Moonstone Theatre Company Announces 2021-2022 Season

Moonstone Theatre Company has announced their inaugural season for 2021-2022 in their new home at the beautiful new Kirkwood Performing Arts Center (KPAC, 210 E. Monroe Ave, Kirkwood). This season will shine a light on mental health and the family through the lens of theatre with three insightful shows all performed in the KPAC Blackbox.

"I'm very excited to launch Moonstone Theatre after our season was delayed due to the pandemic which affected theatres globally, explains Sharon Hunter, Moonstone's Producing Artistic Director. "I chose this season prior to the Covid crisis because I wanted to place a spotlight focusing on mental health and how it affects individuals and their families. It is a universal topic that deserves to be reflected on, in the theatre and spark dialog."

Their first show of the season is the comedy Jake's Women written by Neil Simon and directed by Edward M. Coffield. This warm and poignant comedy from America's premier comic playwright makes another hilarious foray into the world of modern relationships. Jake, a novelist who is more successful with fiction than with life, faces a marital crisis by daydreaming about the women in his life. The wildly comic and sometimes moving flashbacks played in his mind are interrupted by visitations from actual females. Jake's women include a revered first wife who was killed years earlier in an accident, his daughter who is recalled as a child but is now a young woman, his boisterous and bossy sister, an opinionated analyst, his current wife who is leaving Jake for another man, and a prospective third wife. Performances will be October 14-17, 21-24, and 28-31.

The 2001 Pulitzer Prize Winning play Proof, written by David Auburn and directed by Hunter, will be their second show of the season. The play begins on the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday, Catherine, a troubled young woman, who has spent years caring for her brilliant but unstable father, a famous mathematician. Now, following his death, she must deal with her own volatile emotions; the arrival of her estranged sister, Claire; and the attentions of Hal, a former student of her father's who hopes to find valuable work in the 103 notebooks that her father left behind. Over the long weekend that follows, a burgeoning romance and the discovery of a mysterious notebook draw Catherine into the most difficult problem of all: How much of her father's madness-or genius-will she inherit? Performances will be February 17-20, 24-27 and March 3-6.

The final show of their first season is The House of Blue Leaves, written by John Guare and directed by Annamaria Pileggi. Long considered one of the great American plays, the story concerns Artie Shaugnessy, a songwriter with visions of glory. Toiling by day as a zookeeper, he suffers in seedy lounges by night, plying his wares at piano bars in Queens, New York, where he lives with his wife, Bananas, much to the chagrin of Artie's downstairs mistress, Bunny Flingus, who'll sleep with him anytime but refuses to cook until they are married. On the day the Pope is making his first visit to the city, Artie's son Ronny goes AWOL from Fort Dix, stowing a homemade bomb intended to blow up the Pope in Yankee Stadium. Also arriving are Artie's old school chum, now a successful Hollywood producer, Billy Einhorn, with starlet girlfriend in tow, who holds the key to Artie's dreams of getting out of Queens and away from the life he so despises. But like many dreams, this promise of glory evaporates amid the chaos of ordinary lives. Performances will be May 19-22, 26-29 and June 2-5.

Individual and season tickets go on sale August 14 and will be available at Moonstonetheatrecompany.com/tickets or by calling 314-821-9956.

Hunter is also an adjunct professor at Maryville University, the Founder and Executive Director of the St. Louis Theatre Task Force and Creator and Host of the podcast Moonstone Connections which focuses on in-depth interviews with leaders in the arts and entertainment community. It airs on multiple platforms with new episodes posted monthly.

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