TheatreWorks Announces 52nd Season Including Two World Premieres

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley announced its 52nd season, featuring six plays and musicals to be presented November 2022 through August 2023. Three of the season's productions will be mounted at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, and three will be staged at Palo Alto's Lucie Stern Theatre. Subscriptions are now available; single tickets will be available in the coming months at TheatreWorks.org.

TheatreWorks' 52nd Season includes an exciting World Premiere musical about a family persevering after hitting rock bottom; a World Premiere play about unity during crises that divide, developed in TheatreWorks' New Works Festival; a West Coast Premiere exploring one Jewish family's tradition viewed over several millennia; a musical celebration of an electrifying civil rights hero; a revitalized, cult-classic musical exploring community through a cross-cultural lens; and a beloved comedy reimagined that shows the sisterhood of a tight-knit group of women in the South. All the works uplift community and multicultural experiences that will engage audiences in a joyful and passionate celebration of the arts.

"We invite audiences to lift their voices with us this season," said Artistic Director Tim Bond of the season. "In celebration that live, in-person theatre has returned; in awe for thrilling moments of joy and theatricality; in unison as we share these diverse stories of global cultures, people, and perspectives. TheatreWorks' 52nd Season will include six incredible shows, full of the joy and passion you have come to expect from our Tony Award-winning company."

The season begins during the holidays with campy classic musical Little Shop of Horrors (November 30 - December 24, 2022) reset in San Francisco's Chinatown. In this offbeat hit musical, narrated through doo-wop ditties by a trio of street urchins, meek florist Seymour finds himself catapulted into instant celebrity when he cultivates an otherworldly showstopper, a highly unusual plant. Spotlighting multicultural casting, director Jeffrey Lo (TheatreWorks' Director of Community Partnerships/Casting Director who staged TheatreWorks hits The Language Archive and The Santaland Diaries) moves the setting to San Francisco's Chinatown, exploring the cross-cultural and intersectional community fostered there by marginalized people of color. Featuring a score by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman (the Academy Award-winning team behind Disney's The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin), Little Shop of Horrors is based on the cult-classic B-movie by Roger Corman and Charles Griffith, featuring a then-unknown Jack Nicholson in one of the smaller roles. The musical premiered Off-Off-Broadway at Ashman's WPA Theatre, before transferring Off-Broadway to the Orpheum Theatre, where it played for five years. Little Shop of Horrors then became an Academy Award-nominated film starring Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, and Steve Martin, which was called "a full-blown movie musical, and quite a winning one" by The New York Times. It has been performed at theatres around the world, including at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in 1986, with a recent, critically acclaimed Off-Broadway revival which prompted The New York Times to note, "This triumphantly revitalized musical has its own sly message for an era in which celebrity is regarded as a constitutional right: Embrace fame at your peril. It's a killer."

TheatreWorks will ring in 2023 with the West Coast Premiere of Ali Viterbi's In Every Generation (January 18 - February 12, 2023), directed by Michael Barakiva. This multi-generational, multi-lingual, multicultural play takes a time-traveling voyage through four millennia of Passover seders past, present, and future. Winner of the National Jewish Playwriting Contest, this imaginative play examines tradition, family, and identity, contemplating generational trauma and the possibility for change. Chicago Theatre Review lauded the show as "a universal tale of love, caring, acceptance, coping with adversity and achieving one's goals." BroadwayWorld said In Every Generation "underscores that the cycles of human experience often repeat themselves - and that the differences between every generation might not be as different as we may think." In Every Generation received a workshop by the Kennedy Center/ National New Play Network as well as readings at the Jewish Plays Project, San Diego Repertory Theatre, The Barrow Group, and North Coast Repertory Theatre. It premiered at Victory Gardens Theater and will also be performed at Olney Theatre Center as part of a rolling National New Play Network World Premiere.

