August has become a very special time of year for theater and performing arts lovers. Yes, it’s a bit of a dark month on stages throughout the city, but it also brings Houston Theater Week with its BOGO (buy one, get one free) and other pricing specials on many performing arts companies’ season.
To celebrate, we thought a fall theater preview in order with a special roundup of those companies who have made formal announcements of their 2023-2024 seasons. We’re also noting those holiday shows already in the works.
Mark calendars (especially September 22) for the opening shows and dates for each company and let’s grab those tickets for a fall filled with drama, music, comedy and several world premieres.
Theatre Under the Stars opens with Jagged Little Pill (August 29)
Once again, TUTS has one of the busiest falls in Houston with four shows before the year’s end.
TUTS opens the season presenting this touring production of Jagged Little Pill, the Broadway sensation that married a contemporary family story with the music of Grammy winning Alanis Morissette, including many of the songs from one of a best-selling album.
With bloody-good timing for Halloween, TUTS then celebrates Sondheim with Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Pivoting for the holidays, they’ll world premiere a musical by artistic director Dan Knechtges, The Ugly X-Mas Sweater on the Hobby Center Zikha Stage. (We hear rumors of so-ugly-it’s-beautiful costuming and even audience participation for that one.)
Families will then have a (royal) ball with their production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Look for a huge cast, including budding stars from their schools, for this fairytale happy ending.
On the Verge Theatre opens with Far East (August 31)
Photo by Amitava Sarkar (2014)/ courtesy of Houston Ballet
Houston Ballet former soloist Aaron Robison as Bottom with artists of Houston Ballet in John Neumeier's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
One of Houston’s newest companies hasn’t officially announced their full season, but we do know they open this A.R. Gurney classic set in Japan. Following an American man's journey through a foreign land, Far East grapples with the complexities of cultural differences and human connections.
During their inaugural season, On the Verge founders Bruce Lumpkin and Ron Jones set each show on a different stage or non-traditional location through its first season, but their second season begins by partnering with Alta Arts. The Bellaire-area interdisciplinary art center looks to be the company’s home for its next productions.
Houston Ballet opens with A Midsummer Night’s Dream (September 8)
Always theatrical, HB unleashes Shakespeare’s fairy vs. human hijinks danced to the music of Felix Mendelssohn, Gyorgy Ligeti, and traditional organ music.
Originally created by the great choreographer John Neumeier in 1977 for Hamburg Ballet, this Midsummer Night’s Dream has been performed by companies around the globe, but HB became the first North American company to perform the distinguished work in 2014.
Later in the month, the fall mixed rep program, Tutu, brings three distinct dances to the Wortham stage: HB artistic director Stanton Welch’s playful Tu Tu; George Balanchine patriotic Stars and Stripes, a HB premiere; and a world premiere ballet by internationally renowned Colombian-Belgian choreographer, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa.
As always, the company wraps up–and puts a bow–on the year with Stanton Welch’s sugarplum dreamy Nutcracker Ballet.
Stages opens the fall season with POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive (September 1)
Technically, Stages began its 23-24 season with their summer hit Always… Patsy Cline, which is scheduled to get “Crazy” for many more months. But fall starts with POTUS. This Broadway smash political farce about the women who keep the world running — when a scandal-ridden president sends his administration into chaos.
With three stages, the company has plenty of room to also bring a little mystery to spooky season, with Switzerland (October 12). The psychological thriller turns the real and Texas-born author of the “Tom Ripley” books, Patricia Highsmith, into a character in this twisty tale.
For the holidays, Stages offers their latest new Texas panto, Panto Alicia in Wonderland, created by Houston’s own Theatx theater company and featuring song parodies of Ricky Martin, Selena, Bad Bunny, and more.
A.D. Players opens with Forever Plaid (September 6).
Death takes a hilarious holiday in the first two productions of A.D. Players new season.
An audience-favorite dressed in family-friendly nostalgia, Forever Plaid actually has one of the most quirky books of any jukebox musical out there.
Set in both the 1950s and a melodious hereafter, the show follows the life and death of a boy-group wannabes on the way to their first big gig. The Plaids die in a collision with a bus filled with Catholic schoolgirls on their way to see The Beatles. At the moment their careers and lives end, the story of Forever Plaid begins as they get a chance to return from the great beyond to perform one time.
In November, the company brings back A Texas Carol, their outrageous, homegrown holiday show that they world-premiered last year. Written by executive artistic director Jayme McGhan, this Carol tells the story of a Texas family headed to Mee-Maw Jane’s East Texas ranch for what might be her last Christmas.
The only problem: when the first grandchild arrives, Mee-Maw has already passed. Now, how to keep that fact (and her body) from the rest of the family and save Christmas?
Main Street Theater opens with What the Constitution Means to Me (September 16)
In this Tony-nominated play – which, we think, should have won – playwright Heidi Schreck contemplates what the U.S Constitution has meant to her as an individual woman, and to what it means to the world in the 21st century.
The one-woman show becomes a two-women improvisational debate as Heidi and a teen question whether the Constitution needs a major overhaul. Schreck played herself on Broadway, but for this Houston debut, MST’s own Shannon Emerick plays “Heidi.”
For the holidays, MST goes back to the world of Jane Austen, with Georgiana and Kitty: Christmas at Pemberley, the third and latest show of Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon’s Pride and Prejudice sequels. These Christmas at Pemberley plays have been a holiday hit for MST, so we’re can’t wait for the Regency romance with a 21st-century sense and sensibility that brings Mr. Darcy’s younger sister, Georgiana, and the youngest Bennet sister into the mix.
4th Wall Theatre opens with The Pavilion (September 22)
Craig Wright’s The Pavilion, a bittersweet love story with a cosmic perspective has been a staple for theaters across the country — as well as a juicy part for actors.
