There’s a reason Feldman picked the plays he did

Danny Feldman chose his first season at the Pasadena Playhouse — the 100th year of the theater — with a nod to the past but with eyes focused on the future. Here he talks about his choices:

‘Our Town’

Sept. 26-Oct. 22 “It’s my absolute favorite play, which is why it’s my first production. It’s one of the most classic American plays there is. What many people don’t realize is that when it came out in 1938, it was revolutionary. I discovered in my process of picking this play that it opened at the McCarter Theater in, I think, 1938, and was done here on our stage in 1939. I have the pictures to prove it. We’re doing it with Deaf West Theatre, so that will be a totally different take on it.”

‘King Charles III’

Nov. 7-Dec. 3 “Besides being the thing that everybody loves — the sort of tabloid-y nature of the royal family and what’s going on in their heads — the play has a major theme about what happens when our institutions start cracking. Between Brexit and conversations happening in America today, it’s fascinating to look at our lives and what’s going on, removed, through the British experience in a future-history play. What pushed me over the edge on that play was I wanted to do some sort of tribute to Shakespeare in the season.”

‘Pirates of Penzance’

Jan. 23-Feb. 18 “‘Pirates of Penzance’ is the music of ‘Pirates of Penzance’ — it’s operetta. But it’s operetta played with guitars and banjos and in a fun way, with the Hypocrites theater company. I’ve read so many books that say ‘Oklahoma!’ is the birth of the American musical. ‘Pirates of Penzance’ happened in the late 1900s, and I know it was British, but it appeared in America. You see a straight line in operetta in to Jerome Kern and Rodgers & Hammerstein. That show is about taking something that feels old and staid and dusty and bringing amazing new life to it in a very contemporary way. That’s a great sort of metaphor for the Pasadena Playhouse.

‘Bordertown Now’

May 29-June 24 “Culture Clash wrote that play 20 years ago. It was like June 2, 1998, that it opened and we open June 3, 20 years later. We are re-commissioning the play, and they’re going back to the border to see what is going on now. We’re not just doing the ‘Bordertown’ that everyone saw 20 years ago. Some of the material will be the same, because some of it is still relevant, but they’re also going to look at what a ‘border town’ is today in the world we live in now. It gives us an opportunity to have a play of the moment.”

Plus

A fifth, to-be-announced show will be added between “Pirates” and “Bordertown.”

— Lisa Fung