In the Spring, TheatreWorks will welcome back award-winning actor Greta Oglesby, who starred in last season's critically acclaimed Gem of the Ocean, to perform the title role in Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (March 8 - April 2, 2023). This production also reunites Oglesby with TheatreWorks Artistic Director Tim Bond, who will direct this stirring musical play that follows the famed civil rights activist in her inspiring gospel journey to justice, from sharecropper to co-founding the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and becoming an outspoken voice for African American voting rights. Featuring songs including "This Little Light of Mine" and "We Shall Not Be Moved," this incendiary call to action will ignite audiences to rise up and do their part to fight for what's right. Written by Cheryl L. West (Akeelah and the Bee, Before It Hits Home, Jar the Floor), Fannie was commissioned by The Goodman Theatre and Seattle Repertory Theatre and has performed at leading regional theatres around the country. Chicago Reader declared "Fannie is essential viewing. Fannie stiffens our backbones with a double dose of vigor and hope, reminding us that even when we are 'sick and tired of being sick and tired,' our vote and our voices matter."

The season continues with the World Premiere of Kareem Fahmy's A Distinct Society (April 5-30, 2023), an audience favorite from the 2021 TheatreWorks New Works Festival Online. In this moving play, a quiet library that straddles United States and Canada becomes the battlefield for border control. As an Iranian family separated by the Muslim travel ban seeks refuge within its doors, the library's occupants grapple with the power of the law versus the powers of the heart. Presented as a World Premiere in association with Salt Lake City's Pioneer Theatre, TheatreWorks Artistic Associate and Director of New Works Giovanna Sardelli will direct this drama celebrating the human spirit during crises that divide.

TheatreWorks will then welcome actor/director Elizabeth Carter (A.C.T., African American Shakespeare Company, Aurora Theatre Company, TheatreFirst) to helm the cherished comic drama Steel Magnolias (June 7 - July 2, 2023). A tight-knit group of Southern women flock to Truvy's beauty parlor, where its occupants dish gossip, do hair, and provide strength and support through life's joys and tragedies. Written by Robert Harling, Steel Magnolias enjoyed an acclaimed run Off-Broadway before making its way to the big screen as the beloved film starring Julia Roberts, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Sally Field, Olympia Dukakis, and Daryl Hannah. It has since been revived on Broadway as well as seen as a 2012 film starring Queen Latifah, Phylicia Rashad, Condola Rashad, Alfre Woodard, Jill Scott, and Adepero Oduye. The play has been performed at theatres across the world, including at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in 1990. Los Angeles Times called it "a Southern recipe, served up with love," and The Guardian commended how it "taps into some fundamental truths about the strength that women derive from one another, regardless of their age or social background." Featuring a multicultural cast, this production will mark the TheatreWorks directorial debut for Carter, who has been seen onstage in TheatreWorks productions including Distracted (2009), Nickel and Dimed (2003), The Grapes of Wrath (2000), and You Can't Take it With You (1999).

TheatreWorks will close the season with the World Premiere musical Alice Bliss (July 12 - August 6, 2023), which received developmental readings in 2021 at TheatreWorks' Writers Retreat. Set in upstate New York during the Iraq War, this new musical is an intimate and stunning tale of a family seeking hope in the midst of crisis as headstrong teenager Alice struggles to hold them together. When they hit rock bottom and seek a way to carry on, Alice and her family chart a roadmap for community and healing. Based on the book by Laura Harrington, Alice Bliss was commissioned by Playwrights Horizons and TheatreWorks assembles a powerhouse team to bring it to the stage including director Mark Brokaw (Broadway's How I Learned How to Drive, Heisenberg, and Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella), lyrics by Adam Gwon (whose work includes off-Broadway musicals Scotland, PA and Ordinary Days, and contributed to La Ronde in TheatreWorks' 2011 New Works Festival), music by Jenny Giering (whose Caraboo, The Mistress Cycle, Saint-Ex, and La Ronde were seen in TheatreWorks New Works Festivals), and book by Karen Hartman (recent Guggenheim Fellow and former Fulbright Scholar whose prose has appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post).

In chronological order, the TheatreWorks Silicon Valley 2022/23 season is as follows:

Little Shop of Horrors

Book and Lyrics by Howard Ashman

Music by Alan Menken

Based on the film by Roger Corman, Screenplay by Charles Griffith

Directed by Jeffrey Lo

November 30 - December 24, 2022 (opening night: December 3)

LUCIE STERN THEATRE, PALO ALTO

Audiences are invited to put a little horror in their holiday season this year! Everybody's favorite carnivorous plant is ready to devour San Francisco's Chinatown in a reimagined production that lends this uproarious cult-classic musical a delicious local flavor. Follow meek florist Seymour Krelborn as he makes a Faustian bargain with the world's most vicious vegetation and learns that fame and fortune can come with a grisly price. From the iconic team behind Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, it's sure to be a bloody good time!

