Before a packed audience at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, Founding Artistic Director Robert Kelley and Managing Director Phil Santora of TheatreWorks, the nationally-acclaimed theatre of Silicon Valley, unveiled the line-up for its 2012-2013 season.
The season will feature two World Premieres, one plucked from last season’s New Works Festival, the other a new musical based on a beloved Oscar Wilde play; a West Coast premiere from Tony nominee Colman Domingo; four Regional premieres, including an Olivier Award winner for Best New Play; and a big Broadway tip-of-the-hat to Mark Twain.
The season launches with the darling of last season’s New Works Festival, UPRIGHT GRAND, a touching and intelligent comedy about a musical father and daughter by one of America’s hottest young playwrights, Laura Schellhardt (Auctioning the Ainsleys, The K of D). UPRIGHT GRAND will be the centerpiece of the 2012 New Works Festival, at which leading playwrights and composers from across the country present new works to audiences who can participate in discussions, view works-in-progress, and attend workshops, book-in-hand readings, and sing-throughs of new musicals.
TheatreWorks’ 43rd season will also boast the World Premiere musical BEING EARNEST by Paul Gordon and Jay Gruska, based on Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, with a swinging ‘60s twist. Gordon wrote TheatreWorks’ hits Emma, Daddy Long Legs, and Broadway’s Jane Eyre. Gruska is a Grammy and Emmy-nominated songwriter, who has co-written hit songs for Michael Jackson, Lea Salonga, The Pointer Sisters, and many others.
Another exciting highlight is the West Coast premiere of Tony Award nominee and Obie Award winner Colman Domingo’s hit comedy WILD WITH HAPPY, starring himself as an actor coming to terms with his mother’s death while embarking on a road trip to Disney World. This work was an audience favorite at TheatreWorks’ 2011 New Works Festival and the company is delighted to welcome back Mr. Domingo, a recent Tony Award nominee for his performance in The Scottsboro Boys.
The company will also present local audiences with four Regional Premieres: the gripping 2010 Olivier Award winner for Best New Play, THE MOUNTAINTOP by Katori Hall, about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final night on earth, which just closed on Broadway last month; the 2011 Tony-nominated play TIME STANDS STILL by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies, exploring how a wounded journalist and her war correspondent lover rejoin society after reporting on the chaos of war; the stunning play with music 33 VARIATIONS, one woman’s quest to unlock Beethoven’s secret world, by award-winning playwright and director Moisés Kaufman (The Laramie Project); and SOMEWHERE by Matthew Lopez, author of the critically acclaimed The Whipping Man, following the tale of a showbiz-obsessed Puerto Rican family in 1959 New York City, and how they cope when their neighborhood is threatened with demolition.
Rounding out the season is TheatreWorks’ holiday attraction, the sweeping Broadway musical adventure BIG RIVER, winner of seven Tony Awards, based on the beloved novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
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