Houston fave Luis Galindo — who has graced almost every local stage — and 4th Wall’s managing director play the reunited former high school sweethearts.
In December, 4th Wall also turns to Jane Austen for the holidays with Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. We’re looking forward to another spin around the dance floor with this one, as 4th Wall’s Pride and Prejudice rendition several Decembers ago was a theatrical highlight of the year.
Alley Theatre opens fall with American Mariachi (September 22)
The Alley began their 23-24 season with their Summer Chills world premiere adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but the power of mariachi music trumpets in their fall.
Set in the 1970s, American Mariachi, a show about family, tradition, memory, and independence tells the story of two cousins who love music and want to create their own all-women mariachi group.
The Alley Neuhaus Stage season begins with Little Comedies (October 6) a world premiere adaptation and arrangement of Chekhov comedies. The show will be performed by the Alley’s Resident Acting Company and directed by the Tony-Award winning playwright and legendary director Richard Nelson.
Celebrating the holidays, The Alley stages its enchanting new Christmas Carol, adapted by artistic director Rob Melrose that they world-premiered last year.
Catastrophic Theatre opens with Waiting for Godot (September 22)
We’ve been doing our own waiting for Catastrophic — Houston's home for avant-garde and absurdist theater — to bring back Waiting for Godot, Beckett’s masterpiece of absurdism.
In the show, two penniless tramps stand waiting together on a country road for the enigmatic Mr. Godot to arrive to somehow improve their diminishing circumstances.
Director and Catastrophic co-founder, Jason Nodler, reunites with Greg Dean (Vladmir), Charlie Scott (Estragon), Kyle Sturdivant (Pozzo), and Troy Schulze (Lucky), reprising their roles from Catastrophic’s acclaimed 2013 production.
We can also always count on Catastrophic doing some counter-programming during the holiday season, and this year will be no different when they world premiere a stage adaptation of Henry James’s classic gothic ghost story, The Turn of the Screw.
Conceived and co-directed by Catastrophic core artist Afsaneh Aayani and New York City-based creative director and multimedia designer Adam J. Thompson this Turn will feature environmental staging, toy theatre, puppetry, live cinema, and a haunting soundscape.
Ensemble Theatre opens with Chicken & Biscuits (September 22)
Ensemble serves up this feel-good, family comedy with a delicious recipe for joyful theater.
Chicken & Biscuits sees the Jenkins family coming together to mourn the death — but also celebrate the life — of the family patriarch. Unfortunately, squabbling sisters might ruin the funeral, and any hopes for a peaceful reunion unravel when everyone’s got either a secret or a truth to tell. The two sisters are faced with a truth that could either heal or break them.
On November 17, Ensemble brings back their holiday hit A Motown Christmas, the perfect blend of traditional Christmas carols paired with the soulful sounds from such Motown celebrities as Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, and The Jackson 5.
Rec Room opens their fall season with Heroes of the Fourth Turning (October 5)
For a company known for their edgy and unconventional productions, it’s perhaps appropriate that Rec Rooms rebels against traditional theater seasons.
Heroes of the Fourth Turning, a haunting Will Arbery play, actually begins the second half of Rec Room's 2023 season. On the edge of the wilderness, four friends gather at a backyard party to honor their mentor and the newly inaugurated president of a conservative Catholic university. It has been years since they last met, and as the celebration runs deep into the night, their reunion spirals into spiritual chaos and a vicious fight to be understood.
In December, look for a new and we’re betting intimately imaginative production of Peter Pan adapted and directed by Rec Room artistic director Matt Hune.
Houston Grand Opera opens with Intelligence (October 20)
HGO once again makes international opera news by commissioning this world premiere opera created by acclaimed composer Jake Heggie, librettist Gene Scheer, and director/choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founder of the Urban Bush Women.
Intelligence, an extraordinary new work, was inspired by the true story of Civil War spies Elizabeth Van Lew, who hailed from a prominent Confederate family, and Mary Jane Bowser, who was born into slavery in the family’s household. Together they form a secret pro-Union spy ring.
After debuting Intelligence, HGO presents Verdi’s final masterpiece, Falstaff, which recounts the misdeeds of drunken, absurdly vain, formerly thin knight Sir John Falstaff, plucked straight from Shakespeare’s plays. Acclaimed baritone and no stranger to the Wortham stage, Reginald Smith Jr., plays Falstaff.
Dirt Dogs Theatre opens with The Birds (October 20)
An intense season begins fittingly for October with a staged version of the Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 short story, and the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film.
In this Conor McPherson adaptation of The Birds, strangers Nat and Diane find themselves trying to survive together in an isolated cabin relentless and deadly slew of birds begins attacking humanity. Soon after, the young and attractive Julia arrives looking for shelter, bringing with her suspicion and distrust.
When the duo becomes a trio, paranoia takes hold revealing an inside threat that rivals that of the murderous birds on the outside.
Broadway at the Hobby Center opens with MJ: The Musical (November 14)
The king of pop moonwalks into the Hobby Center and leads a slate of musical bio shows for the 23-24 season.
With a book by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage, MJ: The Musical promises to go deeper into the life and music of Michael Jackson. The song list includes global hits like “Beat It,” “Billie Jean” and “Man in the Mirror,” but also some surprises like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Climb Ev'ry Mountain.” To borrow from a Michael line, Broadway at Hobby season is def “gonna be startin’ something” with this one.
We’ll then have to wait to the new year before the simply the best, queen of rock arrives in the form of Tina-The Tina Turner Musical. Another Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, this time, Katori Hall, wrote the book on Turner’s extraordinary, no-holds-barred story.
