Having completed its 25th anniversary season earlier in June, Peterborough’s New Stages Theatre Company has already announced its next season — and it’s the biggest one yet, with eight productions taking place from October 2023 to June 2024.
Established in 1997, New Stages Theatre is a not-for-profit charitable organization with a mission is to bring the best of contemporary professional theatre to Peterborough-Nogojiwanong.
The 2023-2024 season includes New Stages Theatre’s very popular staged reading series, an outrageous cabaret tribute to founding artistic director Randy Read, a week-long festival of exciting new work (appropriately entitled “Brand New Stages”) and, for the first time in the theatre company’s history, a joyous holiday production in December.
While individual tickets are not yet available, you can now purchase one of two early-bird subscription packages at www.newstages.ca.
The 2023-2024 season kicks off at 7 p.m. on Sunday, October 1st at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre with a staged reading of This Is How We Got Here, Keith Barker’s heartbreaking yet heartwarming play following a close-knit family as they deal with an unexpected loss. Nominated in 2018 for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the play won the Playwrights Guild of Canada’s Carol Bolt Award in 2020.
At 7:30 p.m. on Friday, November 17th, New Stages Theatre will be honouring founding artistic director Randy Read with Let’s Get Randy, an outrageously fun cabaret tribute with all-star performers gathering from near and far to sing and sling stories. Read stepped down as artistic director at the end of 2022, passing the reins to Mark Wallace, although he has continued to be involved in the theatre company, including performing in The Secret Mask this past May after recovering from a serious injury.
New Stages Theatre will celebrate the holiday season from Wednesday, December 13th to Sunday, December 17th with It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play by Joe Landry. This unique production of the beloved classic is set in a 1940s radio studio, with five actors playing all the roles and creating all the sound effects in front of the live “studio” audience.
From Tuesday, February 27th to Sunday, March 3th, New Stages Theatre is presenting Brand New Stages, a festival of exciting new work including from local artists:
Looking for Lear by Dreda Blow and Brad Brackenridge is a workshop production at Market Hall arising from their acclaimed puppetry and dance production The Lear Project presented at Erring at King George in May 2022.
Life Without by Steve Ross, the Stratford actor who is well known to New Stages Theatre audiences, will be presented as a staged reading at Market Hall. The play, about the journey of a close-knit family moving forward after a tragedy, will premiere in August at the 2023 Here For Now open-air festival behind the Stratford Perth Museum.
Tussaud/Antoinette, written and directed by New York-based artist Jody Christopherson, will be presented as a staged reading at The Theatre On King. The solo performance is a gothic horror re-imagining of the historical fantasy of Madame Marie Tussaud’s relationship with one of her most famous subjects, Marie Antoinette. Before Tussaud achieved wax museum fame, she was a sculptor who was nearly guillotined during the French Revolution but escaped the Reign of Terror by using her talents and went on to not only document history but to become it.
On Mother’s Day weekend (Saturday, May 11th and Sunday, May 12th), New Stages Theatre will present a staged reading of Love, Loss, and What I Wore by the late Nora Ephron (Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally) and her sister and screenwriting collaborator Delia Ephron (Mixed Nuts, You’ve Got Mail). Based on the 1995 book of the same name by Ilene Beckerman, the play is an intimate collection of monologues by women about pivotal moments in their lives and how they were shaped by the clothes that they wore. Linda Kash will direct the staged reading at Market Hall.
The season will wrap up at 7 p.m. on Sunday, June 9th with a staged reading at Market Hall of Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang. The semi-autobiographical play satirizes the once-common practice of casting White actors to play Asian roles on stage and screen.
Two early bird subscription packages are now available for New Stages Theatre’s 2023-24 season. The regular package includes all five mainstage shows and one of the Brand New Stages shows for $150 plus venue fees. The limited-quantity premium package includes all eight shows for $170 plus venue fees.
Subscription packages are available online now at www.newstages.ca.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor of New Stages Theatre Company’s 2023-24 season.
