NAU Spring 2025 Theatre Events

CLYDE’S by Lynn Nottage

Directed by Kathryn Ervin

The Studio Theater

A truck stop sandwich counter provides opportunity and redemption for a formerly incarcerated staff. Clyde, the shops strong-willed and callous owner suppresses them, but despite it all the staff learn to reclaim their purpose and inspiration allowing themselves to dream. The NY Times says this about Clyde’s, “We are living in Greek times…The systems that control our lives—institutional racism, predatory capitalism, the prison-industrial complex—seem as powerful and implacable as gods. What can humans do about fate, [other] playwrights suggest, but submit to it and hope to preserve the story?… But Nottage’s delightful play, Clyde’s…dares to flip the paradigm.” Nottage’s brilliance as a storyteller is how she can simultaneously bring the ills of our society to the fore and reveal the humanity in a bright comedy.

Clyde’s

premiered on Broadway in 2021 and in 2023, it became the most staged play in the United States according to American Theatre magazine’s annual survey.

Use this Link to Purchase Tickets: Northern Arizona University | Ticketing – Ticket Office Home (universitytickets.com)

Complimentary Parking Available for Event Patrons:

Instructions: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/u…

Link: www.nau.edu/guest

PRIDE’S CROSSING by Tina Howe

Directed by Kathleen M. McGeever

The Clifford E. White Theater

In Pride’s Crossing, Tina Howe creates a fictional biography of Mabel Tidings Bigelow, a New Englander whose life has traversed over nine decades in the twentieth century. Tina Howe writes in her introduction to the play, “There was a young woman who swam the English Channel in 1926. A new Yorker named Gertrude Ederle. She was nineteen and she beat every record on the books.” Taking her inspiration from Gertrude Ederle and superimposing the “what if” on her elderly aunt, Maddy, Howe has created a complex heroine, Mabel Tidings who becomes a grand figure, specific in her achievement, and universal in the sadness of the expectations of her gender. A memory play, we follow Mabel’s story as she ricochets from decade to decade uncovering her roots that forges her identity — a domineering mother, a distant father, two brothers – one caring, one contentious – and an abusive husband. Mable defies adversity, as many of Howe’s heroines do, because they carry remarkable inner strength and find reconciliation. Mable’s peace is in the ocean, swimming. A triumphant and inspiring award-winning play that transcends our expectations!

The world premiere of Pride’s Crossing was presented by the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, CA. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1997, and the winner of the 1997 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play. Playwright Tina Howe, a friend to NAU Theatre, sadly passed in September of 2023. We honor Tina’s place in American Theatre with our production.

Use this Link to Purchase Tickets Now: Northern Arizona University | Ticketing – Pride’s Crossing (universitytickets.com)

Complimentary Parking Available for Event Patrons:

Instructions: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/u…

Link: www.nau.edu/guest