The Purple Rose Theatre Company (or PRTC) was founded by Jeff Daniels

Jeff Daniels

Jeffrey Warren "Jeff" Daniels is an American actor, musician and playwright. He founded a non-profit theatre company, the Purple Rose Theatre Company, in his home state of Michigan...

 in 1991. Originally known as the Garage Theatre, 'The Rose' takes its name from Woody Allen's

Woody Allen

Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...

 1985 film The Purple Rose of Cairo

The Purple Rose of Cairo

The Purple Rose of Cairo is a 1985 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. Inspired by Sherlock, Jr., Hellzapoppin, and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, it is the tale of a film character who leaves a fictional film of the same name and enters the real...

starring Daniels. The theatre provides resources for training actors, playwrights  and other theatre artists residing in the Midwest region and develops new plays based on life in the Great Lakes Basin

Great Lakes Basin

The Great Lakes Basin consists of the Great Lakes and the surrounding lands of the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in the United States, and the province of Ontario in Canada, whose direct surface runoff and watersheds form a large...

.

The main performance space and administrative offices occupy a building in Chelsea, Michigan

Chelsea, Michigan

Chelsea is a city in Washtenaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 4,398 at the 2000 census, at which time it was a village....

 once owned by Daniels' grandfather. The theatre produces four shows every year on a 3/4 thrust stage

Thrust stage

In theatre, a thrust stage is one that extends into the audience on three sides and is connected to the backstage area by its up stage end. A thrust has the benefit of greater intimacy between performers and the audience than a proscenium, while retaining the utility of a backstage area...

 in a 168 seat house. The PRTC is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization and operates under a Small Professional Theatre (SPT) Agreement with the Actors' Equity Association

Actors' Equity Association

The Actors' Equity Association , commonly referred to as Actors' Equity or simply Equity, is an American labor union representing the world of live theatrical performance, as opposed to film and television performance. However, performers appearing on live stage productions without a book or...

 (AEA).

Apprentice Program

The Purple Rose offers a year-long apprenticeship

Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...

 program for young artists entering a career in theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

. Apprentices are paid a 'modest stipend' and work as many as 60–80 hours per week gaining experience in lighting, sound, stage management, design, set construction, and administrative/box office work. The eight apprentices also maintain and clean the theatre's facilities. The program was inspired by Jeff Daniels' experience as an apprentice with the Circle Repertory Company

Circle Repertory Company

The Circle Repertory Company, originally named the Circle Theater Company, was a theatre company in New York City that ran from 1969 to 1996. It was founded on July 14, 1969, in Manhattan, in a second floor loft at Broadway and 83rd Street by director Marshall W...

 in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

Production history

Asterisks (*) denotes a world premiere

2010-2011

Best of Friends * by Jeff Daniels

Jeff Daniels

Jeffrey Warren "Jeff" Daniels is an American actor, musician and playwright. He founded a non-profit theatre company, the Purple Rose Theatre Company, in his home state of Michigan...

Corktown * by Michael Brian Ogden

Some Couples May... * by Carey Crim

Consider the Oyster * by David MacGregor

2009-2010

Escanaba * by Jeff Daniels

Gravity * by David MacGregor

Our Town

Our Town

Our Town is a three-act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder. It is a character story about an average town's citizens in the early twentieth century as depicted through their everyday lives...

by Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder

Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...

Boeing-Boeing by Marc Camoletti

2008-2009

Apartment 3A by Jeff Daniels

A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire (play)

A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...

by Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams

Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...

Bleeding Red * by Michael Brian Ogden

Wake * by Carey Crim

2007 - 2008

The Poetry of Pizza * by Deborah Brevoort

Vino Veritas * by David MacGregor

Growing Pretty * by Carey Crim

"Pan Handle Slim and the Oklahoma Kid" * by Jeff Daniels

2006 - 2007

Escanaba In Love * by Jeff Daniels

The Subject Was Roses

The Subject Was Roses

The Subject Was Roses is a Pulitzer Prize-winning 1964 play written by Frank D. Gilroy, who also adapted the work in 1968 for film with the same title.- Background :...

by Frank D. Gilroy

Frank D. Gilroy

Frank Daniel Gilroy is an American playwright, screenwriter, and film producer and director. He received the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play The Subject Was Roses in 1965.-Early life:...

