Felder, Bradbeer bookend season

One world premiere, several regional ones and a few older shows make up the 2016- 17 Theatre-Works Silicon Valley season announced Tuesday, Feb. 9, by Founding Artistic Director Robert Kelley and Managing Director Phil Santora. As usual, three of the eight shows will be presented at Palo Alto’s Lucie Stern Theatre — including the season opener and the holiday offering — and the rest at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts.

The season kicks off in July with the world premiere of Suzanne Bradbeer’s political drama “Confederates,” about what happens to a presidential campaign when someone unfurls a Confederate flag. The play was the hit of last summer’s developmental New Works Festival, which follows in August.

The American premiere of “The Life of the Party,” celebrating the songs of Andrew Lippa, opens in late August, followed by the regional premiere of John Patrick Shanley’s romantic comedy “Outside Mullingar,” a tale set in Ireland by the author of “Doubt.” Then come revivals of John Caird and Paul Gordon’s musical “Daddy Long Legs” for the holidays and Beth Henley’s oft- performed dark comedy “Crimes of the Heart” in January.

East and West collide in the regional premiere of Velina Hasu Houston’s comic drama of estranged sisters and cousins separated by the Pacific, “Calligraphy,” next spring. The season winds down with a revival of the Jewish immigrant musical “Rags” by Joseph Stein, Charles Strouse and Stephen Schwartz, and closes with a Bay Area premiere by Hershey Felder, who’s been breaking company box office records with his solo piece about Irving Berlin ( through Sunday, Feb. 14). “Hershey Felder, Beethoven,” newly revised for the occasion, opens in June 2017.

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