There must be no sweeter two words to a theater company than "world premiere." In fact, the phrase is so desirable that theaters across the nation can claim the title for the same production as the new phrase "rolling world premiere" has come into fashion. World premieres do indeed dominate the highlights as we begin our overture to the fall theater season, and to the best of our reckoning, these are the first productions of these shows whether or not these world premieres roll on to someplace else.
Leaders of the pack
The first world premiere out of the fall season's starting gate has actually been gestating for six years. In Waiting for Giovanni, now through Sept. 18 at New Conservatory Theatre Center, local activist-writer Jewelle Gomez imagines what is going on in James Baldwin's mind shortly before the 1954 publication of the openly gay novel Giovanni's Room. Written in collaboration with Harry Waters Jr., the play examines Baldwin's worries not only over writing about gay characters, but making them all white, in conflict with his emerging status as a literary civil-rights icon.
Knee-replacement surgery delayed Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup from concluding Berkeley Rep's last season to opening the new one, running Sept. 2-Oct. 30. Now the award-winning actress is ready to tell all about her early life, romances, Hollywood career, personal struggles, and later contentment in work and life (as a Berkeley resident) as she nears her 80th birthday. There will be stories, songs, and dancing in the piece Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone created for her.
Erstwhile gay SF playwright Adam Bock, now Big Appling it, returns with a contemporary adaptation of Phaedra running at Shotgun Players' Ashby Stage Sept. 21-Oct. 23. It's still the story of a woman with an uncontrollable sexual urge for her stepson, but now the setting is suburban America.
Greek tragedy gets another Americanization in a world premiere at TheatreWorks in Mountain View, although the setting is considerably different from Bock's Phaedra. Dan Dietz's Clementine in the Lower Nine, running Oct. 5-30, is a blues riff on Agamemnon set in a post-Katrina New Orleans, where a family deals with haunting legacies and a daunting present.
Former Atlanta playwright Steve Yockey, who wrote the gay apocalyptic sitcom Octopus produced at the Magic Theatre in 2008, is now a playwright-in-residence at Marin Theatre Company. And that means it gets first dibs on his new play Bellwether, running Oct. 6-30. It's described as a "suspenseful fairy tale for adults" about a quiet community that begins to unravel when a young girl goes missing.
Arrivederci Roma sounds like a Tony Curtis movie from the 1960s, but that is not the vibe at all in Morgan Ludlow's new play running Oct. 6-19 at StageWerx. The Wily West production is described as a transgender mafia comedy �" or in publicity terms, "The Godfather meets Trannyshack."
It may seem ironic that Sticky Time, running Oct. 27-Nov. 18, is a multi-media sensory journey about an epic battle to prevent a mysterious force from ending the universe by un-sticking time. Ironic, because playwright and co-director Marilee Talkington has a degenerative condition that has rendered her largely blind. Crowded Fire is producing the premiere of Sticky Time at Brava Theatre with Talkington's own Vanguardian Productions, which has the motto "Theatre Beyond Vision."
Yesteryears anew
Once in a Lifetime was the first Kaufman and Hart collaboration, and was a big Broadway hit in 1930. But unlike other Kaufman and Hart plays, it seldom gets revived. For one thing, the original production featured 37 actors. In ACT's season opener, running Sept. 22-Oct. 16, 15 actors will play 70 roles, and director Mark Rucker's production about the early days of Hollywood talkies will incorporate period film clips and backdrops that meld theater and film.
Aurora Theatre is reaching back to 1966 to open its 20th season with Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance, running Sept. 2-Oct. 9. A cast of popular Bay Area veteran actors makes up the cast in the story of a seemingly settled married couple whose home is invaded by their best friends fleeing an undefined terror.
Rising from a series of calamities, the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre has landed acclaimed ACT actor Steven Anthony Jones as its artistic director and found a new home in the former Post Street Theatre. The opening production, running Oct. 11-Nov. 26, is a double bill made up of Douglas Turner Ward's 1965 classic Day of Absence, which imagines the paralysis that strikes a Southern community when the entire black population disappears, and Brazilian playwright Marcos Barbosa's Almost Nothing, about the spiraling complications that ensue for a couple trying to cover up a killing.
Encore, encore
Theatre Rhino is opening its season with a speedy revival of SexRev: The Jose Sarria Experience, running Nov. 10-27 at CounterPulse. Artistic director John Fisher's play was staged as part of Rhino's previous season, and his meta-theatrical take on one of SF's gay pioneers has been revised for the new staging.
To open its season, the Magic Theatre is reaching back to 1993, when it produced the premiere of Claire Chafee's Why We Have a Body, running Aug. 31-Oct. 2. It's the comedic story of a lesbian private eye who stalks men cheating on their wives, her little sister who alternately robs convenience stores and directs traffic, and their archeologist mother whose specialty is the human brain.
England's Kneehigh Theatre scored a big hit for ACT in 2009 with its live/film adaptation of Noel Coward's Brief Encounter. This time, Berkeley Rep is sponsoring Kneehigh's Bay Area return with The Wild Bride, running Dec. 12-Jan. 1. Based on the classic fairy tale The Handless Maiden, this is a grown-up adaptation about a girl who flees after her father has accidentally sold her to the devil.
Flying solo
The incontestably zany Sara Moore brings a new and improved version of Show Ho, running Sept. 8-Oct. 9, to New Conservatory Theatre Center. Previously seen at Theatre Rhino in 2002, this is Moore's examination of an outcast and her journey of self-discovery as a circus clown, with impressions of the many eccentrics she meets along the way.
Marga Gomez unveils her ninth solo production to help the Marsh open its season. Not Getting Any Younger, running Sept. 8-Oct. 23, with its self-explanatory title, is a comedy about "lies, vanity, and the good old days."
Broadway & beyond
SHN, which used to be known as Best of Broadway, is indeed reaching beyond the Great White Way for a jam-packed fall season of four touring productions. SF and New York are the only U.S. cities that will get to see Kevin Spacey in the Old Vic modernized production of Shakespeare's Richard III, running Oct. 19-29 at the Curran Theatre. The hit Broadway revival of Hair starts the regular subscription series at the Golden Gate Theatre with its Oct. 25-Nov. 20 run.
Fela!, running Nov. 11-Dec. 12 at the Curran, is the story of the late Nigerian musician and activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who was also famous for his reverberating swagger. The musical was seen on Broadway in 2008, where it was nominated for 11 Tony Awards. Then comes Bring It On, running Dec. 14-Jan. 7 at the Orpheum, a touring musical (not scheduled for Broadway) that is loosely based on the 2000 movie about competition in the cheerleading world. The book is by Jeff Whitty (Tales of the City), and music is by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Tom Kitt (Next to Normal).