Our 27th Season
TWT’s 27th Season includes 10 productions, each contributing to The Weekend Theater’s mission of personally, inter-personally and educationally reducing prejudice, cruelty, and indifference through quality, live theater.
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The final three productions of our 2019-20 season were cancelled and our 2020-21 season has been indefinitely postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We’ve been doing our best to make you Laugh, Cry, Think, Act, for 27 years, and we need your help to make it through this terrible time and make it 28. Please consider making a donation today. Thank you and be safe out there!
— TWT Board of Directors
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Avenue Q (Musical)
Music & Lyrics by Robert Lopez & Jeff Marx
Book by Jeff Whitty
Book based on an original concept by Robert Lopez & Jeff Marx
Directed by John Isner
Music Direction by Lori Isner
June 14, 15, 16, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 2019
This laugh out loud musical tells the timeless story of a recent college grad named Princeton, who moves into a shabby New York apartment all the way out on Avenue Q. He soon discovers that, although the residents seem nice, it’s clear that this is not your ordinary neighborhood. Together, Princeton and his new-found friends struggle to find jobs, dates and their ever elusive purpose in life. Filled with gut-busting humor and a delightfully catchy score, not to mention puppets, AVENUE Q is a truly unique show that has quickly become a favorite for audiences everywhere. Although the show addresses humorous adult issues, it is similar to a beloved children’s show, a place where puppets are friends, Monsters are good and life lessons are learned. Winner of the TONY Triple Crown for Best Musical, Best Score, and Best Book, AVENUE Q is part flesh, part felt, and packed with heart.
Between Riverside and Crazy
By Stephen Adly Guirgis
Directed by Michael D. Scott
July 26, 27, August 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, 2019
Ex-cop and recent widower Walter “Pops” Washington and his newly paroled son Junior have spent a lifetime living between Riverside and crazy. But now the NYPD is demanding his signature to close an outstanding lawsuit, the landlord wants him out, the liquor store is closed—and the church won’t leave him alone. When the struggle to keep one of New York City’s last great rent-stabilzed apartments collide with old wounds, sketchy new houseguests, and a final ultimatum, it seems that the old days may be dead and gone. Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, this dark urban comedy explores, with both street-smart wit and disarming tenderness, the slippery nature of justice, and the grit it takes to move on.
The Rooster Rebellion
Written and Directed by Anthony L. Mariani
August 30, 31, September 1, 6, 7, 8, 2019
The story takes place in fall 2015 and summer 2016 in London. Reese Anne, a London teenager, runs away from home to help her ex-history teacher, Shell, who is homeless. They busk by day in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. At night, they live in an underground abandoned tube station, where she tries to create a utopian homeless society, which falls apart on the eve of the Brexit vote. THE ROOSTER REBELLION was staged in 2016 at The Drayton Arms Theatre in Kensington, London, and at The Edinburgh Fringe. In 2017, the play received a third-place award in the London Film Awards Stage Play competition and received third place for best stage play competition in the Cannes Film Festival 2017.
Side Show (Musical)
Book & Lyrics by Bill Russell
Music by Henry Krieger
Directed by Duane Jackson
Music Direction by Leslie Harper
October 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 2019
Based on the true story of conjoined twins and famed entertainers Violet and Daisy Hilton, SIDE SHOW is a remarkable musical about acceptance, love, and embracing one’s uniqueness. Nearly entirely sung through, Side Show features soulful music, stunningly beautiful lyrics, and powerhouse show-stoppers. A stunning reminder of the importance of accepting and celebrating what makes us unique, Side Show is a true story that will touch audience’s hearts.
A Raisin in the Sun
By Lorraine Hansberry
Directed by Danette Scott Perry
December 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 2019
A RAISIN IN THE SUN is a play about dreams, what it means to dream big, to lose faith in your dreams, and to discover new dreams. It is also a story about family. We meet the Younger family the day before they are getting a $10,000 insurance check from the death of the father Walter Younger. Tensions increase as each member of the family tries to get their own way, eventually threatening to break apart their foundation completely. The stakes continue to climb as questions about identity, class, value, race and love become forefront issues, and outsiders to the family make it impossible to forget the world that the Younger family cannot seem to escape.
Good Kids
By Naomi Iizuka
Directed by Andrea McDaniel
January 10, 11, 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25, 2020
Something happened to Chloe after that party last Saturday night. Something she says she can’t remember. Something everybody is talking about. Set at a Midwestern high school, in a world of Facebook and Twitter, smartphones and YouTube, GOOD KIDS explores a casual sexual encounter gone wrong and its very public aftermath. Who’s telling the truth? Whose version of the story do you believe? And what does that say about you?
Sweat
By Lynn Nottage
Directed by Elizabeth Reha
February 14, 15, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 2020
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2017, this poignant play takes a look at the de-industrial revolution through the lens of a history play, but also delves into the issues of today, the economy, immigration, race relations in America, and politics. Lynn Nottage’s SWEAT gives us characters filled with the good and the bad and asks us to reflect on our own views and the views of others. Nottage never tells us who’s right or who’s wrong, but always shows us who’s human.
Crowns (Musical)
By Regina Taylor
Co-Directed by Felicia Richardson & Jamie Scott Blakey
Canceled
(All performances canceled as a public health precaution)
A moving and celebratory musical play in which hats become a springboard for the exploration of black history and identity as seen through the eyes of a young black woman who has come down South to stay with her aunt after her brother is killed in Brooklyn. Hats are everywhere, in exquisite variety, and the characters use the hats to tell tales concerning everything from the etiquette of hats to their historical and contemporary social functioning.
Regrets Only
By Paul Rudnick
Directed by Justin Pike
Canceled
(All performances canceled as a public health precaution)
This comedy of Manhattan manners explores the latest topics in marriage, friendships, and squandered riches. The setting, a Park Avenue penthouse. The players: a powerhouse attorney, his deliriously social wife and their closest friend, one of the world’s most staggeringly successful fashion designers. Add a daughter’s engagement, some major gowns, the president of the United States, and stir.
Race
By David Mamet
Directed by Duane Jackson
Canceled
(All performances canceled as a public health precaution)
Multiple award-winning playwright/director David Mamet tackles America’s most controversial topic in a provocative new tale of sex, guilt, and bold accusations. Two lawyers find themselves defending a wealthy white executive charged with raping a black woman. When a new legal assistant gets involved in the case, the opinions that boil beneath explode to the surface. When David Mamet turns the spotlight on what we think but can’t say, dangerous truths are revealed, and no punches are spared.
