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Four performances of A.R. Gurney’s two-person play “Love Letters,” each featuring a different two-person cast, will be performed at Susquehanna Stage in Marietta. Performing, from left, are: Layne Zeiner and Deb Good-Zeiner, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 11; Steve Sturgis and Christine Koslosky, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 12; Joe Winters and Karen Roberts, 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 13; and John and Holly Kleimo, 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 14.
Performing in Prima Theatre’s “Murder Ballad” are, from left, Rita Castagna, Connor Bond, Alyssa Wray and Joshua Keefer.
Nuns, pirates, philosophers, dreamers and others will populate local stages this year as three area theater companies assemble their 2022 seasons of musicals and plays.
Some shows have had to be rescheduled and seasons reconfigured because of the ongoing surge in COVID-19 cases, and some venues for upcoming performances are still being worked out.
This is the second in a series of stories about local theater companies’ 2022 seasons of musicals and plays. Read the first at lanc.news/TheaterSzn.
This week, we’re featuring Susquehanna Stage in Marietta and Prima Theatre and Orpheus Theatre Company, both based in Lancaster.
“We’re calling this our ‘Season of Love,’” says Jim Johnson, Susquehanna Stage’s managing artistic director.
“What I love is that we have new directors this year, and exciting directors, this year,” he says.
That theme is partially based on the spirit one of two shows in the 2022 season that the Marietta-based theater company contractually can’t announce yet because the shows are still touring elsewhere.
It also captures the spirit of the company’s season-opening main-stage show, A.R. Gurney’s play “Love Letters,” which is being performed Friday to Monday, Feb. 11-14.
“It’s a four-night special engagement, because we’re having a performance on a Monday evening, which is Valentine’s Day,” Johnson says. “And I’ve cast four separate (two-person) casts. Each night it will be a different man and woman,” including two sets of married couples.
Four performances of A.R. Gurney’s two-person play “Love Letters,” each featuring a different two-person cast, will be performed at Susquehanna Stage in Marietta. Performing, from left, are: Layne Zeiner and Deb Good-Zeiner, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 11; Steve Sturgis and Christine Koslosky, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 12; Joe Winters and Karen Roberts, 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 13; and John and Holly Kleimo, 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 14.
“It’s a heartbreaking love story of two people who were never meant for each other and (yet) meant for each other all at the same time,” Johnson says. “They ended up with other people and their lives took different paths but through a series of these letters, we find the depth of their love. … It’s two actors seated on stage, reading letters back and forth.”
The rest of the season includes:
— A two-night special event, the four-person musical revue “Closer Than Ever,” runs Friday and Saturday, March 11 and 12. The show features the music of Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire, the team behind such musicals as “Big” and “Baby.”
— “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” a musical with songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, runs May 13 to 22.
“This is our youth and teen production,” Johnson says. “It’s a show about dreams. We’re excited for these young people … these amazing and talented teens” to tackle the show. The musical tells the biblical story of Joseph, the coat his father bestows on him and the adventure his life takes after his jealous brothers sell him into slavery.
— Reji Woods, a well-known local stage performer, educator and director will direct Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” running June 17 to 26. The 1959 play follows the Youngers, a Black family in Chicago who are striving to better their circumstances — despite financial challenges and racism — through insurance money they received upon the death of the family patriarch.
“We wanted to do a classic play,” Johnson says, and “this has been a bucket-list show for Reji. … The play is about dreams and a family, and the love the family has… . It’s just a great story of resilience.”
— The big summer musical at Susquehanna Stage, July 29 to Aug. 7, is one of the two shows the title of which Johnson can’t announce until May because of contract obligations regarding the rights to the show. But he’ll say that it’s “a quirky kind of musical romp through a magical world, and lighthearted entertainment.” And the image of a feline head graces that slot in the company’s marketing materials. It’s directed by Jill Gagliano, who’s known for her choreography.
— “Agnes of God,” a play about a young nun who is being examined by a psychiatrist after the death of a baby she insists was immaculately conceived, runs Oct. 21-30.
“I love that a woman’s play is being directed by a woman, Maria Soyla Enriquez of (Lancaster’s) Teatro Paloma” theater company, Johnson says.
“It is a riveting piece of theater,” Johnson says. “It is a show that stops you dead in your tracks, because the subject matter is both horrific and astounding at the same time. … The play is a battle between science — and the mind — and faith.”
— The other as-yet-unnamed “season of love,” which can’t be announced till March, Johnson says, runs Dec. 9 to 18.
“It’s the winner of the Tony Award for best musical, the Pulitzer Prize for drama … it’s a pop cultural phenomenon,” Johnson says. “It’s about falling in love, finding your voice and living for today.”
— The theater’s series of one-night staged readings, The Undercurrent, has already begun. The four remaining plays are: David Mamet’s “Oleanna” on April 23; “All the Way,” about President Lyndon Johnson’s work on the Civil Rights Act, on July 2; “Fade,” presented by Teatro Paloma on Sept. 3; and a reading presented by Albright College’s theater department, Nov. 19.
Susquehanna Stage performs at the Marietta Center for the Arts, a restored church at 133 W. Market St., Marietta.
For tickets and information, visit susquehannastage.com or contact the box office at 717-426-1277 or email boxoffice@susquehannastageco.com.
Performing in Prima Theatre’s “Murder Ballad” are, from left, Rita Castagna, Connor Bond, Alyssa Wray and Joshua Keefer.
