CATF's 2018 Season Is HERE!

This is what you've been waiting for: the announcement of the Contemporary American Theater Festival's 2018 Season July 6 - 29! -Mark your calendars! REP Packages are available starting March 26th and Single Tickets are available April 16th.

THE CAKE
By Bekah Brunstetter
A Delicious Comedy

Della's North Carolina bakery is legendary! She is overjoyed when her best friend's daughter returns from New York to get married and asks Della to make her wedding cake. Della, a sweet-natured Christian, is forced to re-examine her deeply-held beliefs and her own marriage when she realizes there is not one bride, but two. Faith, family, and frosting collide in this timely new play by Bekah Brunstetter, writer for the NBC hit This is Us.

"I'm in a world that is not designed for me."

BERTA, BERTA
A World Premiere by Angelica Chéri
A Sensuous (Love) Story

After committing an unforgivable crime and doomed to surrender his freedom, Leroy is granted one final wish: a chance to make amends with his long lost lover, Berta. Their reunion swells from a quarrelsome beginning to an impassioned consummation of their love. Set in the 1920s, Angelica Chéri's riveting tale, inspired by the legendary prison song, poses the question - can Leroy and Berta's bond survive the fate that awaits them?

"I remembers every inch 'a you.
Been achin' for you."

MEMOIRS OF A FORGOTTEN MAN
A World Premiere by D.W. Gregory
A Political Thriller

A Soviet journalist with the gift of total recall.
A psychologist seeking to rehabilitate herself.
A government censor with a secret past.

Over two decades their fates become entwined as victims and collaborators in Stalin's campaign to rewrite public memory. Long before fake news was a trending topic, it was called propaganda. And in the Soviet Union, circa 1938, it was the grease that kept Stalin's machinery of terror in motion. D.W. Gregory takes us to a world where justice is arbitrary and freedom as we know it does not exist.

"All my life I've taken such pride in my great memory. But now...I'm tasked with learning how to forget."

THIRST
A World Premiere by C.A. Johnson
A Dystopian Drama

Samira and Greta lead a peaceful life. They have their own clearing in the woods, their own hut, and their son Kalil to keep them laughing. When Kalil returns home without their water rations, they find themselves in dangerous conflict with their local political leader, Well-Man. Set in a tense, segregated society, Thirst is a complex look at family and love in war-time. C.A. Johnson explores the politics of race and redefines community in this fierce post-apocalyptic story.

"...the war for resources is finally on our doorstep..."

A LATE MORNING [IN AMERICA] WITH Ronald Reagan [Working Title]
A World Premiere by Michael Weller
An Intimate Conversation

In retirement from leading the free world, Ronald Reagan invites us into his office for lemonade and recollections of things he rarely (if ever) shared before. Except maybe with Nancy.

From award winning playwright, Michael Weller (CATF's Fifty Words and The Full Catastrophe) comes a new play written in collaboration with award winning film an Tuner bard television actor, Tim Matheson (West Wing, Jumanji, Animal House) as Ronald Reagan. CATF is honored to work with Weller and Matheson to develop this new script for the 2018 Season and the canon of American Theater.

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
A World Premiere by Amy E. Witting
A Searing Drama

Cousins Alex and Frankie haven't spoken in seventeen years. After more than a decade of trauma, silence, and unease, can a new baby help their shattered family heal at last? Interweaving time and memory, The House on the Hill is a shocking and suspenseful story of two women, coming together to face their shared tragedy and an uncertain future.

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