HILLSBORO, ORE.: Bag&Baggage Productions has announced its 2019-20 season, the first under new artistic director Cassie Greer.
“We are so excited to bring diverse, touching, challenging work to our audiences here in Hillsboro, and we can’t wait to welcome even more performers, artists, and audiences to the Vault in the 2019-20 season,” said Greer in a statement. “I’m particularly excited that this season will feature the directing talents of two of our resident artists, Kymberli and Andrew, along with welcoming new artists from a variety of backgrounds to our theatre space, allowing our company to continue to creatively expand and grow our artistic range.”
The season will kick off with an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (July 11-28), by Gordon Barr, a retelling of the romantic comedy with a more fluid approach to gender and sexuality. Greer will direct.
Next up will be A Clockwork Orange (Oct. 10-27), adapted for the stage by the author Anthony Burgess, an exploration of current social issues, violence, and toxic masculinity. B&B associate artist Mandana Khoshnevisan will choreograph. Greer will direct.
In December will be Ken Ludwig’s The Game’s Afoot, or Holmes for the Holidays (Dec. 5-23), about a 1930s Broadway star portraying Sherlock Holmes who invites his castmates to his Connecticut home for the holidays. B&B resident artist Kymberli Colbourne.
The season will continue with Noël Coward’s Fallen Angels (April 30-May 17, 2020), a comedy about two best friends inebriating themselves in preparation to face their mutual ex-lover. Resident artist Andrew Beck will direct.
The season will close with Anya Pearson’s The Measure of Innocence (May 5-22, 2020), a commissioned adaptation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure about the unjust incarceration of Black men in the United States. The play is part of B&B’s Problem Play Project, a program that commissions Oregon-based playwrights of color to adapt Shakespeare’s so-called problem plays. Bobby Bermea will direct.
Bag&Baggage will also continue their Emerging Artist Program in the 2019-20 season. The season-long program invites four early-career theatre professionals to work in every facet of the company. The program culminates with a production based on Grimm’s fairy tales for young audiences.
In addition to the theatrical offerings, the company will present cabaret artist Tony Starlight; Los Angeles-based comedy troupe Fake Radio; No Filter Improv; burlesque variety show “Cabaret Varieté”; Hillsboro’s Second Annual Brazil Fest; and more. B&B will also continue their quarterly “Films For Five” minifilm fests and the B&B A&C Arts and Culture lecture series, as well as the winter-me SOLO FEST and Burns Night Supper, a Valentine’s Day cabaret event.
Bag&Baggage Productions, founded in 2005, produces American classics and literary adaptations at its performance space called the Vault.
