2024-25 Theatre Arts Mainstage Season
Fall Mainstage
The Importance of Being Earnest
By Oscar Wilde
Directed by Sara Freeman
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s dazzling comedy of manners, wonders if finding out that you are who you have been pretending to be is an absolute triumph or total disaster. Jack and Algernon juggle their country lives and city lives as befits elegant young gentlemen. But they haven’t really reckoned with the wit and skill of Gwendolyn and Cicely, who know the value of having a sensational diary and want the veneration aristocratic young ladies must certainly deserve. A perennial favorite of the English-speaking stage, this show is a wonderful period piece that is also full of constantly renewing insight about the farce and pathos of gender norms, social roles, and self-knowledge. Let’s have both freeing love matches and high tea!
Performances: Nov 1, 2, 7, 8, and 9 (7:30 p.m., with additional 2 p.m. matinee shows Saturdays)
Directors' Lab Festival of Scenes
December 9 & 10 at 7:30 p.m. - FREE ADMISSION
California Suite by Neil Simon - Directed by Emma Smith ‘25
Almost, Maine by John Cariani - Directed by J Wheeler ‘26
Red Days by Rachel Bublitz - Directed by Ashlyne Collado ‘26
The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh - Directed by Jay Milliken ‘26
Athena by Gracie Gardner - Directed by Riley Minkowski ‘26
L-Play by Beth Henley - Directed by Athena Schaefer ‘26
The Writer by Ella Hickson - Directed by Isa Fitzgibbons ‘26
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre - Directed by Percy Proctor ‘25
Present Laughter by Noël Coward - Directed by Evalynn Castro Kaye ‘26
Spring Mainstage
The Oresteia
By Ellen McLaughlin
Adapted from the trilogy by Aeschylus
Translated by Ellen McLaughlin
Directed by Jess K Smith
In this fast, fresh, and feminist adaptation of Aeschylus’s ancient trilogy of plays, Ellen McLuaghlin invites us to question what justice looks like in action. In The Oresteia, each member of a family enacts a kind of violence intended to right a wrong. Instead, violence perpetuates violence and a cycle of harm makes each person “morally unrecognizable” even to themselves. Drawing inspiration from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, this play grapples with not just how a cycle occurs, but how it affects and mobilizes a community to move beyond punitive judgment and individual blame toward the complexities of repair. In this timely re-telling of an ancient story, we are left to consider the nature of justice and a community’s role in healing from harm.
Performances: February 28, March 1, 6, 7, 8, 2025
7:30 p.m./2 p.m. Saturday matinee March 8
The Manikins: a work in progress
The Manikins: a work in progress by Alumnus Jack Aldisert is a piece of interactive theatre for two performers and you - its single audience member. Step into the office of Dr. Ligotti and experience a psychedelic thriller where dream and reality collide as you navigate the hidden agendas and supernatural techniques of the enigmatic staff. This is more than just reading or watching a story - this is truly entering it, being consumed by it. The line between the play and reality will bend and fade, and in the end it will all feel like a dream. Exhibition performances open to public.
Monday March 24: Exhibition performance at 6pm
Saturday, March 29: Exhibition performance at 2pm.
Senior Theatre Festival
April 11-19
The Aliens by Annie Baker
Directed by Mya Woods
The Aliens is a realistic story of two old friends, KJ and Jasper, who regularly loiter outside a Vermont coffee shop. Their routine is intruded on by Evan, a teenage employee learning his place among the Vermont pines. The Aliens is a quiet, poetic, humorous play which uses silence in storytelling, set exclusively on the back patio of the coffee shop, where love, death, literature and music become the foundations of their new found friendships.
Content Warnings: Discussions of suicide, staged use of drugs
April 11 at 7:30pm, April 12 at 2pm and 7:30pm
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised] [again] by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield
Directed by Emma Smith
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised] [again] is a fun, witty, fast paced comedy, dramedy, tragedy, romance, bromance, whirling, twisting, explosion of an exploration of all of Shakespeare's plays. Even the most serious of subjects become silly in this contemporary take on Shakespeare’s immense body of work. When three “friends” attempt the nearly impossible feat of performing all of Shakespeare's 37 plays in 97 minutes, hilarity ensues. Whether you love or hate Shakespeare you’ll lose your skull laughing.
April 18 at 7:30pm, April 19 at 2pm and 7:30pm