BOSTON: SpeakEasy Stage Company has announced its 2021-22 season, a return to the stage that will include five productions.

“We are thrilled to be back,” said producing artistic director Paul Daigneault in a statement. “After a year and a half of Zoom calls and social distancing, the importance of human connection and the healing power of the arts have never been clearer.”

The season will open with Adam Rapp’s The Sound Inside (Sept. 24-Oct. 16), about a friendship that forms between an isolated novelist and her enigmatic creative writing student, and the shocking request that follows. Bryn Boice will direct.

Next up will be BLKS (Oct. 29-Nov. 20), by Aziza Barnes, about a woman who, in the wake of a serious health scare, heads out on the town with her best friends for an epic night that also winds up testing their friendship.

The season will continue with People, Places & Things (Jan. 7-Feb. 5, 2022), by Duncan Macmillan, about Emma, who thinks she’s having the time of her life, but instead, with intoxication feeling like the only way to survive, she finds herself in rehab. David R. Gammons will direct.

Following will be Once on This Island (March 11-April 16, 2022), based on the novel My Love, My Love, by Rosa Guy, with book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty. The musical tells the story of Ti Moune, who is guided by the gods to find her place in the world. Pascale Florestal will direct with music direction from David Freeman Coleman.

The season will close with Matthew Lopez’s two-part play, The Inheritance (April 22-June 11, 2022). Paul Daigneault will direct this play, which transposes E.M. Forster’s Howards End to 21st century New York and explores what it’s like to be a young gay man in New York a generation after the peak of the AIDS crisis.

Founded in 1992, SpeakEasy Stage Company brings new plays and musicals to New England.