2021–2022 Season Announcement
We’re excited to share the title selections for Emerson Stage’s 2021–2022 Season. Each year, the upcoming season is carefully curated by the Emerson Stage Season Selection Committee—a group of Performing Arts faculty, staff, and student representatives. As Emerson Stage is the meeting place for all majors within the Performing Arts Department, the Season Selection Committee has taken great care in creating a season that will provide learning opportunities for all of our students through the selection of titles that are progressive and challenging in nature, and will bring a variety of stories to our stages.
Our 2021–2022 season will focus on the great shift we are all experiencing and will continue to experience: Our shifting relationship with each other, as partners and family members. Our shifting tensions with the community at large, through political tensions and generational tension. Our shifting understanding of ourselves in times of crisis and relief. Together, we will continue to share all of this change.
Sincerely,
Annie G. Levy (Artistic Director) and the Emerson Stage Selection Committee
2021–2022 Season Titles & Information
Included below and attached to this e-mail is information about the season’s shows, their directors, audition dates, and important production deadlines.
Note: this information is subject to change.
*Location and type of performance depends on the College’s plans for the fall 2021 and spring 2022 semesters.
THE LATE WEDDING
By Christopher Chen
Directed by Javier Hurtado
September 23–26, 2021
Jackie Liebergott Black Box Theater or LIVE Online Performances*
About the Show
In a series of disjointed vignettes of marriage and workworn love, The Late Wedding travels through space and time (quite literally) to depict the core of what makes a successful partnership and what subtly chips away at its foundation. Read the script.
Content Awareness
The Late Wedding cast will work as an ensemble playing various roles. For this production, actors of all genders are welcome to audition for the ensemble. Specific roles will be cast from the ensemble. The script contains gender markers/gendered language that will remain intact in the dialogue. This means that performers may be referred to by pronouns or gendered language (husband/wife) during the show that do not match their gender identity offstage. Additionally, this play includes references to gun violence and drowning.
Important Dates
Audition Period: April 5–12
Spring 2021 read-through(s): April dates TBD
Fall 2021 first rehearsal: August 23
Performances: September 23–26, 2021
THIS GIRL LAUGHS, THIS GIRL CRIES, THIS GIRL DOES NOTHING
Annual TYA Production
By Finegan Kruckemeyer
Directed by Pascale Florestal
October 7–9 and 16, 2021
Thursday, Oct 7–Friday, Oct 8 at 10 a.m. EST
Saturday, Oct 9 at 2 p.m. EST
Saturday, Oct 16 at 4 p.m. EST and 8 p.m. EST
Robert J. Orchard Stage (Paramount Center) or LIVE Online Performances*
About the Show
Three young sisters are left in a forest by their woodcutter father and forced to find their own way in the world. From this fairytale beginning, three resolutions are made—one sister walks one way to find purpose, one the other to find adventure, and the third stays right where she is to create a home. Read the script.
Content Awareness
This play includes references to (and possibly depictions of) the death of a mother, parental abandonment, loss, depression and the depiction of giant cartoony battles.
Important Dates
Audition Period: April 5–12
Fall 2021 first rehearsal: September 6
Performances: October 7–10, 2021
BALTIMORE
By Kirsten Greenidge
Directed by Timothy Douglas
October 28–31, 2021
Semel Theater or LIVE Online Performances*
About the Show
Baltimore tells the story of Shelby Wilson, an Black resident adviser for a group of first year students at a college in New England. Shelby is focused on rebuilding her résumé after losing her job in the athletics department. But when a racist caricature is drawn on the dorm door of one of her Black students, she is forced to reevaluate her naive belief that she lives in a post-racial society, and she must help strive for peace on campus. Read the script.
Content Awareness
This play includes references to police aggression, homophobia, racism, internalized racism, and depiction of onstage intimacy (kissing and grabbing). There is a scene that explores memories of aggressions and micro-aggressions using derogatory names including the n-word.
Important Dates
Audition Period: April 5–12
First rehearsal: September 20
Performances: October 28–31, 2021
MARIE ANTOINETTE
By David Adjmi
Directed by Annie G. Levy
November 18–21, 2021
Greene Theater or LIVE Online Performances*
About the Show
This revolutionary take on the life and downfall of the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, displays the vapid and ill-fitting earlier days of her monarchy and its deterioration as the revolution brews in her country, all while providing the richest insight to one of history’s most potentially misconstrued events. Read the script.
