Aurora Theatre Company provides a preview into its future with the announcement of its newly appointed managing director and 2022-23 season lineup.
Francesca Gabourel will succeed Julie Saltzman Kellner, who left in June after 11 years, as its fifth managing director, the Berkeley company and its board of directors announced last week. Gabourel, who officially started the role March 7, was chosen after a four-month-long search by a committee of Aurora board members in partnership with the Chicago arts consulting firm ALJP Consulting. Her experience over the past decade includes working with several Bay Area cultural and performing arts organizations, most recently as an events audience manager for KQED. But she said her main interest lies in community engagement.
“Theater is essential in building vibrant and empathetic communities, and this is a profound season of change for the industry,” Gabourel said in a statement. “I believe Aurora’s commitment to confront and dismantle oppression will allow us to create a more accessible and inclusive theater experience as we move back to in-person gatherings.”
In addition to Gabourel’s appointment, Aurora’s upcoming, abbreviated season is slated to present four shows with a schedule that aspires to “challenge us to learn from the past to forge a better future for us to live in together,” Artistic Director Josh Costello said in an announcement released Thursday, March 17.
The 2022-23 season is scheduled to open in November with the world premiere of playwright Dustin Chinn’s “Colonialism Is Terrible, But Pho Is Delicious” (Nov. 4-Dec. 4). The Seattle native has had plays developed in the Bay Area before, including with the Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep Summer Residency Lab, and returns with a dark comedy of colonial histories and cultural appropriation that centers on the Vietnamese noodle soup.
After the 2022 holiday season, it is followed by Dominique Morisseau’s jazz-soaked drama, “Paradise Blue” (Jan. 27-Feb. 26), about a musician torn between preserving what he has and leaving his demons behind — that is, until a mysterious woman stirs the pot — in the Black Bottom neighborhood of Morisseau’s home city of Detroit.
Next spring, Costello also plans to showcase a long-term passion project of his, an adaption of Edmond Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” (April 7-May 7).
The season concludes with Pulitzer Prize finalist Madeleine George’s eco-comedy, “Hurricane Diane” (June 16-July 16), which follows a butch gardener — an undercover Dionysus — and her plan to restore the Earth’s natural state.
Aurora’s 2021-22 season intends to close with the world premiere of playwright Jonathan Spector’s “This Much I Know” (Sep. 2-Oct. 2), a time-hopping tale about a psychology professor unraveling the mystery of his wife’s disappearance.
For single tickets ($40-$78) or subscriptions ($129-$385), call 510-843-4822 or visitwww.auroratheare.org.