The Thin Place playwright Lucas Hnath (Photo, Rebecca Martinez)
Grand Horizons playwright Bess Wohl (Photo, Walter McBride)
Between the Sheets playwright Anne Undeland (Photo, Georgia Kokolis)
Gloria playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Paradise Blue playwright Dominique Morisseau (Courtesy Photo)
The Gloucester Stage Company has announced its 2022 season of award-winning professional theater with a lineup of socially relevant and intellectually stimulating works with intriguing and inspiring productions and performances.
Featuring stories rooted in human emotions to contemporary comedies, regional premieres, and new provocative works, as well as a grand community production, this season of plays will engage and entertain audiences while expanding the boundaries of the local theater landscape.
“This summer Gloucester Stage is taking you on a rollercoaster ride through a kaleidoscope of theatrical but very human experiences. In each play the protagonist longs for a rightful place in society, for recognition, for love,” said Paula Plum, GSC’s interim artistic director. “We are excited to be offering these rich and insightful, at times funny -- at times tragic, perspectives on the human condition.”
“Paula has crafted a season that runs the gamut of contemporary theater and offers the Boston audience access to plays that are at the dawn of successful careers across the nation’s theaters,” said Christopher Griffith, the theater’s managing director. “This top-tier list of can’t-miss playwrights are bringing the socially relevant and entertaining stories to the stage that we are all looking for right now. Building on that foundation, we have an incredible team of directors leading each production, including past-artistic director, Robert Walsh.”
The critically acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist play, Gloria, written by the MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant recipient Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and directed by Bryn Boice, will open Gloucester Stage Company's season June 3 to 26. It is a funny, trenchant, and powerful play follows an ambitious group of twenty somethings at one of New York's most esteemed cultural magazines. When a seemingly ordinary day at the office turns out to be anything but, these aspiring journalists recognize an opportunity to seize a career-defining moment.
The summer continues to heat up with the production of Mr. Fullerton, Between the Sheets, running from July 1 to 24. Directed by Judy Braha, it is a turn-of-the-century tale of unbridled passion by playwright Anne Undeland. Inspired by Edith Wharton's love letters to her young handsome French lover, Morton Fullerton, unearthed in the last 25 years, the play is a celebratory awakening for Wharton to the discovery of sex and love in all its bliss, heartbreak, and madness.
Robert Walsh returns to Gloucester Stage to direct the Tony Award-nominated play Grand Horizons, from July 29 to August 21. The Broadway hit is a hilarious comedy of marital malaise written by award-winning playwright Bess Wohl. By turns, it is a funny, shocking, and painfully honest play that explores a family turned upside-down and takes an intimate look at the wild, unpredictable, and enduring nature of love.
Under the direction of Jackie Davis, theatergoers will be transported to the sultry, jazz-filled Paradise Club circa 1949 in Detroit in the production of Paradise Blue, running from August 26 to September 18. In Tony Award-nominated playwright Dominique Morisseau's powerful noir-inspired drama, a makeshift family and their troubled bandleader find themselves fighting for the future of Paradise. This dynamic and musically-infused drama shines light on the challenges of building a better future on the foundation of what our predecessors have left us.
Gloucester Stage will round out the season with the haunting production of The Thin Place, beginning September 30 through October 23. Directed by Dee Dee Batteast, part ghost story, part dissection of "truth," the play builds a never-ending loop between your head and your sixth sense and satisfies the cravings of both. With insight and relentless curiosity, the Tony Award-nominated playwright Lucas Hnath's play transforms the theater into an intimate séance, crafting an unnerving testament to the power of the mind, which has a mind of its own.
Gloucester Stage will be returning to live indoor performances in its historic theater located on Gloucester's waterfront following last summer's successful schedule of outdoor performances. The theater company will continue to prioritize the health and safety of artists, staff, and patrons.
All performances, unless noted, are Wednesday through Saturday at 7:30 pm and Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m. at Gloucester Stage Company in Gloucester. Tickets ($29 to $59) for the 2022 season are available now.