When The Lights Come On * by Brian Letscher

Sea of Fools * by Matt Letscher

Matt Letscher

Matthew Letscher is an American actor.-Biography:Letscher was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. He attended college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI where he was a member of the Sigma Nu fraternity....

2005 - 2006

The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. Williams worked on various drafts of the play prior to writing a version of it as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted...

by Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams

Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...

Guest Artist * by Jeff Daniels

The Late Great Henry Boyle by David MacGregor

Honus & Me by Steven Dietz

Steven Dietz

Steven Dietz is an American playwright whose work is largely performed regionally, i.e. outside of New York City...

2004 - 2005

The Mystery of Irma Vep

The Mystery of Irma Vep

The Mystery of Irma Vep is a play in two acts by Charles Ludlam. A penny dreadful, Irma Vep is a satire of several theatrical and film genres, including Victorian melodrama, farce and the Alfred Hitchcock film Rebecca .-Background:...

by Charles Ludlam

Charles Ludlam

Charles Braun Ludlam was an American actor, director, and playwright.-Early life:Ludlam was born in Floral Park, New York, the son of Marjorie and Joseph William Ludlam. He was raised in Greenlawn, New York, on Long Island, and attended Harborfields High School. The fact that he was gay was not a...

Norma & Wanda * by Jeff Daniels

Bus Stop

Bus Stop (play)

Bus Stop is a 1955 play by William Inge. The 1956 film is only loosely based upon it.-Characters:Bus Stop is a drama, with romantic and some comedic elements. It is set in a diner in rural Kansas, about 20 miles west of Kansas City, Missouri during a snowstorm from which bus passengers must take...

by William Inge

William Inge

William Motter Inge was an American playwright and novelist, whose works typically feature solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relations. In the early 1950s, he had a string of memorable Broadway productions, and one of these, Picnic, earned him a Pulitzer Prize...

And The Winner Is * by Mitch Albom

Mitch Albom

Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom is an American best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, dramatist, radio and television broadcaster and musician. His books have sold over 30 million copies worldwide...

2003 - 2004

The Good Doctor by Neil Simon

Neil Simon

Neil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that...

Leaving Iowa * by Tim Clue & Spike Manton

The Underpants by Carl Sternheim

Carl Sternheim

Carl Sternheim was a German playwright and short story writer. One of the major exponents of German Expressionism, he especially satirized the moral sensibilities of the emerging German middle class during the Wilhelmine period.-Biography:Born in Leipzig to a Jewish banker and his Protestant wife...

 (Adapted by Steve Martin

Steve Martin

Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer....

)

Duck Hunter Shoots Angel * by Mitch Albom

Mitch Albom

Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom is an American best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, dramatist, radio and television broadcaster and musician. His books have sold over 30 million copies worldwide...

2002 - 2003

Across the Way * by Jeff Daniels

Stand * by Toni Press-Coffman

Hope for Corky * by Randall Godwin

Blithe Spirit

Blithe Spirit (play)

Blithe Spirit is a comic play written by Noël Coward which takes its title from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" . The play concerns socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to...

by Noel Coward

Noël Coward

Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...

2001 - 2002

Guys On Ice by Fred Alley

Fred Alley

Fred Alley was an American musical theatre lyricist and librettist who died unexpectedly just as his work gained national recognition. His collaboration on the musical The Spitfire Grill with composer James Valcq won the American Academy of Arts and Letters' prestigious Richard Rodgers Production...