The Lancaster-based theater company has used the COVID-19 shutdown and show postponements of the past two years to change how its season is structured, says Mitch Nugent, Prima’s executive artistic producer. The company has two shows announced for 2022. “Later in the spring, we’ll announce the 2022-23 season,” Nugent says, “and that season will be December (2022) through May (2023).”
The shows planned for this year are:
— “Murder Ballad,” a show that was performed off-Broadway and in London’s West End several years ago, runs March 25-26 and April 1, 2, 8 and 9.
“It’s a contemporary rock musical thriller,” Nugent says. “It’s gritty, it’s authentic, it’s slick. … All those crime and murder podcasts are the top podcasts in the world right now, so it’s sort of an irresistible treat. …
“The main character’s name is Sara, and she’s making the choice between the stable life with a young family and that of a passionate affair, and so she unleashes these passionate desires of hers and, of course, those have consequences and so we just see the destruction that comes from that,” Nugent says.
The cast includes Alyssa Wray, who made it to the top nine on TV’s “American Idol” in the spring of 2021, as The Narrator.
Audiences for this show must show proof of COVID-19 vaccination, or a recent negative test, at the door, and masks must be worn during the show.
— Last year’s “The Music of Queen + Journey,” filled with such classic rock songs as “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and “Don’t Stop Believin’,” returns June 17, 18, 24 and 25. The show again features Broadway performer and Penn Manor High School alumnus Donovan Michael Hoffer, who competed on “America’s Got Talent” last summer.
“There will be some tweaks, and it’ll be at the theater this time, instead of on the back of a flatbed truck,” Nugent says. “It was one of the most highly attended shows in our history, and we recognized that people have just crying for it, that it wasn’t around long enough.”
— Last year’s “Stage Brawl,” which was a virtual Prima production in which local community leaders competed performing scenes and songs from shows, will be back sometime in September, Nugent adds — possibly in person this time. Last year’s event “helped raise funds for the artistic initiatives of the theater.”
Prima Theatre is located at 941 Wheatland Ave., Suite A. For information and tickets, visit primatheatre.org, or contact the box office at 717-327-5124 or email boxoffice@primatheatre.org.
Last year, amid a COVID-19 pandemic, was a challenging year in which to launch a theater company’s first full season of shows. Orpheus Theatre Company, founded by husband-and-wife writers, performers and directors Katherine Campbell Rossi and Tyler Joseph Rossi, had to present some of their 2021 shows virtually, and postpone others.
The company’s 2022 season theme is “Rebellion.”
They’ve postponed their planned first show, Christopher Marlowe’s classic “Doctor Faustus,” which was set to be performed later this month in the barn at Historic Rock Ford, because of concerns over COVID-19.
“It’s my intention that the show is still going to be happening in 2022 at some point,” Tyler Rossi says. “I just have to figure out when that’s going to be. … I think it’s important to see (the work) of one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries.”
“Doctor Faustus,” a play about a scholar who makes a pact with the devil to gain knowledge and power, fits into the company’s 2022 season theme of “Rebellion,” Rossi says.
“It is Faustus’ rebellion against God, and it’s Marlowe being an atheist at a time when persecution of religion in England was big,” Rossi says. “It’s where we get the angel and the devil on the shoulder, kind of trying to get you to do one thing or the other.”
The rest of the Orpheus season, as planned, includes:
— “Twisted, the Untold Story of a Royal Vizir,” a musical planned for sometime in June. A venue has not been announced.
The show, Rossi says, “is an interesting blend of ‘Aladdin’ meets ‘Book of Mormon’ in terms of reverence,” Rossi says. “It’s a love letter and a spoof on a lot of Disney properties. It’s the ‘Aladdin’ story from Jafar’s perspective.”
The question the musical asks, he says, is “is it OK to rebel for the greater good?”
— “Dead Men Don’t Sing,” a play written by Rossi, about famed 18th-century female pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny, is planned for September in an as-yet-unnamed venue.
“Blackbeard has just died, and then everyone gets the idea, ‘we can hunt down the pirates and they’re not immortal,” Rossi says.
“It’s the story of them really rebelling against societal norms,” Rossi says, “… and it’s the story of these two on the high seas. It’s a play with music. It’s going to have a lot of sea shanties.”
— “Tales By the Fire II” marks the return of an evening of short plays that was performed at Lancaster’s Tellus360 last year. The theater is negotiating a performance date with Tellus, ideally in October, Rossi says.
“It was an evening of new short plays that we had submitted to us,” Rossi says, anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes in length. “We’ll soon have a call for playwright submissions. … We’ll have a small selection of actors who will do all the roles throughout the evening.”
— “Leap,” local playwright and actor Jeremiah Miller’s one-man play about 19th-century Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard, will be performed Dec. 15-18 at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, 31 S. Duke St., Lancaster.
Kierkegaard was “a rebel in his own right,” Rossi says. “He had a way of really bringing the divine down to the human level, which wasn’t really done, especially in the philosophy or theology of his day.” Tickets to the show are available online at lanc.news/LeapTickets.
— Finally, Orpheus’ education director, Benny Benamati, is creating a three-person play called “Anne and Friends,” to tour Lancaster County schools during the 2022-23 school year. “It’s about Anne Frank and two other children who were affected during the Holocaust. We will meet them and see what their journeys were like,” Rossi says.
Despite pandemic challenges, 2021 “was a thrill, and it continues to be a thrill” running a theater company, Rossi says. “I continue to be just shocked by the generosity of audiences, and it feels great to know we’re providing something for people. If we spent the majority (of 2021) online, I’m really excited to see what we can do this year in person, and do theater the way it was intended.”
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