Howard Ashman (Book and Lyrics) is best known as a pivotal creative mind behind the Disney animation renaissance with such films as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast. Ashman's first love was theater; he was a founder of Off-Off-Broadway's renowned WPA Theatre, where he conceived, wrote, and directed God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater as well as the classic musical Little Shop of Horrors (both with music by Alan Menken). He also wrote and directed the Broadway musical Smile (music by Marvin Hamlisch). In his short career, he received many awards, including The Outer Circle Critics Award, New York Drama Critics Circle and Drama Desk (Little Shop of Horrors), two Oscars (The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast), two Golden Globes (The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast) and multiple Grammys. Howard, a documentary about his life, was produced in 2018. Mr. Ashman died in 1991 of complications of AIDS.

Legendary composer Alan Menken (Music) is noted for his multiple works with the Walt Disney company (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Newsies, Hercules, Home on the Range, Enchanted, and Tangled), as well as Broadway stage musicals Sister Act, Newsies The Musical, Leap of Faith, and Little Shop of Horrors. With eight Academy Awards, Menken has received more Oscars than any living person, and is the recipient of numerous other awards including Golden Globes, Grammys, Drama Desk Awards, and a Tony Award. He is one of 17 people to have received an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award (EGOT).

Jeffrey Lo (Director) is a Filipino-American playwright and director who helmed TheatreWorks Silicon Valley's productions of The Language Archive and The Santaland Diaries. He is the recipient of the Leigh Weimers Emerging Artist Award, the Emerging Artist Laureate by Arts Council Silicon Valley and Theatre Bay Area Director's TITAN Award. His plays have been produced and workshopped at TheatreWorks, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The BindleStiff Studio, City Lights Theater Company, and The Custom Made Theatre Company. Directing credits include Hold These Truths and The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin at San Francisco Playhouse; Vietgone and The Great Leap at Capital Stage; Peter and the Starcatcher and Noises Off at Hillbarn Theatre; The Crucible, Yellow Face, and The Grapes of Wrath at Los Altos Stage Company; Uncle Vanya at the Pear Theatre (BATCC award for Best Production); and A Doll's House, Part 2 and Eurydice at Palo Alto Players (TBA Awards finalist for Best Direction). Lo has also worked with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, San Jose Repertory Theatre, and is a company member of Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company and San Francisco Playground. In addition to his work in theatre he works as an educator and advocate for issues of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and has served as a grant panelist for the Zellerbach Family Foundation, Silicon Valley Creates, and Theatre Bay Area. He is the Director of Community Partnerships and Casting Director at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley.

In Every Generation

By Ali Viterbi

Directed by Michael Barakiva

West Coast Premiere

January 18 - February 12, 2023 (opening night: January 21)

MOUNTAIN VIEW CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

"Why is this night different from all other nights?" It's Passover, and the multi-generational, multi-cultural Levi-Katz family finds they all have different answers as they struggle with questions of race and religion that have yet to be resolved. Is trauma generational, or genetic? What does it mean to be free? Is vegan brisket even kosher? A celebration of Jewish tradition, this exciting new play follows one family through four millennia of Passover dinners, going from the personal to the eternal, musing on how and if humanity will ever evolve.

Ali Viterbi's (Playwright) work has been developed, produced, or commissioned by Geffen Playhouse, The Kennedy Center/National New Play Network, La Jolla Playhouse, Round House Theatre, San Diego Repertory Theatre, HERE Arts Center, Jewish Plays Project, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, The Barrow Group, Owl and Cat Theatre in Australia, North Coast Repertory Theatre, and Horizon Theater Company, among others. She won the 2019 National Jewish Playwriting Contest for In Every Generation and has been a finalist for the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Viterbi has staffed on a TV show and developed projects with AMC and Anonymous Content. She was a member of the 2020/2021 Geffen Playhouse Writers' Room, and she is the associate artistic director of the annual Lipinsky San Diego Jewish Arts Festival. Viterbi received her B.A. from Yale University and her M.F.A. in Playwriting from U.C. San Diego.

