Saint Louis University Theatre & Dance Program Announces 2021–2022 Performance Season

The Saint Louis University Theatre & Dance Program of the Department of Fine and Performing Arts has announced its line-up for the 2021-2022 University Theatre & Dance Season. The selections for this season consist of traditional and contemporary works, as well as original work from university students. The pieces range from edgy comedy to beloved classics, thought-provoking drama to creative artistic expressions. In addition to hosting a special guest director, our 2021-2022 season productions will be directed by Saint Louis University Theatre & Dance faculty who continue to offer students top-tier educational experiences while delivering exceptional programming for our audiences.

The season begins in October with Kenneth Lonnergan's 2015 Tony Award nominated dark comedy for best revival of a play This is Our Youth, directed by Associate Professor Tom Martin. The second production of the season, directed by Associate Professor Lucy Cashion, will be a new and fresh take on the classic William Shakespeare comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, which explores magic, mischief, and love. The closing performance of the 2021-2022 season will be the inaugural Dance Concert featuring original dance works choreographed by Saint Louis University dance students and directed by Assistant Professor Holly Seitz-Marchant.

The SLU Theatre & Dance Program is delighted to announce that The Rimers of Eldritch from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson, opening February of 2022, will be directed by guest artist and St. Louis theatre tour-de-force Carl Overly Jr. SLU is proud to continue partnering with the Kranzberg Arts Foundation to present two of the four performances in their Grand Arts Center spaces. The Rimers of Eldritch will perform February 24-27 in the Kranzberg Black Box at the Kranzberg Arts Center. The Grandel Theatre will be the site of the Dance Concert April 22-24. Both This is Our Youth and A Midsummer Night's Dream will take place on the campus of SLU in Xavier Hall's Mark Wilson Studio Theatre and Main Stage Theatre, respectively.

Tickets and season subscriptions for the 2021-2022 Theatre & Dance will begin sales on August 2, 2021. All tickets and subscriptions should be purchased through MetroTix.com or at the University campus box office, located in Xavier Hall, the week prior to each performance. All performance venues are general non-assigned seating.

Saint Louis University is a Missouri ArtSafe certified organization and will follow the health and safety protocols set up by our university in line with the CDC and St. Louis City guidelines. All ticketing, masking, distancing, etc. is subject to change based on these guidelines.

2021-2022 Saint Louis University Theatre & Dance Season

This is Our Youth

By Kenneth Lonnergan

Directed by Thomas Martin

Mark Wilson Studio Theatre, Xavier Hall | 3733 West Pine Mall

October 1 - 10 2021

In 1982, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the wealthy, articulate, pot-smoking teenagers who were small children in the '60s have emerged as young adults in a country that has just resoundingly rejected everything they were brought up to believe in. The very last wave of New York City's '60s-style Liberalism has come of age-and there's nowhere left to go. In meticulous, hilarious, and agonizing detail, THIS IS OUR YOUTH follows forty-eight hours of three very lost young souls in the big city at the dawn of the Reagan Era: Warren Straub, a dejected nineteen-year-old who steals fifteen thousand dollars from his abusive lingerie-tycoon father; Dennis Ziegler, the charismatic domineering drug-dealing friend who helps him put the money to good use; and Jessica Goldman, the anxiously insightful young woman Warren yearns for. Funny, painful, and compassionate, THIS IS OUR YOUTH is a living snapshot of the moment between adolescence and adulthood when many young people first go out into the world on their own, armed only with the ideas and techniques they developed as teenagers-ideas and techniques far more sophisticated than their parents ever realize, and far less effectual than they themselves can possibly imagine.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Lucy Cashion

Xavier Hall Main Stage Theatre, Xavier Hall | 3733 West Pine Mall

November 18 - 21 2021

Mischief is in the air when the King and Queen of the Fairies quarrel and Puck is left in charge of the love potion. Four young people are lost in the woods on midsummer's night. Will they find each other and true love, or will Puck's meddling leave them broken-hearted and alone? A band of players prepares to entertain the Duke of Athens. But now that the fairies have made a donkey out of their leading man, will Quince and the others ever get to play their parts? Is there time to put everything right before this magical night is over?

The Rimers of Eldritch

By Lanford Wilson

Directed by Carl Overly Jr.

Kranzberg Black Box, Kranzberg Art Center | 501 N. Grand Blvd

February 24 - 27 2021

As Martin Gottfried comments, "It is a simple one. A mystery, really. A man has been murdered. The mystery is, who he is, who murdered him and what were the circumstances? And to solve it, Wilson looks at the outsides and insides of his tiny, Middle Western town. He looks at a middle-aging woman who falls in love with the young man who comes to work in her cafe. He looks at a coarse, nasty woman mistreating her senile mother, who is obsessed with visions of Eldritch being evil and headed for blood-spilling. He looks at a tender relationship between a young man and a dreamy, crippled girl. But Wilson sees far more than this. He is grasping the very fabric of Bible Belt America, with its catchword morality ('virgin,' 'God-fearing') and its capability for the vicious. He senses the rhythm of its life and the cruelty it can impose. He understands the speech patterns of its loveless gossips, its sex-hungry boys, its compassionless preachers, its car-conscious blondes." In the end Wilson's portrait of Eldritch is full length, and the truth of its revelations will be pondered long after the stage lights have dimmed, and the play has ended.

Dance Concert

Directed by Holly Seitz Marchant

Choreographed by Saint Louis University Dance Students

The Grandel, 3610 Grandel Square | 501 N. Grand Blvd

April 22 - 24 2021

The Saint Louis University Department of Fine and Performing Arts, Theatre & Dance Program presents the inaugural Dance Concert of the minor in dance, featuring a collection of new works choreographed and performed by Saint Louis University dance students. Please join us for an evening of dynamic, thought provoking and original artwork.

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