San Jose Stage Company has announced its 2022-2033 season. Five plays are planned with season opener The Play that Goes Wrong scheduled for September 21, 2022. A to-be-named musical will close the season during the summer of 2023.
The season features two world premieres, a regional premiere, Tony-honored plays and a musical.
“We are beyond exuberant and honored to present an anniversary season at The Stage that reflects the culmination of forty years of bringing powerful, provocative, and profound theatre to our community,” said Randall King, Founding Artistic Director.
“All of the titles in this season resonate our core mission: to expand community, forge creative partnerships, and challenge individuals in order to illuminate the human condition. When we set out forty years ago, it was our collective vision to provide a home for the exceptional artists in our region and give voice to the new American theatre. We wanted to deliver meaningful and relevant stories to our community in order to stimulate dialogue and ignite change. In that time, we have produced over two hundred plays including twenty world premieres and over fifty new works, as well as re-envisioned classics and cutting-edge musicals. Each production has provided a stepping stone to the legacy and progression of San Jose Stage Company. We are excited to continue the mission and the dream.”
San Jose Stage is celebrating its historic run by branding the season as “Milestone: The 40th Anniversary Season.”
Full details below.
ON STAGE
San Jose Stage Company 2022-2023 Season
MILESTONE: The 40th Anniversary Season
September 2022 – July 2023
THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG
By Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields
Directed by Jon Tracy
September 21 – October 16, 2022
Press Opening: September 24, 2022This multi-award-winning comedy is a hilarious hybrid of Monty Python madness and Sherlock Holmes mystery. It’s opening night for the Cornley University Drama Society’s newest production, THE MURDER AT HAVERSHAM MANOR, where things are quickly going wrong. Very, very wrong. This 1920s-style whodunit-farce hybrid has everything you never wanted in a show from an unconscious leading lady and a corpse that can’t play dead, to actors who trip over everything (including their lines). Against all odds, the accident-prone thespians battle to make it to their final curtain call, with hilarious consequences! It’s a riotous farce in the door-slamming NOISES OFF tradition!
MEET JOHN DOE
Original screenplay by Robert Riskin
World Premiere Adaptation by Kenneth Kelleher
Directed Kenneth Kelleher
November 23 – December 18, 2022
Press Opening: November 26, 2022A reporter’s fake news turns a down-and-out derelict into a national hero and unknowingly makes him a pawn of big business. As relevant today as it was in 1941, this story about media, politics and the American Dream explores questions of trust and the manipulation of government and other institutions meant to protect the people. The beloved film, based on a 1922 magazine article, starred Gary Cooper in the title role opposite Barbara Stanwyck and is counted in two “Top 100” lists by the American Film Institute.
STRANGE COURTESIES
By L. Peter Callender
Directed by Greg Homann
February 1 – 26, 2023
Press Opening: February 4, 2023STRANGE COURTESIES explores the potential power of truth telling set against the aftermath of the brutal apartheid regime of South Africa. Citizens on both sides confront a painful past and pursuit of healing through the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Can dignity be restored to victims and their families while offering a basis for individual healing, and promoting the reconciliation of a divided society? Inspired by Shakespeare, Wilson, and Fugard, Callender “unveils the mask of history’s harsh reality with imagination, theatricality and, always, humor” in this timely work.
GRAND HORIZONS
By Bess Wohl
Directed by Allison F. Rich
April 5 – 30, 2023
Press Opening: April 8, 2023Fifty years into their marriage, Nancy announces she wants a divorce to which her husband Bill readily agrees. While they seem unfazed by the decision, their two adult sons are shaken to the core, forced to reexamine everything they thought they knew about their parents’ outwardly happy lives. As the family grapples with their new reality, each must reckon with their own imperfect past and how their collective love for each other might express itself in new and unlikely forms. The Tony-nominated Broadway production in 2020 starred Jane Alexander and James Cromwell with Ben McKenzie and Michale Urie as their sons.
SUMMER MUSICAL
June 7 – July 2, 2023
Press Opening: June 10, 2023Stay tuned for the announcement of the title joining the ranks of recent audience favorites like CHICAGO, HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, THE TOXIC AVENGER, and MAMMA MIA!
Subscriptions and single tickets to the 2022-2023 season are now available, with packages ranging from $135-$270.
The Stage attracts over 30,000 to downtown San Jose and employs more than 150 local artists annually.
Stark Insider congratulates San Jose Stage Company on its 40th anniversary and hopes to see you at the show.
