TAMPA, FLA.: Jobsite Theater has announced its 2018-19 season, featuring six productions.
“The 2018-19 season celebrates 20 years in a way that honors our past while looking ahead to the future, keeping our head up in the stars while our feet are planted firmly on the ground,” said producing artistic director David M. Jenkins in a statement. “It re-embraces the plucky ensemble spirit that defined our earliest steps and cemented us as an important addition to the Tampa Bay area arts and culture scene. Jobsite Theater is the proud resident theatre company of the Straz Center’s Shimberg Playhouse, where the entire season will take place.”
The season will kick off with the return of Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Aug. 17-Sept. 9), by John Cameron Mitchell and Steven Trask, which was produced at the theatre in 2013. It is about a transgender rock artist who gives a life-changing performance. Artistic associates Spencer Meyers, Amy E. Gray, and Woody Bond will return to the cast and band. Jeremy Douglass will serve as the music director and keyboardist, and Jenkins will direct.
Next up will be Joseph McDonough’s Edgar & Emily (Oct. 12-Nov. 4), a comic fantasia in which the reculsive poet Emily Dickinson receives a surprise guest: Edgar Allan Poe. Paul J. Potenza and Katrina Stevenson will star, and Jenkins will direct.
Following will be Shakespeare’s Othello (Jan. 11-Feb. 3, 2019), with a modern twist.
The season will continue with the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) (March 15-April 7, 2019), by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield, a comic 90-minute show that sums up all of the Bard’s 37 plays. The cast will include Jenkins, Meyers, and artistic associate Shawn Paonessa. Stevenson will direct, and design costumes and props.
Following will be Hedda (May 10-June 2, 2019), adapted by Lucy Kirkwood from Ibsen, a 21st-century version of Ibsen’s classic that imagines Hedda Gabler as a woman in an unhappy marriage living in Notting Hill.
The season will close out with Nick Payne’s Constellations (July 12-Aug. 4, 2019), a love story between an urban beekeeper and a physicist.
Jobsite has been the resident company of the Straz Center for the Performing Arts since 2003 and produces socially and politically relevant theatre, with new and under-produced works.
