BRÜKA THEATRE 33rd ANNIVERSARY SEASON WILD CARD THE LARK
2026-05-15 19:30 - 2026-05-31 22:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Bruka Theatre, 99 N. Virginia St, Reno, 89509
BRÜKA THEATRE 33rd ANNIVERSARY SEASON WILD CARD
THE LARK
FROM THE BATTLEFIELD TO THE FLAMES; RECLAIMING JOAN OF ARC
May 15, 16, 20(A), 21, 22, 23, 27(OC), 28, 29, 30 @ 7:30 PM SUN Matinees: May 17, 31* @ 2 PM
TICKET PRICES
Senior/Student/Military $26 General Tickets $30
All Tickets $35 at the Door
A = Artist Night $17 All Tickets
OC = Our Center Night $22 All Tickets ($5 to Our Center)
*Followed by a talk-back with the company
INDIVIDUAL TICKETS ON SALE ON: April 27, 2026
THE LARK ONLINE TICKET LINK: https://brukatheatre.simpletix.com/
Reno, NV – Coming to Bruka Theatre in May of 2026, a revolutionary play that takes us from the battlefield to the flames with The Lark written by French dramatist Jean Anouilh, adapted by Lillian Hellman. This 1952 dramatization of the life and trial of Joan of Arc opens at Brüka on May 15 and plays through May 31, 2026. Directed by Holly Natwora, a local theatre artist whose dense and impressive resume includes such Brüka shows as Dangerous Liaisons, Waiting For Godot, and The Diary Of Anne Frank.
The Lark is presented by special arrangement with Broadway Licensing, LLC, servicing the Dramatists Play Service collection.
ABOUT THE PLAY
John Chapman, writing in the New York Daily News said of The Lark: “It is always the story of a simple girl who became an inspired warrior and then was tried by the church—but there have been several ways of telling it. Anouilh’s way, and Miss Hellman’s, is to try to tell the story from two viewpoints. One of them is how we look at the tale now as a piece of history, with our knowledge of how the girl’s blundering captors unwittingly created a martyr who became forever a symbol of courage and faith. The other viewpoint has been to try to imagine what it must have been like to be Joan herself. Both approaches have been splendidly realized by the technique of divorcing the drama from the confinements of time, sequence and space. With this freedom, the story of Joan of Arc can move backward or forward without an interruption, without a jar. And as she tells her listeners of what she heard and what she did, her story comes alive.”
TICKET INFORMATION
Artist Night Tickets must be purchased in advance to receive a discount on our regularly priced tickets. Opening Night ticket holders are invited to a post-show reception and an opportunity to meet the artists. Our Center Night tickets include a $5 donation to Our Center. Ticket prices reflect some of the additional costs. Season Tickets are available online @ https://brukatheatre.simpletix.com/ (Under – Memberships) or call the box office at 775-323-3221 or email: boxofficebruka@gmail.com
ACCOMODATIONS: The Lark performances will take place in our upstairs Bruka Space, please contact us in advance so we can accommodate your needs. We have special elevator access available and accessible restrooms as well as other provisions to make your visit comfortable. Contact the box office at 775-323-3221 or email: boxofficebruka@gmail.com
RESERVATIONS are available in person through the Brüka Box Office phone number (775) 323-3221, online at www.bruka.org, or at our new Brüka Studio 44 located next door to Bruka on First Street at 44 W. 1st St. Our in-person box office hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 5 – 7 PM. We are closed on most holidays. Our 2025/2026 Season Tickets are on sale beginning September 1, 2025. Individual tickets go on sale the Monday after the previous show closes. Check us out at www.bruka.org.
All Brüka mainstage evening shows begin at 7:30 PM. Matinees begin at 2:00 PM. Doors open 30 minutes before curtain time. There is NO late seating and all ticket sales are final.
PARKING
We suggest convenient parking in the Court Street parking lot across from The Pioneer Theater and walking across the new Virginia Street Bridge to Brüka, FREE after 5:00 PM and all day Saturday and Sundays. We also validate parking at the Parking Gallery on 1st and Sierra Street. The Downtown Ambassadors are present before and after performances for guidance and safety.
