Dobama Theatre Announces 2019-2020 Season

From Dobama Theatre: Dobama Theatre proudly announces its 60th Anniversary Season, which includes six Mainstage productions and variousofferings from The Playwrights' GYM, Dobama's professional playwriting unit, the 11th season of the Dobama Emerging Actors Program (DEAP) and The 42nd Annual Marilyn Bianchi Kids’ Playwriting Festival. The 2019/20 Season will include six Regional, Midwest or Cleveland premieres by today’s established and emerging playwrights.

From Artistic Director Nathan Motta:

"This is an exciting moment in the history of Dobama Theatre. Not only does the 19/20 Season mark 60 years of doing provocative, Off-Broadway-type work (something quite unprecedented outside New York), but it also begins the next phase of executing our mission. With a new Pay-What-You-Can initiative featuring rush tickets for every show, receiving the Kathryn V. Lamkey Award from Actors’ Equity Association for our work in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and a dynamic new Managing Director, the 19/20 Season is the beginning of exciting new growth at Dobama. I also happen to believe that, top-to-bottom, this is the best season we've programmed in my tenure. We look forward to welcoming audiences next season to experience stories that reflect the community we serve."

From incoming Managing Director Trevor Wise:
“I am honored and thrilled to be joining the Dobama Theatre team as it enters its 60th Anniversary season. I look forward to working with Nathan, the Board, and the amazing staff as we move Dobama forward and strengthen the vibrant theatre that has become synonymous with Off-Broadway Theatre in Cleveland.” Dobama’s 2019/20 Mainstage

Season includes: Stupid F**king Bird By Aaron Posner
Sort of adapted from The Seagull by Anton Chekhov
Directed by Nathan Motta
September 6 - 29, 2019

Cleveland Premiere
2014 MacArthur Award Winner for Outstanding Original New Play or Musical
Stupid F**king Bird, a hilariously irreverent remix of Chekhov’s classic play The Seagull, stages a timeless battle between young and old, past and present, in search of the true meaning of it all. An aspiring young director rampages against the art created by his mother’s generation. A young actress wrestles with an aging Hollywood star for the affections of a renowned novelist. And everyone discovers just how disappointing love, art, and growing up can be. With original songs and witty banter, this season opener will tickle, tantalize, and invite you to consider how art, love, and revolution fuel our pursuit of happiness.

Wakey, Wakey

By Will Eno

Director TBA

October 18 - November 10, 2019

Midwest Premiere

2011 Outer Critics’ Circle Award nominee for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play Wakey, Wakey was called "profoundly moving” by The New York Times and Variety said it was "a work of humor, humanity and grace that makes you want to hug your lover, your neighbor and maybe an usher on the way out.”Hot off the success of his Super Bowl Skittles Broadway musical, playwright Will Eno’s new play features a guy named Guy - a man who knows, like all of us on some level, that he is about to die. Guy explores with the audience what in life is worth celebrating, what is worth treasuring, and what is worth letting go in this moving and hysterical play. Audience members that remember past Dobama productions of Thom Pain, Middletown, and The Realistic Joneses know they are in for a great night at the theatre.

The Old Man and The Old Moon
Book, Music, & Lyrics by PigPen Theatre Company
Co-Directed by Melissa T. Crum & Nathan Motta
December 6, 2019 - January 5, 2020
Midwest Premiere

The Old Man and The Old Moon is an experience of music and theatre magic that you won’t want to miss. PigPen Theatre Company created this original play with music and toured the country, making this hit show a Critics’ Pick by The New York Times, Boston Globe, and Chicago Tribune. An Old Man has the important job of filling up the moon with liquid light each night. But when his wife is drawn away by a mysterious melody, the Old Man must abandon his duties to cross the seas in search of his lost love. Along the way he must contend with apocalyptic storms, civil wars, monsters of the deep, irritable ghosts, as well as the fiercest obstacle of all: change. The Old Man and The Old Moon features actors playing instruments, sound effects created live on stage, elaborate shadow puppets, and audience interaction in an imaginative seafaring epic that’s fun for families, but also a great evening’s entertainment for date night.

Skeleton Crew
By Dominique Morisseau
Directed by Justin Emeka
January 24 - February 16, 2020
Cleveland Premiere
2016 Obie Award Winner - Best New Play

Skeleton Crew takes place in an automotive plant in Detroit that’s on shaky ground. Each of the few remaining workers are trying to figure out how to move forward if their plant goes under. Shanita has to decide how she'll support herself and her unborn child, Faye has to decide where she'll live, and Dez has to figure out how to make his ambitious dreams a reality. Power dynamics shift as their manager Reggie is torn between doing right by his work family, and by his own. The New York Times called the play “squarely in the tradition of Arthur Miller...A deeply moral and deeply American play." From the playwright that brought you Sunset Baby, Skeleton Crew is the third of Dominique Morisseau's Detroit cycle trilogy.

Dance Nation
By Clare Barron
Directed by Shannon Sindelar
March 6 - 29, 2020
Midwest Premiere
Winner - 2017 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize

Dance Nation is about an army of pre-teen competitive dancers who are plotting to take over the world. And if their new routine is good enough, they’ll claw their way to the top at the Boogie Down Grand Prix in Tampa Bay. A play about ambition, growing up, and how to find our souls in the heat of it all, this exciting portrait of a competitive middle-school dance troupe explores both the exhilaration and the raw terror of being a kid through the story of a group of 13 year
olds played by a cast of adult actors. Dance Nation was atop every Top Ten list in New York last year.

The Other Place
By Sharr White
Directed by Nathan Motta
April 24 - May 24, 2020
Cleveland Premiere

2011 Outer Critics’ Circle nominee for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play The Other Place focuses on Juliana, a successful neurologist on the verge of a potential breakthrough when her life takes a disorienting turn. During a lecture to colleagues at an exclusive beach resort, she spots a mysterious young woman in a yellow bikini walk into the conference room amidst the crowd of business suits. But in this brilliantly crafted play, nothing is as it seems. Piece by piece, a mystery unfolds and the elusive truth about Juliana boils to the surface. Secrets unravel as blurred reality and fragmented memories collide in a cottage on the windswept shores of Cape Cod. Dobama will continue with The Playwrights’ GYM throughout the season, The 42nd Annual Marilyn Bianchi
Kids’ Playwriting Festival in June 2020, and Dobama Emerging Actors Program (DEAP) celebrates eleven years in July 2020.