Michael Barakiva (Director) is an Armenian/Israeli-American director, writer, and producer. He is the Founder and Creative Director of Novel Readings, a company that uses the performance of text to produce social justice events and develop writers' work, and served as the Artistic Director of the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, NY (2015-2020). Michael is a recipient of the David Merrick Prize in Drama, a Summer Fellowship and New Directors/New Works Grant from the Drama League, Granada Fellowship at UC Davis, and the Phil Killian Fellowship in Directing at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has presented at the National Puppet Theatre in Sofia, Bulgaria, as well as at the International Theater Festival at UNAM in Mexico City.

Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer

By Cheryl L. West
Directed by Tim Bond
Featuring Greta Oglesby

March 8 - April 2, 2023 (opening night: March 11)

LUCIE STERN THEATRE, PALO ALTO

"To hope is to vote!" Famed activist and civil rights hero Fannie Lou Hamer makes this impassioned rally cry, reminding us that change begins with just one voice. Tracing her steps from sharecropper to activist to political candidate, Fannie takes audiences on a gospel-filled journey of justice and self-determination, inspiring every American to rise up and fight for the vital issues of our time. This show features a live band and the return of Greta Oglesby, star of last season's critically acclaimed Gem of the Ocean. The Siskiyou Daily News called Fannie "powerful and life-affirming."

Called a "theatrical daredevil" by The New York Times, plays by Cheryl L. West (Playwright) include Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, Before It Hits Home, Last Stop on Market Street, Shout Sister Shout, Akeelah and the Bee, Pullman Porter Blues, and Jar the Floor. Her plays have been produced in England, Off-Broadway, on Broadway (Play On!), and in numerous regional theaters around the country, including Seattle Repertory Theatre, Arena Stage, The Old Globe, Goodman Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Minneapolis Children's Theatre, Seattle Children's Theatre, Chicago Children's Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Asolo Repertory Theatre, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Arkansas Repertory Theatre, St. Louis Black Repertory Theatre, Bay Street Theatre Festival, Syracuse Stage, Cleveland Play House, South Coast Repertory Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, and Off‐Broadway's Manhattan Theatre Club and Second Stage Theater. She has written TV and film projects at Disney, Paramount, MTV Films, Showtime, TNT, HBO, CBS, and BET, and is the Webby-nominated writer for the original web series "Diary of a Single Mom." West is currently preparing a revival of Broadway-bound Jar the Floor, and working on commissions for Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Minneapolis Children's Theater, Goodman Theatre, and Seattle Repertory Theatre.

Tim Bond (Director) is the second Artistic Director in TheatreWorks Silicon Valley's 52-year history. He was chosen to succeed founding artistic director Robert Kelley who retired in 2020, and joined the company shortly before the pandemic shut down. Overseeing the company's virtual productions while theatres were closed, he made his TheatreWorks directorial debut with last season's Gem of the Ocean. Prior to TheatreWorks, Bond served as Artistic Director for Seattle Group Theatre, where he curated the company's nationally recognized MultiCultural Playwrights Festival and was an Associate Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where he created the FAIR Program cultivating the next generation of diverse theatre artists and administrators. He has helmed a host of award-winning productions at theatres around the globe and is a leading director of the works of playwright August Wilson, with whom he had a close friendship and longstanding working relationship.

A Distinct Society

By Kareem Fahmy
Directed by Giovanna Sardelli

World Premiere in Association with Pioneer Theatre Company

April 5-30, 2023 (opening night: April 8)

MOUNTAIN VIEW CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

By chance and geographic anomaly, a quiet library in northern Vermont straddles the U.S.-Canada border. Most years it's just a curiosity, but during the "Muslim ban," it becomes an unlikely meeting place for an Iranian family who find themselves on opposite sides of an invisible divide. When the Québécoise librarian, a U.S. border patrol officer, and a local teenager become involved, all must choose between breaking the law and saving themselves. A favorite from TheatreWorks' New Works Initiative!

