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Here is an expanded look at the DCTC’s expanded, 12-play 2007-08 season, with dates, synopses and comments from Denver Center Theatre Company artistic director Kent Thompson and Denver post theater critic John Moore:

“Third”

The company’s pitch: “Laurie Jameson, a feminist art historian, has settled into her life as a professor at a small, New England college when Woodson Bull III, known simply as “Third,” challenges her long-held beliefs with an essay she’s sure he could not have written. Against the political backdrop of the impending Gulf War, Laurie and Third engage in a red state vs. blue state confrontation that leaves both shaken and changed forever. The final play by Wendy Wasserstein, critically acclaimed author of ‘The Heidi Chronicles’ and ‘The Sisters Rosensweig,’ was described by the New York Times as ‘a gentle breath of autumn.’ ”

Kent Thompson says: “I was interested in this play because of my ongoing commitment to women’s voices, and because Wendy was a dominant female voice in the American theater for 25 years. I really like the play because it deals with a progressive, smart and very liberal female professor who demonizes someone from the right in exactly the same way the left is always accusing the right of doing. It really digs down into that issue of the assumptions we make about people whose opinions we don’t agree with. It deals with issues women of all kinds are dealing with: Cancer, a father with Alzheimer’s, the shifting perspectives of middle age. And it’s very funny.”

John Moore says: This will be a fitting homage to Wasserstein, whose work has not been staged by the DCTC since “Isn’t it Romantic?” in 1995.

“You Can’t Take It With You”

The company’s pitch: “Guess who’s coming to dinner? When it’s the Sycamore home, the guests could be just about anyone. The eccentric, free-spirited Sycamores take in everyone from tipsy Broadway showgirls to displaced members of the Russian aristocracy. When daughter Alice introduces her uptight fiance; to her unconventional relatives, sidesplitting chaos ensues. From literary luminaries Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman comes a comic classic of the American stage, a winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and an Academy Award, and a fun-loving favorite for generations of American audiences.”

Kent Thompson says: “It’s a great American comedy, and we really haven’t done that in the past few seasons here. Plus, it’s just a natural for our acting company.”

John Moore says: You might think this is a tired warhorse, but it hasn’t been done by any Colorado company since at least 2000.

“The Diary of Anne Frank”

The company’s pitch: “This is the poignant chronicle of a Jewish family’s claustrophobic years in hiding in an Amsterdam attic, and their ultimate betrayal and execution by the occupying Germans. Brilliant, witty, and wise beyond her years, Anne Frank wrote unsparingly of the shortcomings and bravery of her fellow captives, and of her own heroism and fragile coming of age. Her diary is an enduring testament of hope amid unthinkable cruelty and despair. ‘In spite of everything,’ she wrote, ‘I believe people are truly good at heart.’

Kent Thompson says: “If you look at our educational programs and our theatrical offerings, the one age group we don’t really address is middle-school children, those 11-14 year olds and their families. My sense is that is the last age range where parents and their children will really come to the theater together. And with the latest kind of cyclical rise in the denial of the Holocaust, I thought it was a good time to do that play.”

John Moore says: Young theater audiences will watch anything you put in front of them. But if you can’t find a bridge that keeps them interested in theater into their pre-teen years, it’s difficult to win them back. But if you can, you make theatergoers for life.

“Pride and Prejudice”

The company’s pitch: “Love, laughter, passion, and adventure – Jane Austen’s classic romance sweeps onto the stage in a gorgeous Regency-era comedy of manners. City airs clash with rural realities as country girl Elizabeth Bennet and the proud Mr. Darcy fall reluctantly in and out of love, amid meddling family members and local gentry. A cast of unforgettable characters brings this tale to vivid, enchanting life.”

Kent Thompson says: “It’s a very romantic novel, and I think it’s a really good adaptation. And although this play was not adapted by a woman, its source book was certainly written by a woman.”

