Tuesday – 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5‐$10 at the door, but no one will be turned away for the lack of funds. Tickets can also be purchased online here.

Tonight is the opening night of Dario Fo’s play Accidental Death of An Anarchist at Curio Theatre (4740 Baltimore Ave). This comedy is probably the best-known play written by Fo and features both real and fictional characters. The shows run through January 7 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays beginning at 8 p.m. Tickets ($15-$20) are still available for tonight’s show. To buy tickets click here.

Check out the promotional video below (it’s hilarious!).

There are only three performances of Curio Theatre‘s Eurydice left. This Thursday, Friday and Saturday are your last three chances to see this fabulous, critically acclaimed play. Tickets are $15-20 and can be purchased here. All performances begin at 8 p.m.