Kareem Fahmy (Playwright) is a Canadian-born playwright and director of Egyptian descent. His plays, which include American Fast, A Distinct Society, The Triumphant, Pareidolia, The In-Between, and an adaptation of the acclaimed Egyptian novel The Yacoubian Building, have been developed at theatres nationwide. His fellowships/Residencies include Sundance Theatre Lab, TCG Rising Leader of Color, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Phil Killian Directing Fellow), The O'Neill (National Directors Fellow), Second Stage Theater (Van Lier Directing Fellow), Soho Rep (Writer/Director Lab), Lincoln Center (Directors Lab), New York Theater Workshop (Emerging Artist Fellow). Fahmy is the co-founder of the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at The Lark and of Maia Directors, a consulting group for organizations and artists engaging with stories from the Middle East. Fahmy received an MFA in Directing from Columbia University.

TheatreWorks Artistic Associate and Director of New Works Giovanna Sardelli's (Director) many directing credits at TheatreWorks include last season's World Premiere play Nan and the Lower Body and It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play as well as the March 2020 Northern California Premiere of They Promised Her the Moon, Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph's Archduke (2019), FINKS (2018), The Velocity of Autumn and Crimes of the Heart (2016), Joseph's The Lake Effect (2015), Somewhere by Matthew Lopez (2013), and the World Premiere of Joseph's The North Pool (2011). She is an award-winning director who has worked on numerous plays by Rajiv Joseph including the World Premiere of Archduke (Mark Taper Forum) and Guards at the Taj (Geffen Playhouse; 2016 Ovation Award for Best Production of a Play) and the World Premiere of the Obie Award winning play Describe The Night (2014 New Works Festival, Alley Theatre, Atlantic Theater Company in NYC). She has directed World Premieres of plays by Theresa Rebeck, Lynn Rosen, Joe Gilford, Jeff Augustine, Lauren Yee, Zayd Dohrn, Melissa Ross, Lila Rose Kaplan, Matthew Lopez, and Zoe Kazan among others. Sardelli recently directed "Marvel's Squirrel Girl: The Unbeatable Radio Show!," a podcast series by Marvel Entertainment and Sirius XM.

Steel Magnolias

By Robert Harling

Directed by Elizabeth Carter

June 7 - July 2, 2023 (opening night: June 10)

MOUNTAIN VIEW CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

For this production, audiences will head on over to Truvy's Beauty Salon, where the curlers are hot and the gossip is hotter. Nestled in small-town Louisiana, it's the place to go for the best 'dos, the best advice (whether asked for or not), and the best friends a woman could ever need. Truvy, the irascible Ouiser, protective M'Lynn and her soon-to-be-wed daughter Shelby, and a host of other memorable women banter, bicker, and bond through the years, forging a sisterhood strong enough to carry them through all of life's triumphs and tragedies.

Robert Harling is an actor, playwright, screenwriter, and director who was born in Natchitoches, Louisiana. He wrote his play Steel Magnolias based on his mother and sister and adapted it into the film of the same name. Other film credits include the screenplays for Soapdish, The First Wives Club, Laws of Attraction, and The Evening Star (which he also directed). He served as writer and producer for ABC TV's "GCB."

Elizabeth Carter is a Bay Area actor/director who recently directed Stoop Stories at the Aurora Theatre Company, as well as the virtual production of Feel the Spirit for Shotgun Players and Colt Coeur. Other directing credits include San Francisco Shakespeare Festival's 2020 groundbreaking virtual King Lear and 2021 Pericles Episode 3, Bondage (Honorable Mention for the Relentless Award) with AlterTheater, Every 28 Hours Plays, and A Place to Belong with American Conservatory Theater, for colored girls... (Broadway World Best Local Play and TBA nominee Best Ensemble) with African American Shakespeare Company, and Participants (TBA Best Anthology) for TheatreFirst. She has directed numerous productions for California Shakespeare Theater Conservatory and has served as the Associate Director of the Theatre Department at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco. She is a recipient of the Bridging the Gap Grant and a Director's West 2019 Alum. Elizabeth is the Inaugural SDCF Lloyd Richards New Futures Resident Director at Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Alice Bliss - A New Musical

