PHILADELPHIA: Lantern Theater Company has announced its 2017-18 season, which will include a world premiere play by Bruce Graham.

“Lantern Theater Company’s 2017-18 season will bring us stories of great minds striving to expand the human experience through art, science, magic, and fine food,” said artistic director Charles McMahon in a statement. “From Renaissance Italy to 19th-century London, from Europe during and after the Second World War to modern day France, we will perform a cycle of stories that put the world on stage in all its beauty, mystery, complexity, and wit.”

The season will begin with Red Velvet (Sept. 7-Oct. 8), by Lolita Chakrabarti, about real-life actor Ira Aldridge. He was the first African-American actor to portray the role of Othello in London in 1833. Peter DeLaurier will direct.

Next up will be the world premiere of Bruce Graham’s The Craftsman (Nov. 9-Dec.10), about Dutch patriots who discover that one of their own sold rare Vermeer painting to the Nazis during WWII. M. Craig Getting will direct.

Following will be Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen (Jan. 11-Feb. 11, 2018), an examination into the mystery of why the German physicist Werner Heisenberg visited his old mentor and Danish counterpart Neils Bohr in 1941 while their countries were at war. Kittson O’Neill will direct.

Next will be William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (March 8-April 15, 2018), McMahon will direct.

The season will close with Don’t Dress For Dinner (May 24-June 24, 2018), adapted by Robin Hawdon from Marc Camoletti, a comedy that follows a very complicated love triangle that unravels over a dinner party. Kathryn MacMillan will direct.

Lantern Theater Company, founded in 1994, produces work that invites discussion and engagement with artistic and social issues.