Los Altos Stage Company Sets 2016-17 Season

Los Altos Stage Company is pleased to announce the line-up for our upcoming season at the Bus Barn Theater in Los Altos. Comprised of two musicals and three plays, our 21st Annual Season is filled with imagination, inspiration, passion, poetry, folly, disillusionment, and madness.

The new season opens with a provocative musical that delves into the violent means some will use to obtain celebrity status. With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by John Weidman, Assassins challenges us to look at our culture through the lives of the nine assassins and would-be assassins of the Presidents of the United States, taking the names we have all vaguely heard of and transforming them into real people with their own individual hopes and delusions. Characters such as John Wilkes Booth, Charles Guiteau, and Lee Harvey Oswald appear onstage to tell their stories in a kaleidoscope of dangerous personalities disappointed by and disillusioned with the American Dream. Assassins opens September 1 and runs through September 25, 2016.

In November, Los Altos Stage is thrilled to present the hilarious and quirky off-Broadway hit that was named one of the top ten plays of 2010 by The New York Times, The New Yorker and Time Out New York. Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker traces a summer community center acting class in Shirley, Vermont where five lost souls find themselves relating through a series of wacky acting exercises. The unexpected intimacy of the class creates an unlikely Petri dish where funny, surprising and poignant secrets are revealed. Circle Mirror Transformation opens November 17 and runs through December 11, 2016.

In the New Year, Los Altos Stage Company presents a fast-paced satire that turns multiculturalism on its head. Yellow Face by Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang explores what happens when a prominent Asian American playwright and activist accidently casts a white man as the Asian American lead in his new play. Intertwining the historical events of the 1990 casting controversy of Miss Saigon, the 1996 Campaign Finance Controversy during which a number of Asian Americans were investigated by the Senate Foreign Relation Committee, and the 1999 accusation of espionage against Wen Ho Lee, with this fictional story about mistaken racial identity, Yellow Face explores the complexities, contradictions and comedy of the construct of race. Yellow Face opens January 26 and runs through February 19, 2017.

In April, Los Altos Stage presents the acclaimed play based on the seminal 1960s novel by Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, adapted by Dale Wasserman. Set in a mental hospital for convicted criminals, the play explores issues of individual identity and freedom, with inmate McMurphy clashing with the Nurse Ratched to fight for the dignity of his fellow patients. In a world where sanity means conformity and following the rules is the only way to survive, the play is a powerful reminder of the beauty and the danger of being an original. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest opens April 13 through May 7, 2017.

Los Altos Stage Company's 21st season comes to a close with the quirky Broadway hit musical about the joys of creative expression and triumphs found in taking risks, [title of show], with music and lyrics by Jeff Bowen and book by Hunter Bell. Winner of the 2001 Lucille Lortel Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical, this Tony nominated musical is about two young songwriters in New York City trying to write a show about...well...two young songwriters in New York City trying to write a show. When two struggling writers, Jeff and Hunter, make a commitment to write something new in three weeks, they quickly find that writing a comedy about the process of writing is more interesting than anything else they could write. This is a musical comedy for anyone who has followed a dream and a backstage love letter to the theatre and the art of collaboration. [title of show] opens May 25 and runs through June 24, 2017.

Season subscriptions (5 plays) are on sale now at www.losaltosstage.org or by calling the Los Altos Stage Company Box Office at (650) 941-0551. Prices range from $90 (student) to $162/subscription. Single tickets go on sale July 1, 2016.

Los Altos Stage Company is a quintessential American neighborhood playhouse, serving Los Altos and the greater South Bay area, and paying tribute to the full canon of American musicals, comedies, and dramas. This 18-year-old theater company strives to bring together a diversity of theater enthusiasts, practitioners, and supporters to create, explore and celebrate the rich tapestry of American culture and experience through live theater. Los Altos Stage Company produces five to six shows annually at its intimate 99-seat theater located on the Los Altos Civic Center campus.

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