 & Frederick Heide

Months on End * by Craig Pospisil

Craig Pospisil

Craig Pospisil is an American playwright, and musical bookwriter. He has written nine full length plays and musicals,, mostly comedies, and more than 40 short plays and musicals.- Biography :...

Born Yesterday

Born Yesterday

Born Yesterday is a play written by Garson Kanin which premiered on Broadway in 1946, starring Judy Holliday as Billie Dawn. The play was adapted intoa successful 1950 film of the same name.- Plot :...

by Garson Kanin

Garson Kanin

Garson Kanin was a prolific American writer and director of plays and films.-Film and stage career:...

Let It Be * by Dennis North

2000 - 2001

Rain Dance * by Lanford Wilson

Lanford Wilson

Lanford Wilson was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters...

Orphan Train * by Dennis North

Completing Dahlia * by Annie Martin

1999 - 2000

closed for renovations

1998 - 1999

Boom Town * by Jeff Daniels

The Hole * by Wendy Hammond

The Big Slam by Bill Corbett

Bill Corbett

Bill Corbett is an American writer and performer for television, film and theatre. He was a writer and performer on the cult television show Mystery Science Theater 3000 , for which he voiced the robot Crow T. Robot during the show's later seasons on the Sci Fi Channel and played the character...

Criminal Genius by George F. Walker

George F. Walker

George F. Walker, CM is a Canadian playwright and screenwriter. He is one of Canada's most prolific playwrights, and also one of the most widely produced Canadian dramatists both in Canada and internationally.-Early years:...

1997 - 1998

Escanaba in da Moonlight by Jeff Daniels

Julie Johnson

Julie Johnson

Julie Johnson is a 2001 drama film directed and written by Wendy Hammond and Bob Gosse. It was shown at several film festivals worldwide between 2001 and 2004.-Plot:...

by Wendy Hammond

Book of Days * by Lanford Wilson

Lanford Wilson

Lanford Wilson was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters...

Marcus is Walking by Joan Ackermann

1996 - 1997

Apartment 3A * by Jeff Daniels

Labor Day * by Kim Carney

The Hot L Baltimore by Lanford Wilson

Off the Map

Off the Map

Off the Map is a travelogue written by Hibikina Chickena and Kika Kat. It was originally a self-published zine and was later published and sold in both zine and book form by the CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective....

by Joan Ackermann

1995 - 1996

Escanaba in da Moonlight * by Jeff Daniels

Beast on the Moon by Richard Kalinoski

The Purple Rose Spring Comedy Festival * by various playwrights

The Harmony Codes * by Michael Grady

1994 - 1995

Thy Kingdom's Coming * by Jeff Daniels

Only Me and You * by Kim Carney

Hang the Moon * by Suzanne Burr

Weekend Comedy by Jean & Sam Bobrick

1993 - 1994

The Vast Difference * by Jeff Daniels

Two Sisters* by T.E. Williams

Keely and Du by Jane Martin

Jane Martin

Jane Martin is the RUMORED pen-name of a playwright speculated to be retired Actors Theatre of Louisville artistic director Jon Jory. Jon Jory, Martin's spokesperson, denies being Jane Martin but has directed the premieres of Martin's shows....

Stanton's Garage by Joan Ackermann

1992 - 1993

Possessed: The Dracula Musical * by Robert Marasco, Jason Darrow & Carter Cathcart

Necessities by Velina Hasu Houston

National Anthems by Dennis McIntyre

Nooner * by Joan Ackermann

1991 - 1992

Kuru by Josh C. Manheimer

Ties That Bind * by Kitty S. Dubin

More Fun Than Bowling by Steven Dietz

The Tropical Pickle * by Jeff Daniels

1991 (First Season)

Blush at Nothing * by Lisa A. Wing

Shoe Man * by Jeff Daniels

External links

• Purple Rose Theatre Company website
• Jeff Daniels website
• Escanaba in Love information for 2007-2008 run in Detroit