Book by Karen Hartman, Music by Jenny Giering, Lyrics by Adam Gwon
Based on the novel by Laura Harrington

Directed by Mark Brokaw

World Premiere

July 12 - August 6, 2023 (opening night: July 16)

LUCIE STERN THEATRE, PALO ALTO

How do you hold on to normal when life is anything but? Set in upstate New York during the Iraq War, this intimate and stunning new musical tells the story of a girl who hits rock bottom, finds her mom there, and begins to grow up. Full of humor, hope, resilience, and sheer teenage joy, Alice Bliss presents a breathtaking exploration of family and community coming together to find hope in the face of uncertainty. Developed as part of TheatreWorks' New Works Initiative.

Karen Hartman's (Book) work recently launched VOLT at 59E59 Theaters, an unprecedented festival of three Off-Broadway premieres by a single author simultaneously: New Golden Age (Primary Stages); Goldie, Max & Milk (MBL Productions); and The Lucky Star (The Directors Company). Also in 2022, Denver Theater Center presented the World Premiere musical Rattlesnake Kate, book by Hartman, score by Neyla Pekarek. Other work includes Good Faith: Four Chats about Race and the New Haven Fire Department (premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre); Roz and Ray (McKnight Fellowship, Edgerton New Play Prize), premiered at Seattle Repertory Theatre and Victory Gardens; and The Lucky Star (as The Book of Joseph) premiered at Chicago Shakespeare Theater and broke box office records at Everyman Theater in Baltimore. Hartman is developing Project Dawn (People's Light, NEA Art Works Grant, NNPN Rolling World Premiere) for Population Media Center as a television series, and another project for 20th Television. She wrote the book for Alice Bliss with Giering and Gwon, based on Laura Harrington's novel, which won the 2019 Weston-Ghostlight New Musical Award. Her prose has appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. A recent Guggenheim Fellow and former Fulbright Scholar, Hodder Fellow, and New Dramatist, Hartman served as Senior Artist-in-Residence at University of Washington School for five years, and lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Jenny Giering (Music) is a composer, singer, and pianist. Her works include Alice Bliss, What We Leave Behind, Songs from an Unmade Bed (Drama Desk Nomination for Best Musical), The Mistress Cycle (TheatreWorks 2002 New Works Festival), Saint-Ex (TheatreWorks 2008 Writers Retreat), Summerland, Crossing Brooklyn and Alice Unwrapped with Laura Harrington, Caraboo (TheatreWorks 2003 Writers Retreat and 2002 New Works Festival), La Ronde (TheatreWorks 2011 & 2012 Writers Retreat), The Hotel Carter, Still Life and Island of Blue Dolphins. She has written incidental music for Lauren Gunderson's Silent Sky (TheatreWorks 2014), Georgiana & Kitty: Christmas at Pemberley, and Wendy & Peter, as well as for Gertrude & Claudius, Red Velvet, Elizabeth Rex, Arthur's War, and Denis O'Hare & Lisa Peterson's An Iliad. Giering has won the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award, Constance Klinsky Prize, National Art Song Award, National Music Theatre Network Director's Choice Award, Meet the Composer Grant, Frederick Loewe Award, Weston Playhouse Theatre Company New Musical Award, Tilles Music Chair, and National Alliance for Musical Theatre's Production Grant. Her residencies include Dramatists' Guild Jonathan Larson Fellowship, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Weston Playhouse Theatre Company's Writer's Retreat, Goodspeed Musical's Johnny Mercer Writers Colony, Sundance Playwrights Retreat, Sundance Theatre Lab at White Oak Residency, Cifton Artist in Residence at Harvard University, and Collaborative Arts Project Writers in Residence Program.

