THE DUET OF A LIFETIME
Upright Grand
By Laura Schellhardt
World Premiere
Dad tickles ivories in a dive. Daughter dazzles concert halls. Between them the bittersweet counterpoint of parent and child, respect and rebellion, dream and disappointment plays out in the key of life. Funny, profound, and thoroughly beloved at our 2011 New Works Festival, this music-filled family drama puts a piano and its passionate players center stage in a masterpiece for four hands. From the author of Auctioning the Ainsleys.
July 11 - August 10, 2012
Lucie Stern Theatre, Palo Alto
A HEADLINE HOT DRAMA
Time Stands Still
By Donald Margulies
Tony Award Best Play Nominee 2010 | Regional Premiere
This witty, insightful drama from Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Margulies follows a battle-scarred photographer and her foreign correspondent lover, longtime partners thrust homeward by the tides of war. Her camera has kept chaos at a distance, but past wounds are not easily forgotten and their future wavers between love and liberation, stability and strife. A brilliant Broadway hit from the author of Brooklyn Boy and Dinner with Friends. Contains occasional mature language.
“Intelligent, absorbing, funny...a new play of substance.” The New York Times
August 22 - September 16, 2012
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts
A PASSION FOR MUSIC
33 Variations
By Moisés Kaufman
Tony Award Best Play Nominee 2009 | Regional Premiere
Driven to solve Beethoven’s greatest mystery, sharp-witted musicologist Kathryn Brandt joins a captivating waltz between present and past, art and life, distant mother and defensive daughter. Accompanied by a concert pianist, this intriguing drama spans two centuries in a race against time for the nearly deaf composer and his modern-day acolyte, both fighting the betrayal of their bodies as they pursue the passions of their minds.
Contains brief nudity.
“A potent family drama wrapped inside a fascinating historical mystery.” Variety
October 3 - 28, 2012
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts
AN UNFORGETTABLE MUSICAL ADVENTURE
Big River
Music and Lyrics by Roger Miller
Book by William Hauptman
Adapted from the novel by Mark Twain
Tony Award Best Musical
Hilarious and heartwarming, Mark Twain's classic Huckleberry Finn sweeps down the mighty Mississippi, where runaways Huck and Jim discover a friendship that defies convention and defines the American dream. Propelled by an infectious, award-winning score and a dazzling array of unforgettable characters, their uproarious adventures chronicle the best and worst of our heritage in a joyously theatrical journey sure to delight the entire family.
“A classic American musical with the most fetching score of the decade.” TIME magazine
November 28 - December 30, 2012
Lucie Stern Theatre, Palo Alto
A DANCE TO LIFE
Somewhere
By Matthew Lopez
Regional Premiere
Dance, dance, dance! As the film of West Side Story shoots on their doorstep, redevelopment threatens a Puerto Rican family striving to match sky-high hopes with low-end reality. But nothing can quell the starry-eyed dreams of the Candelarias, a talented clan of hoofers determined to crash the boards of Broadway, Hollywood, and ultimately America itself. Told in exuberant dance as well as drama, it is a comic, captivating journey of the heart.
Contains occasional mature language.
“A robust, entertaining, compelling gem.” San Diego Union Tribune
January 16 - February 10, 2013
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts
A SOUL-STIRRING DRAMA
The Mountaintop
By Katori Hall
Best New Play 2010, Olivier Award | Regional Premiere
A Memphis motel, 1968. First night for a sassy maid—last for an icon of our time, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. fresh from the speech of a lifetime. In a breathtaking journey beyond realism, this provocative London/Broadway hit imagines the night before tragedy, burnishing a legend while revealing the flesh-and-blood man behind it. Humorous, magical, it is a daring rumination on life, legacy, and conviction that connects each of us in a remembrance of unforgettable things past.
Contains mature language.
“Crackles with theatricality and humanity.” Newsday
March 6 - 31, 2013
Lucie Stern Theatre, Palo Alto
A WILDE NEW MUSICAL
Being Earnest
Music by Paul Gordon and Jay Gruska
Book & Lyrics by Paul Gordon
From the play by Oscar Wilde
World Premiere
London,1964. The sounds. The colors. The Beatles. Skirts are getting shorter, hair is growing longer, and times are changing faster than ever. The latest romantic musical from Paul Gordon (TheatreWorks’ hits Emma, Daddy Long Legs, and Broadway’s Jane Eyre) moves Wilde’s comic masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest to a bachelor flat near Carnaby Street, where the exuberance of mod fashion, music, and morality inspires a quartet of lovers and incurs the wrath of Lady Bracknell, the cantankerous keeper of tradition’s flame.
April 3 - 28, 2013
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts
LEAVING THEM LAUGHING
Wild with Happy
By Colman Domingo
West Coast Premiere
Mom passed away—now where to put her? In a raucous contemporary comedy, a struggling black actor rejects the rituals of grief, opting instead for a rapturous road trip to the happiest place on earth: Disney World! Hilarious yet immensely touching, this runaway hit of our 2011 New Works Festival stars Tony Award nominee Colman Domingo as a devoted son on a manic mission to a magic kingdom come.
Contains occasional mature language.
June 5 - 30, 2013
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts
