Diversionary Theatre will present Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home – A Puppet Play with Actors as the fifth show of their 2006-2007 season. Past, present and future collide on a snowy Christmas Eve for a troubled family of five. Humorous and heart-wrenching, this beautifully written play by the author of How I Learned to Drive proves that magic can be found in the simplest breaths of life.

The ride Vogel takes us on this time around is very much a case of a dedicated teacher following the adventurous spirit she tries to nourish in her students in Brown University's MFA playwriting program. In deconstructing one family's image of American as apple pie togetherness on the ultimate family holiday, Vogel returns to the central proposition of How I Learned to Drive and the painful memories of her brother's death from AIDS explored in The Baltimore Waltz. It is also the outgrowth of her interest in fostering experimental theatrical techniques and acknowledging the roots of that experimental spirit. Thus The Long Christmas Ride Home combines theatrical puppetry with Japanese and contemporary theater techniques, and at the same time pays tribute to another Pulitzer Prize winner, Thornton Wilder -- most obviously Wilder's The Happy Journey From Trenton but also Our Town.

Chris Buess

Ozzie Carnan

Amanda Cooley Davis

Dana Hooley

John Rosen

Crystal Verdon

Diversionary’s production will be directed by Lisa Berger. The cast features Chris Buess, Ozzie Carnan, Amanda Cooley Davis, Dana Hooley, John Rosen and Crystal Verdon. The puppets will be created by Lynne Jennings, Mindy Donner and Iain Gunn of The Puppetry Center of San Diego. Sam Creely, Emily Marfia and Nicole Solas will be apprentice puppeteers. Andrew Jacobs will provide live music, and Peter Kalivas of the PGK Project will choreograph a special dance section. The design team includes David Weiner (sets), Jennifer Setlow (lights) and Cecilia Church (costumes). Victoria Martinez will stage manage, and Jenna Long will be dramaturg.

Described as “a richly deserving and rewarding play” when it premiered at the Vineyard Theatre in Provincetown in 2003, this entertainment is of the more serious, introspective sort one would expect from a show based on the art of Bunraku, Japanese puppet theatre. The play seamlessly integrates American theatrical comedy and the centuries-old art form into a unique and very special show that, puppets or no, feels like nothing else to show up recently on the New York boards.

It all starts with the story, which finds a husband and wife driving their three children, Stephen, Rebecca, and Claire (the show's primary puppet characters) home after a catastrophic Christmas dinner with their grandparents. Husband and wife, in the car's front seat, narrate the action while their children - portrayed primarily by three actors, with additional puppeteers cloaked in black from head to toe providing assistance - fight, argue, threaten to get sick, and so on.

The puppets, which are being created for Diversionary’s production by The Puppetry Center of San Diego, have a near-complete range of motion that allows every extremity and every joint to define a character emotionally by representing them with exacting physical precision. This is most striking because the manipulators don't seem to be controlling their puppets, but rather allowing the children's characters to express themselves; each one has hopes, fears, and dreams, that are fully realized dramatically. The resulting blend of the traditional and the contemporary is justified in the show as being created in Stephen's mind when he's inspired by a Japanese culture presentation during a church service.

Diversionary Theatre was started in 1986. The mission of the theatre is to produce plays with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender themes that portray characters in their complexity and diversity both historically and contemporarily.

The Long Christmas Ride Home will preview on Friday, March 23 and open on Saturday, March 24 and run through Sunday, April 15. Performance times are: Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday and Saturday at 8:00pm, Sunday at 2:00 and 7:00pm, and a Monday, April 2 performance at 7:30pm. Tickets are $29 for Friday and Saturday performances, and $27 for other nights, with a $4 discount for students/seniors 60+/military. Tickets for opening night are $39 and includes a post-show cast party.

Sales to groups of 10 or more as well as single tickets are now on sale. For tickets or information, call the Diversionary box office at 619.220.0097 or log on to www.diversionary.org.