TheatreWorks Unveils 18-19 Season Including A Hershey Felder World Premiere And More

Theatre enthusiasts packed the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts tonight to hear Founding Artistic Director Robert Kelley and Executive Director Phil Santora of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley reveal the lineup for the company's 49th season, which launches this summer. Among the exhilarating works announced were: the World Premiere of a new piece by Hershey Felder on Claude Debussy, an acclaimed Tony-winning musical, a thrilling political prizefight, and an array of Regional Premieres that include a hit comedy that sends up suburban values, a gospel/rhythm & blues musical developed at TheatreWorks, a heart-stirring musical for the holidays, a comic drama about one of the key historical events in the last century, a searing look at an unsung American hero, plus the return of the grown-up holiday hit The Santaland Diaries. For more information or to purchase subscriptions ($143 - $583) the public can call 650-463-1960 or visit theatreworks.org. Subscriptions are on sale now; single tickets will go on sale in spring 2018. Special pricing is available for seniors (65+), educators, and patrons 35 and under.

TheatreWorks' 49th season launches with the Regional Premiere of Hold These Truths (July 11 - Aug. 5, 2018). Created by Jeanne Sakata, this passionate and engaging work, called "Stunning. A brilliant portrayal of a genuine hero" by Huffington Post, follows the inspiring story of a Japanese-American student who fought internment to a relocation camp during WWII, chronicling his journey from college all the way to the Supreme Court, and eventually to a Congressional Medal of Honor. The Los Angeles Times noted "Hold These Truths gives hope that the arc of the moral universe does indeed eventually bend toward justice."

Hold These Truths will segue into TheatreWorks Silicon Valley's 2018 New Works Festival (Aug. 9 - 19, 2018) at which leading playwrights and composers from across the country share developing work with audiences, presenting book-in-hand readings and sing-throughs of new plays and musicals.

Following the New Works Festival is the Regional Premiere of Karen Zacarías's Native Gardens (Aug. 22 - Sept. 16, 2018). This cutting-edge suburban comedy by one of America's hottest new playwrights was called "Perceptive. Hopeful. A true breath of comic fresh air" by DC Theatre Scene. In her newest work Zacarías, noted by American Theatre magazine as one of the most produced playwrights in the US, offers up a hilarious look at what happens when a clash of cultures turns well-intentioned neighbors into feuding enemies, as rising attorney Pablo and his PhD candidate wife Tania purchase the house next to a well-established DC couple with a prize-worthy garden. Native Gardens received its World Premiere in Cincinnati in 2016, and has quickly gone on to productions at leading regional theatres around the country including The Guthrie Theater, Arena Stage, Victory Gardens Theater, The Old Globe, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Trinity Repertory Company, and others. TheatreWorks is delighted to bring this timely comedy to the Bay Area.

In the fall, TheatreWorks will present Fun Home (Oct. 3 - 28, 2018), the hit musical by Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change; Shrek the Musical; Thoroughly Modern Millie) and Lisa Kron (Well, 2.5 Minute Ride). Based on the award-winning graphic novel by MacArthur Genius Award winner Alison Bechdel, Fun Home offers up a blazingly honest memoir of Alison's past and present, as she relives her childhood at the family-owned funeral home, her growing adolescent understanding of her own sexuality, and looming, unanswerable questions about her father. This astonishing new musical collected five 2015 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book, Best Direction, and Best Leading Actor in a Musical. Fun Home also received rapturous accolades, with critics calling it "a rare beauty, extraordinary and heart-gripping" (The New York Times), "the best musical of the season" (New York Magazine), and "an emotional powerhouse" (Chicago Tribune). Fun Home marks a return to TheatreWorks for Tesori, where her works Caroline, or Change and Violet have been given award-winning productions. The company also staged one of her earliest efforts, the musical Galileo, which received its West Coast Premiere at TheatreWorks in 1990.

