BERKELEY, CALIF.: Aurora Theatre Company has announced the lineup for its 2015–16 season, its 24th. It includes a number of West Coast and Bay Area premieres, as well as a world premiere from local favorite Mark Jackson.
First up is Marisa Wegrzyn’s Mud Blue Sky (Aug. 28–Sept. 27), a comedy about a rocky reunion of three middle-aged flight attendants during a layover near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. This Bay Area premiere will be directed by Aurora artistic director Tom Ross.
Next is another area premiere, Amy Freed’s The Monster-Builder (Nov. 6–Dec. 6), to be directed by Art Manke, who helmed the work’s premiere at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, Ore. The play will star local actor Danny Scheie as a megalomaniacal starchitect challenged by two upstarts at his own duplicitous game.
Bay Area director/playwright Jackson will next helm Little Erik (Jan. 29–Feb. 28, 2016), his brand-new contemporary adaptation of Ibsen’s Little Eyolf, a haunting play about loss and family. This will be the fully staged anchor production of this season’s Global Age Project, an Aurora initiative that encourages playwrights and directors to explore life in the 21st century and beyond. New plays dealing with global-age concerns will be chosen from an international pool of playwrights and presented as developmental readings during the run of Little Erik.
Next is Sarah Treem’s The How and the Why, in its West Coast premiere, to be directed by Joy Carlin (Mar. 18–Apr. 24, 2016). The play follows two evolutionary biologists of different generations who clash over what it means to be female.
Another West Coast premiere, David Ives’s The Heir Apparent (Apr. 15–May 15, 2016), follows, directed by Josh Costello. This is Ives’s adaptation of Jean-François Regnard’s 1708 comedy about greed, love and intrigue.
Closing the season is a contemporary classic, Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold”…and the boys (June 17–July 17, 2016), to be directed by Timothy Near, in her Aurora debut. Fugard’s 1982 play recounts a profound, life-changing experience in the lives of a white teenager and his family’s two black servants in South Africa.