LOCATION Brüka Theatre is located at 99 N. Virginia Street at the corner of 1st and Virginia Streets in downtown Reno, next to the Virginia Street Bridge. Please let us know if you require ADA accommodations by calling us at (775)-323-3221 or emailing us at boxofficebruka@gmail.com
ABOUT BRÜKA THEATRE Brüka Theatre celebrates its 33rd season of live theatre in downtown Reno – Wild Card is the theme for the 2025/2026 season. As an artistic leader in the region, Brüka is recognized for innovative productions, exceptionally talented artists, and an acclaimed Theatre for Children touring series since its founding in 1992. Central to Brüka is the commitment to the re-investigation of contemporary and classic plays and developing new plays within Brüka’s Artistic Collective, a group that includes winners of the Nevada Arts Council and Sierra Arts Foundation artist grants and now TEN local best actor honors. Brüka was named “Best Theatre Company” by Reno News and Review for twenty-one years. Brüka is a non-equity, small, not-for-profit member theater company and is a constituent of the national TCG (Theatre Communications Group). Brüka Theatre has produced hundreds of live shows in our downtown Reno location. Sign up for our newsletter by going to our website at www.bruka.org.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Holly Natwora received her MFA from Columbia University where she studied with some of American theater’s most innovative directors and performers. She has acted in more than seventy plays, most notably at La MaMa E.T.C., SoHo Rep., The Neighborhood Playhouse and two summers at Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival, as well as touring The Caucasian Chalk Circle in Berlin, Germany and playing Lady Macbeth in the first ever New York Fringe Festival. Television and film credits include Law and Order and Law and Order:Criminal Intent. After moving to Reno in 2005, Holly has performed or directed at Brüka Theatre, Reno Little Theater, Good Luck Macbeth, and TheatreWorks of Northern Nevada. Holly was nominated for a Best Actress Award of Northern Nevada by the Reno News and Review and won A Best Actress Award for her portrayal of Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at Reno Little Theatre. Holly’s critically acclaimed rendition of The Diary of Anne Frank was invited to be performed at the Nevada Governor’s Advisory Council on the Holocaust in Education. Currently she teaches theater at Truckee Meadows Community College and occasionally at The Sierra School of the Performing Arts.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jean Anouilh was a French dramatist and screenwriter whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1944 production of Sophocles’ Antigone, which, though performed without objection by censors, was nevertheless seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain’s Vichy government. His plays are less experimental than those of his contemporaries, having clearly organized plot and eloquent dialogue. One of France’s most prolific writers after World War II, much of Anouilh’s work deals with themes of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromise.
Lillian Hellman was an American playwright, prose writer, memoirist, and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway as well as her communist views and political activism. She was blacklisted after her appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities at the height of the anti-communist campaigns of 1947–1952. Although she continued to work on Broadway in the 1950s, her blacklisting by the U.S. film industry redefined her personal and professional life.
In November 1947, after the Hollywood Ten defied the committee, Hellman wrote an editorial titled “The Judas Goats”. It said in part:
It was a week of turning the head in shame; of the horror of seeing politicians make the honorable institution of Congress into a honky tonk show; of listening to craven men lie and tattle, pushing each other in their efforts to lick the boots of their vilifiers; publicly trying to wreck the lives, not of strangers, mind you, but of men with whom they have worked and eaten and played, and made millions. Has it anything to do with Communism? Of course not. There has never been a single line or word of Communism in any American picture at any time. There has never or seldom been ideas of any kind. Naturally, men scared to make pictures about the American Negro, men who only in the last year have allowed the word Jew to be spoken in a picture, men who took more than ten years to make an anti-Fascist picture, those are frightened men and you pick frightened men to frighten first. Judas goats; they’ll lead the others, maybe, to the slaughter for you.They frighten mighty easy, and they talk mighty bad. … I suggest the rest of us don’t frighten so easy. It’s still not un-American to fight the enemies of one’s country. Let’s fight.