Content Awareness
This play includes harsh language and cursing; references to disordered eating, explicit sexual references, and extreme violence; and depictions of drug abuse and a panic attack.
Important Dates
Audition Period: April 5–12
First rehearsal: October 11
Performances: November 18–21, 2021
NEXT TO NORMAL
Book and Lyrics by Brian Yorkey
Music by Tom Kitt
Directed by M. Bevin O’Gara
Music Direction by Jon Goldberg
January 27–30, 2022
Greene Theater
About the Show
Dad’s an architect; Mom rushes to pack lunches and pour cereal; their daughter and son are bright, wise-cracking teens, appearing to be a typical American family. And yet their lives are anything but normal because the mother has been battling manic depression for 16 years. Next to Normal takes audiences into the minds and hearts of each character, presenting their family’s story with love, sympathy, and heart. Read the libretto.
Content Awareness
This play includes depictions of mental health, medical care and treatment, intense loss, a suicide attempt, and drug use.
Important Dates
Audition Period: September 13–20
First rehearsal: November 29
Performances: January 27–30, 2022
AS YOU LIKE IT
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Eddie DeHais
February 17–20, 2022
Semel Theater*
About the Show
In this radically queer version of As You Like It, our main characters—Orlando, Rosalind, and Celia—run away from home in order to become who they really are. In the Forest of Arden, you’re just as likely to fall in love with someone else as you are to fall in love with yourself, as each character leans into what makes them happiest, whether that’s writing terrible poetry, melancholic monologuing, or epic dance-offs. Rosalind has Orlando woo her under the guise of “curing” him of his love for Rosalind, while they both discover that this flirtation is impossibly tantalizing in itself. Queer love, joy, and acceptance are at the center of this riotous production. Read the play (Emerson Stage will be creating a specific cut of the script based on the vision of the production).
Content Awareness
This production will include kissing and some parental homophobia. It features a character adopting a different gender expression, first out of fear and later as personal exploration. Rosalind at first dresses like a man for safety reasons (banished from home, Rosalind thinks it is safer to be perceived as a man) and later in order to more authentically connect with another character who would not otherwise communicate openly and honestly.
Important Dates
Audition Period: September 13–20
First rehearsal: November 29 (Shakespeare intensive week); and January 10, 2022
Performances: February 17–20, 2022
NewFest: NEW PLAY WORKSHOP
Work TBD
Director TBD
February 27–March 2, 2022
Greene Theater*
About the Show
Emerson Stage presents a workshop production of a new play in development by an established playwright.
Important Dates
Audition Period: January 2022
First rehearsal: TBD
Performances: Feb 27–Mar 2, 2022
NewFest: ROD PARKER PLAYWRITING FELLOWSHIP
By Rod Parker Playwriting Fellowship Awardee (to be selected in fall 2021)
Directed by Joe Antoun
March 24–27, 2022
Greene Theater*
About the Show
The student winner of the 2021 Rod Parker Playwriting Award will see their play taken from page to stage in this fully produced performance.
Important Dates
Call for scripts: August 2021
Deadline to submit scripts: September 2021
Audition Period: January 2022
First rehearsal: TBD
Performances: March 24–27, 2022
NewFest: READINGS AND SHORTS
Works TBD in fall 2021
Directors TBD in fall 2021
Semel Theater*
About Readings and Shorts
A collection of short plays and readings written, directed, and performed by Emerson students.
Important Dates
General auditions: January 2021
First rehearsal: TBA
Performances: TBA
INTO THE WOODS
Book by James Lapine
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Directed by Scott LaFeber
Music Direction by Jon Goldberg
April 14–16, 2022
Cutler Majestic Theatre
About the Show
The story follows a Baker and his wife, who wish to have a child; Cinderella, who wishes to attend the King’s Festival; and Jack, who wishes his cow would give milk. When the Baker and his wife learn that they cannot have a child because of a Witch’s curse, the two set off on a journey to break the curse. Everyone’s wish is granted, but the consequences of their actions return to haunt them later with disastrous results. Read the libretto.
Content Awareness
This musical combined the Grimms Brothers version of famous fairy tales and includes the specific dangers featured in those stories including abuse and neglect, poverty, pedophilia, destruction of property, and murder.
Important Dates
Audition Period: January 2022
First rehearsal: February 21, 2022
Performances: April 14–16, 2022