TheatreWorks goes from crisis to world premieres
Less than a year ago, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley was in the midst of an emergency fundraising campaign, uncertain whether it would raise the $3 million it needed to continue as the region’s third-largest nonprofit theater. Its eventual success, exceeding its goal by $1 million, doesn’t mean the 54-year-old company is now resting easy.
“We’re digging out of the same hole everyone is, from COVID,” Artistic Director Giovanna Sardelli told the Chronicle.
Still, TheatreWorks’ April 15, release of a six-show 2024-25 season is cause for celebration mere months after such a future was no foregone conclusion.
The lineup begins in fall at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts with “King James” (Oct. 9-Nov. 3), Rajiv Joseph’s play about male friendship and rabid LeBron James fandom. Sardelli directs, building on a nearly two-decade collaboration with Joseph; she directed his first play, “Huck & Holden,” in New York in 2006. “He celebrates the little things we do that don’t seem significant, like extending kindness, and he makes it of utmost importance,” Sardelli said of Joseph’s writing.
For the holidays, the company mounts a new seasonal favorite by two local writers that premiered at Marin Theatre Company following development at TheatreWorks: “Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley” (Dec. 4-29). Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon’s Christmastime sequel to Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” centers on Jane and Lizzy’s pedantic, unaware sister, Mary, giving her a chance to come into her own and find nerdy love. Jeffrey Lo directs the comedy at the Lucie Stern Theatre. “It’s a confection,” Sardelli said. “It just keeps delivering.”
2025 marks the return to Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts of TheatreWorks homeboy Hershey Felder, who specializes in biographical plays with music about composers. This time, with “Hershey Felder: Rachmaninoff and the Tsar” ( Jan. 10-Feb. 9) the writer-performer deviates from his usual solo format by bringing another actor, Jonathan Silvestri, onstage with him. “Not only is he dazzling you with the music; he’s telling you how the music came to be,” Sardelli said.
In spring Alameda writer and composer Min Kahng returns for another world premiere, following 2017’s “The Four Immigrants: An American Musical Manga,” with “Happy Pleasant Valley: A Senior Sex Scandal Murder Mystery Musical” (March 5-30), co-produced with Center Repertory Company in Walnut Creek. When Kahng was pitching commission possibilities, Sardelli recalled him introducing this one by saying, “I’m not sure if it’s a TheatreWorks play, because it’s about sex and senior citizens.” Sardelli paused for effect. “I went, ‘Sign us up, Min!’ ” Lo directs the show at Lucie Stern Theatre.
Following the previously announced “The Heart Sellers” (April 2-27) — Lloyd Suh’s play about two recent immigrants, co-produced with Sacramento’s Capital Stage and Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company — the season culminates in the world premiere of “5 & Dime” (June 18July 13), a musical adaptation of the 1976 play and 1982 film “Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.” The show, about a James Dean fan club, has a book by Ashley Robinson, lyrics by Shakina and music by Dan Gillespie Sells. It’s “big dreams, small lives,” Sardelli, who directs at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, said. “They didn’t quite get out of the dusty town.” When one character finally reveals their truth, she went on, everyone learns “what literally being seen means.”
Along with its season, the company unveiled its Susan Fairbrook Playwright Fund, named after a late board member who championed new plays. The fund commissions new works from local writers Gunderson, Lo and Conrad A. Panganiban as well as creates residencies for Kahng, Panganiban, Jonathan Spector, Geetha Reddy, Betty Shamieh, Cleavon Smith, Terry Boero and Grace Hoffman.
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