Pauses Punctuate Flyleaf's Season Finale

Pauses during the Flyleaf Theater Company’s first season finale should prompt  audience reflection, dramatic artistic director Krisha Hoyt says.

“Annie Baker, in her script, she writes, ‘You really have to respect the pauses in the script. Because if you just speed through them, it’s a different play,’” Hoyt said during a rehearsal of “Circle Mirror Transformation” on Sunday night.

“That’s one of the things that I’ve been trying to work with this cast on. Let there be a moment where the audience has to think, ‘What are these two people thinking?’ We want people leaving saying to themselves, ‘Well, what happened here?’”

, Flyleaf performs “Circle Mirror Transformation” at 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 25 and Saturday, Jan. 26, and Sunday, Jan. 27 at the 1870 Town Hall, 12 Woodward Ave., Berlin.

Tickets are $15 for adults, and $12 for students and seniors.

The show ends Flyleaf’s first season.

The play focuses on a group of people who are “all taking an introduction to theater class together,” Hoyt said.

“I was looking for a show that really embodied this idea of ensemble work. We don’t have a star. We don’t have a lead. Everybody in the show is really pulling their weight,” she said.

“There are a lot of shows out there like that. But, this one in particular, because it seemed almost like a directorial challenge to me. A lot of the different reviews of the shows that I read said, ‘Oh, nothing happens.’ There’s no car crashes and nobody gets killed, but there’s a lot that goes on with these characters. I really saw it as a challenge as a director to pull that out of the actors and shove it in the audience’s faces.”

Eldridge said Flyleaf’s second season starts in June with “Falsettos,” a musical by Natick resident William Finn, from June 14 to June 23.

The play is “actually part of a trilogy that he wrote, and he took the last two parts of this trilogy and combined it into one musical,” Eldridge said.

The show is “a comedy, but it’s a dramatic comedy, (with) many levels to each of the characters,” he said.

From Sept. 6 to Sept. 8, Flyleaf will perform a stage adaptation of “The 39 Steps.”

“Four characters play over 150 people,” Eldridge said. 

On Nov. 15, Nov. 16 and Nov. 27, there will be  “a three-person musical written by Jonathan Larson” called “Tick, Tick … Boom!” Eldridge said. Eldridge, Casale and Ken Orben will perform in this fundraiser for Flyleaf.

The season wraps up on Jan. 10, Jan. 11 and Jan. 12, 2014 with Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”

“We’re looking forward to the season because it’s hopefully going to show how versatile and the variety of productions that we have to offer here at Flyleaf: a little bit of everything, from rock operas to Shakespeare,” Eldridge said.