Greetings, tourists, octogenarians, and liberal-arts students. As you are the backbone of the American theatre, we couldn’t be more excited to tell you about our season for the coming year—a lineup of plays that we think accurately represent the state of our niche industry.
Brand New Play That’s Been in Development for Two Decades
This playwright started workshopping “Autumn Whenever” at a highly regarded incubator for new plays in 2002, and has workshopped it every year since at all the other highly regarded incubators for new plays. We fully expect this exciting new work to speak to the current moment as incisively now as it did in 2002, which was technically the twenty-first century, and therefore is still technically the present.
History Play That Could Have Used More Research
This playwright read a Wikipedia page that mentioned a fascinating historical incident wherein Benedict Arnold and Frank Sinatra spent a night at the same tavern. What conversations they must have had! By the time the article was corrected, the writer was already halfway through a draft of “Benny and Frank”—the same draft we’ll be staging!
Hot-Button-Issue Play Without a Real Take
“Names/Faces/Lives” is a searingly incisive play about how climate change affects a small town, which asks searingly incisive questions about how climate change affects small towns, and arrives at searing, incisive answers, like, “Hmm—much to consider.”
Contemporary Adaptation of Classical Work but with Swearing
Productions of classical works in contemporary settings are hackneyed and annoying. Thankfully, there’s a new trend in town, and “Like Oedipus but Edgy” is in on it, telling the familiar story of Oedipus (which we can all agree is thematically rich and historically significant) but with a fresh spin (which we can all agree is not stuffy or inaccessible). Oedipus swears now! Something for everyone. Please tell the English department at your local high school that we’re doing this.
Musical-Theatre Song Cycle with Flimsy Thematic Through Line
Musical theatre is all about telling stories. And what has more stories than the promotions in-box in your e-mail? You know, where Grubhub tells you what’s going on with them? A songwriter thought there was a musical in that, and we’re really hoping that people agree.
Play from an M.F.A. Graduate with a Very Particular Millennial Way of Writing
This cutting-edge millennial playwright is fresh out of an M.F.A. program, but you wouldn’t know it from reading “the Cuban missile crisis made me horny is that weird? (or, the subtitle play),” which is clearly the work of someone ready to remake theatre into the countercultural hotbed we’ve heard that it was in the nineteen-sixties.
“Jersey Boys”
Don’t be mean about it. We have subscriptions to sell and lights to keep on.
Revival of Problematic Eighties Play We Should Have Reread First
We have made the difficult decision not to move forward with our planned revival of “Total Bitch Ex-Wife”—about a very masculine Hollywood producer who plots to kill his total bitch ex-wife for no reason with the reluctant help of his whiny feminist assistant who probably went to Barnard—as we reëvaluate this playwright’s place in the canon. After thirty seconds of reflection encouraged by the only person in our office who is younger than forty-five, we realized that “Total Bitch Ex-Wife” actually might not have aged super well. That’s on us. We are going to be replacing it with a different play by the same writer: “I Slept with My Student and I’ll Never Be Sorry About It.”
As always, no theatrical season would be complete without Q. & A.s after every single performance to give you the illusion of participation. If you’ve ever wanted to know how someone memorizes all those lines, this is definitely the time to ask. ♦