For the holidays, TheatreWorks once again offers entertainment for multi-generations, bringing the enchanting Broadway musical Tuck Everlasting to Palo Alto for its Regional Premiere (Nov. 28 - Dec. 23, 2018). Based on the bestselling book by Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting features a book by Claudia Shear and Tim Federle, music by Chris Miller, and lyrics by Nathan Tysen. This production also marks a return for Miller and Tysen, who created songs for Tuck Everlasting while in residence at the 2010 TheatreWorks' Writers' Retreat, and developed and presented their earlier musical The Burnt Part Boys at TheatreWorks' 2006 New Works Festival. This magical adventure follows 11-year-old Winnie Foster who stumbles upon a whimsical family that offers her the choice of eternal youth, or a full mortal life. Tuck Everlasting made its World Premiere at Atlanta's ALLIANCE THEATRE in 2015, followed by its Broadway debut in 2016. The New York Times called it "a warm-spirited and piercingly touching musical. It had the woman next to me repeatedly wiping away tears, and I understood how she felt." Variety said, "This is an intimate family story of love, loss and the purpose and power of storytelling in the American folk tradition of Twain and Wilder," and Associated Press declared, "The music is magical. Long may it live."

As a bonus attraction for the holidays, TheatreWorks will once again offer the hilarious tale of everyone's favorite surly department store elf Crumpet in The Santaland Diaries. Written by David Sedaris and adapted by Joe Mantello, this Christmas show for mature audiences will be presented in a limited three-week run (Dec. 5 - 23, 2018) at the Lohman Theatre in Los Altos Hills. This second Yuletide production for TheatreWorks made its debut last season and earned kudos from local critics, who called it "Absolutely spectacular. Extremely engaging. Hilariously brought to life" (Daily News), and "Uproarious" (Metro Silicon Valley).

TheatreWorks launches the New Year with the thrilling political showdown, Frost/Nixon (Jan. 16 - Feb. 10, 2019). Written by Peter Morgan, widely known for his work onstage as well as in television and film ("The Queen," The Audience, and Netflix's current blockbuster "The Crown"), this riveting drama shows the machinations behind the match-of-the-century when disgraced former US President Richard Nixon agreed to sit down with cancelled British talk show host David Frost, both men hoping to redeem their reputations. The play premiered at The Donmar Warehouse in 2006, and collected Olivier and Evening Standard nominations for Best Play. It was followed by a Broadway run in 2007, where it received three Tony Award nominations including Best Play, and was hailed as "Fast and fluid. A ticking time-bomb thriller" by The New York Times, "A riveting entertainment" by Curtain Up, and "One of the most remarkable Broadway performances in years," by The Washington Post.

Spring brings the West Coast Premiere of George Brant's Marie and Rosetta (Mar. 6 - 31, 2019) an audience favorite developed in Palo Alto at TheatreWorks' 2015 New Works Festival before its successful 2016 run Off-Broadway. Brant's many plays include Grounded, recently staged at NYC's The Public Theater with direction by Julie Taymor and starring Anne Hathaway (who is also scheduled to star in the upcoming film adaptation). In Marie and Rosetta Brant has crafted an intimate play with music that imagines the initial encounter between celebrated gospel/R&B singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe and young Marie Knight, whom she is sizing up as a potential protégée and eventual collaborator. Tharpe performed in churches as well as nightclubs, influencing Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, and Ray Charles, among others, with her powerhouse vocals. She went on to counter-balance her clarion sound with Knight's rich contralto, in a remarkable musical partnership that established the pair as one of the top gospel acts of the era. Sister Rosetta Tharpe will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland on April 14, 2018. Marie and Rosetta was hailed as "Roof-raising. It really swings," (The New York Times) and "a spectacular show" (Newsday).

TheatreWorks will celebrate its 50th year in April 2019 with the World Premiere of piano virtuoso Hershey Felder's final composer piece, Hershey Felder: A Paris Love Story - Featuring the Music of Claude Debussy. Felder's prior productions at TheatreWorks (Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin; Hershey Felder, Beethoven; Our Great Tchaikovsky) have broken all box office records for the Silicon Valley theatre company. In this new work, Felder for the first time shares his own deeply personal connection to the City of Light, intertwined with the story of French composer Claude Debussy who developed his own musical language to express the ravishing beauty he found in nature. In another remarkable show mixing music, character, and story, Hershey Felder: A Paris Love Story will feature Debussy's works ranging from the ethereal "Clair de lune" to the evocative "Prélude á l'après-midi d'un faune" and the sweeping "La mer."