John Moore says: Jon Jory usually writes under the moniker of Jane Martin, and you’d think if there were any work that he would keep his female alter ego in the title page, this would be it. Me personally, I may be calling in sick. I feel a November fever coming on …

“Irving Berlin’s White Christmas”

The company’s pitch: “Just in time for the holidays comes a delightful new musical staging of the classic Yuletide film. White Christmas includes all of your favorite Irving Berlin songs, from ‘Sisters’ and ‘Blue Skies’ to ‘I Love a Piano’ and the beloved title number. The fun begins when a pair of World War II vets – two of the hottest song-and-dance men in showbiz – team up with a sassy sister act to save a friend s run-down country inn. This is a sparkling holiday package filled with vintage songs, rousing dance numbers and enough heartwarming nostalgia to make your holidays merry and bright.”

Kent Thompson says: “This is a very demanding big Broadway musical, and the music and the dancing is extraordinary.”

John Moore says: A welcome respite from the company’s annual offering of “A Christmas Carol.”

“Lydia”

The company’s pitch: “A Mexican immigrant family is mired in grief, rage and guilt over a daughter tragically disabled on the eve of her quinceanera (15th birthday). When the undocumented Lydia arrives in El Paso from Mexico to work as a maid for the Flores family, her nearly miraculous bond with the brain-damaged girl elates, then angers and finally destroys the troubled family – and Lydia herself. Lyrical, dark, shocking and magical, this meditation on family and cultural identity in the 1970s is a brilliant new play from an award-winning writer.”

Kent Thompson says: “When I first read it, I kept thinking about it for 10 days – and that usually is a pretty good sign that the play has legs. I felt like it was really pretty brave writing in the sense that he deals with some very difficult issues with this family that is falling apart. It’s about the bitterness of these first-generation immigrant parents and their struggle in the 1970s. They fled from Mexico but are now stuck in these dead-end jobs.It’s really a very emotional, funny but scary play.”

John Moore says: Solis, under commission by the DCTC, only delivered the first draft of his script on Feb. 9. So if Thompson believes it can be workshopped and made ready to go in less than a year, that tells you it came to him in strong shape.

“Our House”

The company’s pitch: “A rising TV news anchor is tripped up by her own ambition when she covers a hostage crisis – perpetuated, she learns too late, by a man who despises her. Theresa Rebeck skewers the trend toward TV news as entertainment and TV anchors as ambitious media stars. Morphing swiftly from comic to catastrophic, Rebeck s biting wit and gift for social satire raises “Our House” to the lofty theatrical territory shared by her earlier plays “The Water’s Edge,” “Bad Dates” and “Spike Heels.”

Kent Thompson says: “I think Theresa is really emerging into the major part of her career. This play is a risk because it is a satire, and it is unrelentingly a satire. It’s nasty, it’s mean, it’s very funny, and it’s about an American obsession that is now out of control. I think you see how far both we as willing participants wanting to be stars, and TV with its mighty thirst for ratings, are willing to go. I also just think she’s a great comic writer.”

John Moore says: This play, which was read last month at the Colorado New Play Summit, is a head-scratcher. Let’s see: A ruthlessly ambitious TV producer; a viewer willing to go to great extremes for fame; a diatribe about reality TV and the lack of ethics in media … didn’t we see all of that two years ago in Curious’ lousy “The Dead Guy?” And didn’t it feel dated then? There’s not much any writer can say about this subject that will feel new to a contemporary audience. But it’s an undeniably funny script. And it’s straightforward stuff, so it will have broad and accessible appeal to newer theatergoers.

“Plainsong”

The company’s pitch: “Set on the high plains of eastern Colorado, this adaptation of the New York Times bestselling novel unflinchingly portrays love and loss in a small ranching community. A schoolteacher is left alone to care for his vulnerable sons, while two gruff bachelor brothers knowing little about life beyond the ranch awkwardly offer a home to a pregnant teenage girl. As their lives intertwine, they survive harshness and cruelty to recreate family and community. Warm, stark, unsentimental, yet poetic – this story taps a deep well of human emotion.”

Kent Thompson says: “I think it’s going to be immensely popular because the book has only sold about a million copies nationwide – that’s a pretty good built-in audience. I think the book is popular because it’s an unsentimental yet humorous and emotionally engaging view of small-town life on the Colorado plains. I think it’s his unsentimentality, coupled with the fact that he’s not afraid to include some of the darker elements of the story, that make it so compelling. I think he completely redefined what family and community means, and he does it in a way that’s authentic and powerful.”

