PITTSBURGH: City Theatre Company has announced its 2020-21 season, featuring two world premieres.
“Our job as a new works theatre is to keep our audience engaged with the national theatre landscape,” said artistic director Marc Masterson in a statement. “We are proud to present a season that brings back City Theatre favorites, introduces new voices, and adds a Pittsburgh story into the American theatre canon.”
The season will open with a new take on Frankenstein (Sept. 19-Oct. 11), from the Emmy Award-winning performance collective, design studio, and film/video production company Manual Cinema. This production stitches together Mary Shelley’s story of Frankenstein with her biography through the use of cinematic techniques and a live orchestra.
Next up will be Dominique Morisseau‘s Paradise Blue (Nov. 7-29). In 1949 Detroit, a club owner and trumpeter has to wrestle with escaping his demons and the cost of leaving the only home he’s ever known.
Following will be The Sound Inside (Jan. 16-Feb. 7, 2021), by Adam Rapp. Masterson will direct this play about a Yale literature professor who receives life-altering news and finds herself entangled with a student.
The season will continue with Vietgone (March 6-28, 2021), by Qui Nguyen, an irreverent all-American love story about two immigrants in 1975. Oanh Nguyen will direct.
The world premiere of Lindsay Joelle’s The Garbologists (April 19-May 16, 2021) will follow. This unconventional buddy comedy follows two sanitation workers who are nothing alike, but who are thrown together in the cab of a garbage truck and left to pick up what the world around them has discarded.
A yet-untitled world premiere of a Pittsburgh immigration story from James McManus (May 15-June 6, 2021) will close out the season. Michael John Garcés will direct this play featuring stories of immigration in Pittsburgh, inspired by real-life experiences and detailing the many ways people have made Pittsburgh their home.
“For the final show of our 2020/21 season, City Theatre has been given the amazing opportunity to create a community-engaged work about immigration in Pittsburgh,” said associate artistic director Clare Drobot in a statement. “Funded by the Allegheny Regional Asset District’s RADical Impact Grant and in partnership with nationally acclaimed Cornerstone Theater, and a coalition of Pittsburgh based collaborators, City Theatre is teaming up with director Michael John Garcés and playwright James McManus to create a new work.”
Founded in 1975, City Theatre Company is committed to producing and developing contemporary plays that engage and challenge a diverse audience.
