Throughout the pandemic, I’ve struggled to answer a constant question: “What have you been writing about with theater on hold?” As if the shuttering of playhouses meant theater artists completely stopped working, stopped inventing, stopped existing.
The array of theatrical offerings on tap in 2022 is testament to Bay Area theater artists’ courage, determination, resilience and creativity. It’s a dynamic, even dizzying time in the industry, with a fresh generation of leaders, a burst of company reorganizations, a heightened focus on equity and a gamut of boundary-pushing musicals on the horizon.
Nothing to write about? Hardly.
A fuller reopening
Bay Area theater unsteadily returned to indoor playhouses in 2021, but many companies big and small have yet to make their full, pandemic-era returns, either leery of making plans they’d have to cancel or because they made plans and canceled them. But in 2022, omicron variant permitting, a fresh set of producers has triumphant homecomings on the books, including American Conservatory Theater (“Freestyle Love Supreme,” Jan. 21-Feb. 13) and the Custom Made Theatre Company. (“Zac & Siah, or Jesus in a Body Bag,” Feb. 4-27).
“Freestyle Love Supreme”: Jan. 21-Feb. 13. $5-$130. ACT’s Geary Theater, 415 Geary St., S.F. 415-749-2228.www.act-sf.org
“Zac & Siah, or Jesus in a Body Bag”: Feb. 4-27. $20-$30. Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason St., Ste. 601, S.F. 415-798-2682.www.custommade.org
‘Getting There’
If you saw the uproarious yet incisive“Yoga Play”at San Francisco Playhouse in 2019, there’s little chance you escaped without becoming a Dipika Guha acolyte (if you weren’t one already). Now the playwright returns to San Francisco with a world premiere, this time at New Conservatory Theatre Center.
“Getting There” follows five women of color in Paris — two sightseeing Americans in their 20s, three Frenchwomen in their 50s, all of them primed for a great disruption. In an intriguing epigraph, Guha quotes Maria Irene Fornés on Edward Hopper’s paintings: “There’s something very real about the situation — it’s very mundane — but the air is always so clean you feel there’s something wrong.”
Jan. 14-Feb. 20. $25-$65. New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness Ave., Lower Lobby, S.F. 415-861-8972.www.nctcsf.org
New leaders, new visions
In covering the many transitions in Bay Area theater leadership in the past several years, I’ve found myself using (and overusing) terms such as “sea change” and “tectonic shift.” Washington, D.C.’s Lauren Halvorsen, who writes the theater newsletter Nothing for the Group, always calls the phenomenon (which is nationwide) the regional theater “Game of Thrones,” which might be the best way of putting it.
In any case, the new year affords Bay Area audiences the chance to see how a slew of new artistic directors are envisaging what theater means at their companies, fromSean San Joséat Magic Theatre to Sahar Assaf at Golden Thread Productions; fromTim Bondat TheatreWorks toMargo Hallat Lorraine Hansberry Theatre; from Brendan Simon at TheatreFirst to Johanna Pfaelzer at Berkeley Rep.
Distributive leadership
Speaking of leaders, a bunch of theater companies are moving away from the single-captain model, allowing small groups to share the benefits and burdens of being in charge. Shotgun Players uses a group of nine to make season-planning decisions, and Z Space, following the departure ofLisa Steindler, has switched to a three-person leadership model.
As theaters return to fuller operations and announce coming seasons, it will be fascinating to see how these new setups affect companies’ visions, missions and programming — how a broader range of perspectives manifests in what audiences see on stage.
‘I, Too, Sing America’
In 2019, on my way to catch a show in the small, upstairs venue at Brava Theater, I heard what sounded like an army of fans showering love on their idol’s every line in the facility’s downstairs main stage. This was “I, Too, Sing America,” San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company’s musical exploration of poets such as Langston Hughes, Frances Chung and Vince Gotera. An explosion of joy and talent conceived and composed by Othello Jefferson, the show returns for an encore run.
Jan. 28-Feb. 13. $15-$40. Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St., S.F. 415-484-8566.www.sfbatco.org
‘The Tempest’
Oakland Theater Project crafts dud-free seasons, the kinds of lineups where every show makes you want to fan yourself, say “Touché!” or embark on a spiral of internet research.
Artistic Director Michael Socrates Moran has a way of making classics feel like new plays, and his 2022 opener (Feb. 11-March 6) looks to be another proud entrant in that tradition. He reimagines Shakespeare’s play set on a magical island as taking place in the memory of Prospero’s daughter, Miranda.
“We hope the reckoning with this play serves as a reckoning for all of us in our time as we wrestle with questions of rewriting our history, who has power to tell whose story, colonization and the relevance of Shakespeare itself in contemporary America,” Moran said in a statement.
Feb. 11-March 6. $10-$52. Flax Art & Design, 1501 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. 510-646-1126.www.oaklandtheaterproject.org
Broadway tours that actually take artistic risk
Broadway is not always the adventurous theatergoer’s best bet; Broadway tours even less so — their wares having been tested, deemed safe enough for cross-country audiences. But two shows in BroadwaySF’s lineup this year dare to explore darkness.
“Hadestown” (June 7-July 3) was a song cycle and then a concept album before becoming a musical; Anaïs Mitchell’s show weaves together two fateful marriages in Greek myth that involve descents to the underworld — Eurydice and Orpheus, Persephone and Hades. Then, Daniel Fish’s “Oklahoma!” (Aug. 16-Sept. 11) gives fuller voice to the demons usually kept implicit in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s groundbreaking musical. If you’ve always thought the musical’s love story and its project of nation-building (Oklahoma goes from territory to soon-to-be state over the course of the show) look like foregone conclusions, this production finds the uncertainty and danger lurking in those narratives.
“Hadestown”: June 7-July 3. BroadwaySF’s Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., S.F.
“Oklahoma!”: Aug. 16-Sept. 11. BroadwaySF’s Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., S.F.
Single tickets to both shows will go on sale at a later date at 888-746-1799 orwww.broadwaysf.com.
Homegrown musicals
The Bay Area doesn’t depend on New York exports for its musical theater offerings, and that’s true again in 2022, with an array of new projects of note for audiences here and beyond.
首先是“冲走”(3月9日- 6月1日),featuring the music of the Avett Brothers, and Berkeley Rep has already extended its world-premiere production twice.
On its heels is a second Berkeley Rep world-premiere musical: “Goddess” (March 19-May 1), a retelling of the Marimba myth that has a book by Jocelyn Bioh and music and lyrics by Michael Thurber.
In fall, ACT is expected to premiere “Soul Train” (Sept. 16-Oct. 16), about the iconic TV show, with a book by Dominique Morisseau, whose “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations” is now playing on Broadway and on tour.
“Swept Away” and “Goddess”: Jan. 9-March 6 and March 19-May 1, respectively. $37-$186, subject to change.Both shows at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2015 and 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. 510-647-2949.www.berkeleyrep.org
“灵魂火车n”: Sept. 16-Oct. 16. $25-$130. ACT’s Geary Theater, 415 Geary St., S.F. 415-749-2228.www.act-sf.org