The final selection of the season offers the Northern California Premiere of Rajiv Joseph's Archduke, which returns to TheatreWorks where it was developed and became an instant hit at the company's 2016 New Works Festival. Pulitzer Prize finalist Joseph, whose prior works The North Pool and The Lake Effect received acclaimed productions at TheatreWorks, turns his attention to the cataclysmic 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, and imagines three hapless insurgents who had little notion their actions would launch World War I. Archduke made its World Premiere in May 2017 at the Mark Taper Forum, where it was called "An ambitious mix of comedy, tragedy, and history. Imaginative. First rate," by the Los Angeles Times.

Five 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. The added holiday production will be presented once again at the Lohman Theatre, on the campus of Foothill College in Los Altos Hills. In chronological order, the TheatreWorks Silicon Valley 2018/19 season is as follows:

A Fight for Freedom

Hold These Truths

By Jeanne Sakata
Regional Premiere
July 11 - August 5, 2018 (opening night: July 14)

LUCIE STERN THEATRE, PALO ALTO

An unsung American hero, Gordon Hirabayashi, fought passionately for the Constitution against an unexpected adversary: his own country. During World War II, he refused to report to a relocation camp with thousands of families of Japanese descent, launching a 50-year journey from college to courtroom and eventually to a Presidential Medal of Freedom. An inspiring true story of conscience amidst conflict, it is a one-man portrait of American character at its best.

Playwright Jeanne Sakata's talents span across theater, film, television, and voiceover. Her career includes guest star and recurring roles on myriad television programs, in film, and onstage at theatres across the country including La Jolla Playhouse, Geffen Playhouse, American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The Public Theater, South Coast Repertory, Lincoln Center Theater, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, and many more. Hold These Truths is her first play.

A Clever New Comedy

Native Gardens

By Karen Zacarías
Directed by Amy Gonzalez
Regional Premiere

August 22 - September 16, 2018 (opening night: August 25)

MOUNTAIN VIEW CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

In this cutting edge suburban comedy from America's hottest new playwright, gardens and cultures clash, turning well-intentioned neighbors into ecological adversaries. When an up-and-coming Latino couple purchases a home beside the prize-winning garden of a prominent Washington DC family, conflicts over fences and flora spiral into an uproarious clash of cultures, exposing both couples' notions of race, taste, class, and privilege.

Karen Zacarías' award-winning plays include The Book Club Play, Just Like Us (adapted from the book by Helen Thorpe), Legacy of Light, Mariela in the Desert, the Helen Hayes Award-winning play The Sins of Sor Juana, and the adaptation of Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Her musical Chasing George Washington premiered at The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, followed by a national tour, and was then adapted into a book by Scholastic with a foreword by First Lady Michelle Obama. She is currently working on the adaptation of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence for Oregon Shakespeare Festival, among other commissions. Zacarías is a core founder of the Latino Theatre Commons, a national network that strives to update the American narrative to including the stories of Latinos.

A Groundbreaking Musical Memoir
Fun Home

Music by Jeanine Tesori • Book & Lyrics by Lisa Kron

Based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel

Directed by Robert Kelley

October 3 - 28, 2018 (opening night: October 6)

MOUNTAIN VIEW CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

Welcome to Fun Home, the blazingly honest memoir of Alison, a graphic novelist exploring her youth in a loving, dysfunctional family whose secrets of sexuality echo her own. Winner of every Best Musical award of 2015, this tragicomic tale is told with enormous emotion and sensitivity, its haunting yet amusing score illuminating one of the most extraordinary and original musicals of our times. Contains mature language and content.

Jeanine Tesori is the most prolific and honored female theatrical composer in history. Her body of work includes five Broadway musicals, including Fun Home, Caroline, or Change, Violet, Shrek the Musical, and Thoroughly Modern Millie. In addition to this season's Fun Home, TheatreWorks has presented Caroline, or Change and Violet, as well as one of Tesori's earliest works, the West Coast premiere of Galileo in 1990. Tesori has received five Tony Award nominations, winning (with Lisa Kron) 2015 Tonys for Best Musical, and Best Original Score, the first female team to win that award. She has also won three Drama Desk Awards, an Obie, two New York Drama Critics Circle Awards for Best Musical, and two Lucille Lortel Awards. Actress and playwright Lisa Kron's major works include 2.5 Minute Ride, Well, and Fun Home, for which she won Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical, and shared Best Original Score and Best Musical with Jeanine Tesori. While Fun Home was receiving its premiere run at New York's The Public Theater, Kron was appearing on stage in Good Person of Szechwan at the same theatre. Cartoonist Alison Bechdel was best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For until the 2006 critical and commercial success of her graphic memoir Fun Home, adapted into this musical. She is a 2014 recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award and is also known for the "Bechdel Test" - which asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man.

