Private Eyes by Steven Dietz

Private Eyes is a comedy of suspicion in which nothing is ever quite what it seems. Matthew’s wife, Lisa, is having an affair with Adrian, a British theatre director.  Or perhaps their affair is part of the play being rehearsed. Or perhaps Matthew has imagined all of it simply to have something to report to Frank, his therapist. And, finally, there is Cory — mysterious woman who seems to shadow the others — who brings the story to its surprising conclusion.  Or does she? The audience itself plays the role of detective in this hilarious “relationship thriller” about love, lust and the power of deception.

“Directed with requisite snap by Stephen Drewes, Spare Stage mounts an indeed spare, but worthy production of an enjoyable play…” Robert Avila, San Francisco Bay Guardian

Steven Dietz (Playwright) Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, Dietz graduated in 1980 with a B.A. in Theatre Arts from the University of Northern Colorado, after which he moved to Minneapolis and began his career as a director of new plays at The Playwrights’ Center and other local theaters. During these years he also formed a small theatre company (Quicksilver Stage) and began to write plays of his own. A commission from ACT Theatre to write God’s Country brought him to Seattle, Washington in 1988, and he lived and worked in Seattle from 1991 to 2006. He is the recipient of the PEN U.S.A. Award in Drama (for Lonely Planet); the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award (Fiction and Still Life With Iris); the Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Award (The Rememberer); the Yomiuri Shinbun Award for his adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s Silence; and the 2007 Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Mystery for his adaptation of William Gillette’s and Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1899 play Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure. Dietz is also a two-time finalist for the prestigious Steinberg New Play Award (for Last of the Boys and Becky’s New Car), given by the American Theatre Critics Association. He was awarded the 2016 Steinberg New Play Award Citation for Bloomsday.

Stephen Drewes (Director) a fifth-generation San Franciscan, accepted his first directing assignment in 1975 for The People’s Theatre in Cambridge, MA. He has since directed more than 85 productions in every genre from children’s theatre to grand opera. He has been a member of the faculty at Middlebury College, Boston University, and Colgate, and taught at CCSF for twenty years. He was Artistic Director of the Publick Theatre in Cambridge MA, where three of his productions won Boston Critics Awards for Direction. He was also resident stage Director for Pocket Opera. He co-founded Spare Stage in 2008, and won a Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for his direction of THE UNEXPECTED MAN in 2009.