Adam Gwon (Lyrics) is a musical theatre writer named one of "50 to Watch" by The Dramatist magazine. His musicals have been produced on six continents, in more than half a dozen languages. His Off-Broadway credits include Scotland, PA presented at Roundabout Theatre Company, which received a Drama Desk Award nomination; Ordinary Days presented at Roundabout Theatre Company, which received a Drama League Award nomination (also seen in the West End); and Old Jews Telling Jokes presented at Westside Theatre. His work also includes String, Cake Off (which received a Helen Hayes Award nomination at Signature Theatre), Cloudlands, The Boy Detective Fails, and Bernice Bobs Her Hair. Other projects include The Waves in Quarantine (a film collaboration with Lisa Peterson and Raúl Esparza, presented by Berkeley Repertory Theatre), songs as a staff writer on the hit web series "Submissions Only," and for Stephen Schwartz and John Tartaglia's The Secret Silk on Princess Cruise Lines. Gwon has received the Kleban Award, the Fred Ebb Award, the Richard Rodgers Award, the Frederick Loewe Award, the Second Stage Theater Donna Perret Rosen Award, the Weston Playhouse New Musical Award, the ASCAP Harold Adamson Award, and the MAC John Wallowitch Award, as well as commissions from Roundabout Theatre Company, Playwrights Horizons, Keen Company, Signature Theatre, South Coast Repertory, the Kimmel Center, and Broadway Across America. His songs have been heard at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and more, performed by such luminaries as Audra McDonald, Kelli O'Hara, and Brian d'Arcy James. Adam has been a fellow at MacDowell, Hermitage Artist Retreat, the O'Neill Music Theater Conference, and the Dramatists Guild, is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and a member of ASCAP and the Dramatists Guild. He served on the Tony Awards Nominating Committee from 2015-2018, and currently sits on the Dramatists Guild Council and the Boards at Roundabout Theatre Company and Primary Stages.

Mark Brokaw's (Director) Broadway Credits include the recent revival of How I Learned to Drive, as well as Heisenberg, Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella, The Lyons, After Miss Julie, Crybaby, The Constant Wife, and Reckless. Winning a 1997 Drama Desk Award for directing the Off- Broadway Premiere of How I Learned to Drive, his New York credits also include the Signature revival of Jesus Hopped the A Train and the Off-Broadway Premieres of The Lyons, Lobby Hero, The Long Christmas Ride Home, This is Our Youth, As Bees in Honey Drown, 2.5 Minute Ride, and The Dying Gaul. He's directed productions at leading regionals throughout America, including Guthrie Theater, Center Theatre Group, Steppenwolf Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage, La Jolla Playhouse, Sundance Theatre Lab, and the O'Neill Theatre Conference. Brokaw's work has also been seen at London's Donmar Warehouse and Menier Chocolate Factory, Dublin's Gate Theatre, and the Sydney Opera House. He served as the Artistic Director of Yale Institute for Music Theatre and he's a current SDC Executive Board member and SDC Foundation president.

Led by Artistic Director Tim Bond, the Palo Alto-based theatre company serves more than 100,000 patrons per year and has captured a national reputation for artistic innovation and integrity, often presenting Bay Area theatregoers with their first look at acclaimed musicals, comedies, and dramas, directed by award-winning local and guest directors, and performed by professional actors cast locally and from across the country. In June 2019, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley received the Regional Theatre Tony Award, the highest honor bestowed on an American theatre not on Broadway. In June 2020, Founding Artistic Director Robert Kelley retired after 50 years at the helm of the theatre he founded, ending what is believed to be the longest tenure of an Artistic Director at a League of Resident Theatres (LORT) theatre.

Since its founding in 1970, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley has become one of the nation's leaders in cultivating and producing new musicals and plays, developing and premiering 71 works by new and veteran artists and 170 Regional Premieres. The company's New Works Festival and Writers' Retreat programs attract authors and composers of national stature (Rajiv Joseph, Stephen Schwartz, Beth Henley, Paul Gordon, Marsha Norman, Henry Krieger, Duncan Sheik, Jules Feiffer, Joe DiPietro, and Andrew Lippa, among many others), providing an artistic home in which America's theatre artists can create new works. In addition, the company has developed scores of works which have gone on to both regional and Off-Broadway productions. It was at TheatreWorks that the 2010 Best Musical Tony Award-winner Memphis was first workshopped and received its World Premiere. Stephen Schwartz's musical The Prince of Egypt, based on the DreamWorks movie of the same name, also made its World Premiere at TheatreWorks and debuted in London's West End in 2020.

For more information the public can visit theatreworks.org. Subscriptions are now available and single tickets will be available in the coming months.

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