A Magical Musical for the Holidays
Tuck Everlasting

Book by Claudia Shear & Tim Federle

Music by Chris Miller • Lyrics by Nathan Tysen

Based on the novel by Natalie Babbitt
Directed by Robert Kelley

November 28 - December 23, 2018 (opening night: December 1)

LUCIE STERN THEATRE, PALO ALTO

An enchanting bestseller springs to life in this 1890s tale of Winnie Foster, a free-spirited girl whose search for adventure leads to the Tucks, a close-knit family that has discovered the secret to everlasting life. With a rousing score and a wealth of warm-hearted humor, this whimsical Broadway musical offers Winnie the choice of a lifetime: return to everyday life, or join the Tucks on their infinite, irreversible voyage through time. This magical holiday treat offers an entertaining event for the entire family.

Chris Miller (music) and Nathan Tysen (lyrics) also penned The Burnt Part Boys (2010 Lucille Lortel nomination, Best Musical), which was developed at TheatreWorks' 2006 New Works Festival, and Fugitive Songs (2008 Drama Desk Award nomination, Outstanding Revue). Miller and Tysen returned to TheatreWorks in 2010 where they developed songs for Tuck Everlasting at the TheatreWorks Writers' Retreat. The book marks the Broadway writing debut of both Claudia Shear and Tim Federle. Former Broadway actor Federle (Gypsy, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Little Mermaid) is author of several young adult novels including "Five, Six, Seven, Nate!," "The Great American Whatever," and "Better Nate Than Ever" - this last book inspired in part by his experience coaching the child stars of Broadway's Billy Elliott. Shear won an Obie and received a Drama Desk nomination for her solo show Blown Sideways Through Life, followed by Dirty Blonde, for which she received Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations for Best Play and Best Actress, and won the Theatre World Award. Her play Restoration ran Off-Broadway in 2010.

An Offbeat Holiday Comedy
The Santaland Diaries

By David Sedaris • Adapted by Joe Mantello

Directed by Jeffrey Lo

December 5 - 23, 2017 (opening night: TBD)
LOHMAN THEATRE, LOS ALTOS HILLS

Returning by popular demand, this irreverent holiday hit features an unemployed slacker who signs on as a Yuletide elf at Macy's. As a gingerbread village of candy-caned kids and cynical Santas jingles into riotous life around him, this wickedly funny comedy offers a one-man cure for an overdose of holiday hype. Naughty but nice, the Elf is back. Recommended for mature audiences. Tickets will initially be available to subscribers ($39 general/$20 students), with any remaining tickets offered to the general public in the fall.

David Sedaris' international career as a memoirist took off when he recounted his short tenure at Macy's as Crumpet the Elf in an essay that he read on NPR's "Morning Edition" in 1992. Tony Award winner Joe Mantello adapted the holiday reading into a stage production in 1996, and it debuted at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York City. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote "Sedaris belongs on any list of people writing in English at the moment who are revising our ideas about what's funny." He is the author of Barrel Fever and Holidays on Ice, as well as collections of personal essays, Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, and Theft by Finding. There are more than ten million copies of his books in print and they have been translated into 25 languages.

A Thrilling Political Showdown

Frost/Nixon

By Peter Morgan

Directed by Leslie Martinson

January 16 - February 10, 2019 (opening night: January 19)

MOUNTAIN VIEW CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

Richard Nixon has resigned. David Frost has been canceled. With America caught in the riptides of Watergate and Vietnam, the former leader of the free world and the lightweight British talk-show host clash in a legendary series of TV interviews that will determine the President's legacy forever. In a riveting political prizefight unseen again until today, the cameras roll, the truth spins, and it becomes clear that he who controls the medium controls the message.

British playwright Peter Morgan, CBE, is best known for his historical films including "The Queen," "The Other Boleyn Girl," "The Last King of Scotland," "Frost/Nixon," and his plays Frost/Nixon and The Audience (which won Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Olivier, and Evening Standard awards for its stars Helen Mirren and Richard McCabe), and the current Netflix hit, "The Crown," which captured the 2017 Golden Globe for Best Television series.