John Moore says: This is precisely the kind of work that made Thompson so successful in Alabama: Presenting works that speak directly to the people he is presently among, and where they came from.

“Gee’s Bend”

The company’s pitch: “The women of Gee’s Bend – an impoverished and isolated community on the Alabama River – created unique, bold and sophisticated quilts out of necessity and materials at hand. Now world-renowned, their brilliantly innovative quilts are featured in leading museums across the country, including the forthcoming Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. One critic dubs Wilder’s new play ‘a glorious piece of theatrical handiwork that uses the civil-rights movement as a thread for stitching together the rich emotional material of a close-knit family of Quilters.’ With echoes of Alice Walker’s ‘The Color Purple’ and Lynn Nottage’s ‘Intimate Apparel,’ ‘Gee’s Bend’ is both a work of art and a bona fide crowd-pleaser.”

Kent Thompson says: “This really seems like synchronicity, because I commissioned this play when I was in Alabama, and so when I heard there was an art-museum exhibit this year dedicated to Gee’s Bend, I thought, ‘OK, I need to do it this year.’ It’s kismet.”

John Moore says: Sounds a bit like “Quilters II” to me, but that’s OK. That DCTC creation went on to become one of the most frequently staged musicals of the past two decades. This one sounds like it has great heart and purpose. And I’m all for Thompson continuing to reach out and work with other local arts groups.

“The Merry Wives of Windsor”

The company’s pitch: Sir John Falstaff is larger than life and twice as hilarious in Shakespeare’s rambunctious comedy of rascals, secret identities, marital mayhem and romance in an English village. The vain, bumbling Falstaff, short on funds and ale, plots to seduce and rob two respectable Windsor wives. In a style worthy of TV s Lucy and Ethel, the women thwart his plot, while the villagers join in a boisterous moonlit revel, to drum the hapless knight out of town for good and all. A timeless and timely comedy.”

Kent Thompson says: It’s never been done here, and it’s a good choice for this company. It’s about middle age, marriage, children of marriageable ages, and it has one of the greatest comic characters ever written in Falstaff.”

John Moore says: A refreshing choice. It will be interesting to see who ends up directing it. For the first time since Thompson arrived, the annual Bard offering will be helmed by someone else – Thompson will be directing “Plainsong.”

“Doubt”

The company’s pitch: “In this brilliant tale of suspicion and moral uncertainty, a Catholic priest is accused by an old-school nun of abusing a student. The nun demands the priest’s confession and resignation, while the boy’s mother defends the friendship. This remarkable drama won the Pulitzer Prize along with Obie and Tony awards, intriguing audiences long after the final curtain.”

Kent Thompson says: “This is an issue that continues to haunt us in society, and it looks at it in a new way. It’s not about bashing priests. The issue is about making assumptions in this very politically charged time.”

John Moore says: Our own Tony-winning regional theater company hasn’t staged a Tony-winning best play since 2000’s “Copenhagen.” It’s long past due that it gets interested again in staging what New York thinks are its best new works.

A musical to be announced

The company’s pitch: “Following in the footsteps of ‘Crowns,’ ‘Love, Janis,’ ‘It Ain’t Nothin’ but the Blues’ and the upcoming ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,’ a new musical or a new production of an existing musical will bring in the summer as we celebrate this wonderfully American art form. Among the first to experience this production will be arts professionals in Denver for the National Performing Arts Convention.”

Kent Thompson says: Honestly, we haven’t made the decision on the title yet. We have a collection of new musicals that we want to look at. The other thing we are balancing, quite frankly, is that if we do new musical, that we do it well – because we are already doing three new plays. It’s an issue of the human-toll on our staff. Also, we want something that will appeal to both DCA and DCTC audiences.”

John Moore says: Wouldn’t it be great if the DCTC puts all that musical-theater talent it’s stocking to good use on a work written within the past 10 years?

Tickets and subscriptions: Current subscribers may renew their subscriptions beginning in mid-April. New subscriptions will be available later this spring and single tickets will be available late this summer.