COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO.: TheatreWorks has announced in 2017-18 season, dedicated to the legacy of founding artistic director Murray Ross, who died in January. He founded the theatre in 1975.
The season opens with Much Ado About Nothing (July 27-Aug. 19), performed at Rock Ledge Ranch.
Next, on the TheatreWorks mainstage, is Simon Stephens’s Heisenberg (Sept. 7-24), which traces an unlikely romance between a couple that meets by chance on a train platform in London.
Michael Frayn’s Chekhov adaptation Wild Honey follows (Oct. 19-Nov. 5). Based on the Russian author’s unfinished early play, often called Platonov, it follows an unruly extended family through an eventful long weekend of mourning, romance, and celebration.
Next is The Santaland Diaries (Nov. 30-Dec. 23), the holiday staple by David Sedaris in its popular Joe Mantello adaptation. Returning to TheatreWorks as Crumpet, the disgruntled Macy’s elf, will be Sammie Joe Kinnett.
The season will continue at TheatreWorks’s brand new home, the Ent Center for the Arts, with Oklahoma! (Feb. 15-Mar. 11, 2018), the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic about the American frontier.
TheatreWorks will next offer a “season extra,” a collaboration with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic’s Bernstein Festival and Opera Theater of the Rockies to stage Leonard Bernstein’s seldom-produced comic opera Trouble in Tahiti (Feb. 22-March 4, 2018).
Another “season extra” will be Ibsen’s fantastical Peer Gynt (April 5-15), in a student production featuring dancers, musicians, actors, puppets, and an original score inspired by the Edvard Grieg original.
Music will also factor into the season’s final official offering, Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus (April 26-May 23), about the historic rivalry between Salieri and Mozart. The production will be enhanced by players from the Colorado Springs Philharmonic.
Founded in 1975, TheatreWorks bills itself as a place where actors, audiences, scholars, directors, and designers come together to think about and create classic and contemporary theatre.