The Gospel of Rock
Marie and Rosetta

By George Brant

Directed by Robert Kelley

West Coast Premiere

March 6 - 31, 2019 (opening night: March 9)

LUCIE STERN THEATRE, PALO ALTO

Stirring churches in the morning and the Cotton Club at night, Sister Rosetta Tharpe became a musical legend. With competition growing on the 1940s Gospel Circuit, she auditions a new partner, a beauty with a voice made in heaven. Will they blend, break, or find harmony at last? This roof-raising musical, a hit at TheatreWorks 2015 New Works Festival, tells the saga of the woman who inspired Elvis, Ray Charles, and more on her way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Playwright George Brant's works have been produced by The Public Theater, Trinity Repertory, Alley Theatre, and many others. His many plays include Elephant's Graveyard, Dark Room, The Mourner's Bench, and Grounded, recently staged at NYC's The Public Theater with direction by Julie Taymor and starring Anne Hathaway (who is also scheduled to star in the upcoming film adaptation). Brant has also been commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to adapt Grounded into an opera with music by Jeanie Tesori.

The Music of Romance

Hershey Felder: A Paris Love Story
Featuring the music of Claude Debussy

Written and Performed by Hershey Felder

Directed by Trevor Hay

World Premiere

April 3 - 28, 2019 (opening night: April 6)

MOUNTAIN VIEW CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

Virtuoso Hershey Felder takes audiences on his own personal journey, while exploring the life and music of Impressionist composer Claude Debussy. For decades Felder's "Great Composer Series" has celebrated the brilliance of Beethoven, Berlin, Tchaikovsky, and more. In this glorious series finale, he brings to life a visionary who proclaimed nature his religion and romance his milieu, creating music of ravishing beauty, color, and compassion, from the sweeping "La mer" to the evocative "L'après-midi d'un faune" and the mystical "Clair de lune."

An actor, pianist, writer, director, composer, conductor, and producer, Hershey Felder has created lauded shows about George Gershwin, Frederic Chopin, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Leonard Bernstein, Irving Berlin, and Tchaikovsky. Felder's solo shows have been seen across America, at The Geffen Playhouse, Pasadena Playhouse, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage, San Diego Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Old Globe Theatre, American Repertory Theater, and Cleveland Playhouse, as well as long runs at Chicago's Royal George Theatre and engagements at New York's Town Hall, 59E59, and the Streicker Center. Felder has become an enormous Bay Area favorite; audiences packed TheatreWorks' regional premiere of Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin setting box office records which were shattered by Hershey Felder, Beethoven and Our Great Tchaikovsky. This World Premiere marks Felder's fourth appearance with TheatreWorks.

A Darkly Comic Drama

Archduke

By Rajiv Joseph

Directed by Giovanna Sardelli

Northern California Premiere

June 5 - June 30, 2019 (opening night: June 8)

MOUNTAIN VIEW CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

Can one man, one moment, derail a century? Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph explores the present by focusing on the past: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, 1914-the flash that ignited World War I. On a darkly comic quest for immortality, three hapless insurgents prove that little has changed from then to now. Archduke returns to TheatreWorks, where it was a hit of the company's 2016 New Works Festival.

Rajiv Joseph is the author of the Broadway play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Drama. His other plays include Guards at the Taj (recipient of the 2016 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play), The North Pool (TheatreWorks 2011), Gruesome Playground Injuries, Animals Out of Paper, and The Lake Effect (TheatreWorks 2015).

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 some 67 works by new and veteran artists and 163 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, 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. A home for artists developing new works, it was at TheatreWorks that the 2010 Best Musical Tony Award-winner Memphis was first workshopped and received its world premiere.

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley is an Equity/LORT theatre, producing nine shows annually, playing to more than 100,000 patrons a year. TheatreWorks continues its dedication to the Bay Area community with increased audience services and subscriber benefits, Wednesday discussion nights, and opening night celebrations in which the community is invited to mingle with writers, cast, and crew. In addition, TheatreWorks offers many public services such as the education outreach program that reaches some 25,000 students annually with in-class workshops, student matinees, summer camps, the Young Playwrights Project, the acclaimed Oskar school tour, the Children's Healing Project at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, and has piloted a theatre program for the children at Ronald McDonald House this past fall.

For information or subscriptions ($143-$583), the public can call 650-463-1960, or visit theatreworks.org. Single tickets become available in spring 2018. Special pricing is available for seniors (65+), and patrons 35 and under.

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