Tony Award winner and Hayward native James Monroe Iglehart returns to TheatreWorks for 2023-24 season

强调了的e Silicon Valley company’s 53rd lineup include “How I Learned What I Learned,” “Queen,” and “Tiger Style!”

Huck (Alex Goley, left) and Jim (James Monroe Iglehart) run away down the mighty Mississippi in the musical “Big River” at TheatreWorks.

Photo: Mark Kitaoka

Before he won a Tony Award for playing the Genie in“Aladdin,”before he performed in “Hamilton,” and“Freestyle Love Supreme,”before he appeared in “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” and “Girls5eva,” James Monroe Iglehart was a rising Bay Area stage actor.

Now, as part of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s 2023-24 season, the Hayward native returns to one of the Bay Area theater companies where he got his start. He’ll direct “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” (Nov. 29-Dec. 24), Rachel Sheinkin and William Finn’s musical comedy about the American-born form of childhood competition.

Jim (James Monroe Iglehart) and Huck (Alex Goley) shelter from the rain in the musical “Big River” at TheatreWorks.

Photo: Mark Kitaoka

The rest of the TheatreWorks lineup, announced Monday, April 10, begins with “Mrs. Christie” (Oct. 4-29) by New York playwright Heidi Armbruster. The West Coast premiere, directed by Giovanna Sardelli, is about a real-life Agatha Christie mystery: when the author disappeared for 11 days in 1926.

In the new year, the company reunites actor Steven Anthony Jones with director (and TheatreWorks Artistic Director)Tim Bondfor a new production of August Wilson’s “How I Learned What I Learned” (Jan. 17-Feb. 11). The show, which the pair previously presented at Seattle Repertory Theatre and Oregon Shakespeare Festival, traces the playwright’s extraordinary life, beginning in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, the setting of many of his plays, and proffers hard-won but crackling wisdom.

Steven Anthony Jones in Oregon Shakespeare Festival's “How I Learned What I Learned.”

Photo: Jenny Graham/Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Spring 2024 continues with “Queen” (March 6-31) by Madhuri Shekar (“House of Joy,”“In Love and Warcraft”). The show, presented in partnership with EnActe Arts, follows bee researchers studying the insects’ disappearance who must weigh their own gain against environmental catastrophe. Miriam A. Laube directs.

Up next is the comedy “Tiger Style!” (April 3-28), about a pair of Chinese American siblings who blame all their professional and romantic problems on their “tiger” parents. Guggenheim fellow Mike Lew writes, andJeffrey Lo,who recently directed a Chinatown-set“Little Shop of Horrors”at TheatreWorks, returns to the helm.

San Jose playwright and director Jeffrey Lo works with director Leslie Martinson last May at City Lights Theater Company in San Jose.

Photo: Paul Kuroda/Special to The Chronicle

The season concludes with the world premiere of “Being Alive: A Sondheim Celebration” (June 5-30, 2024), a tribute to the mighty composer conceived by TheatreWorks founderRobert Kelleyand Resident Musical Director William Liberatore.

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Reach Lily Janiak:ljaniak@sfchronicle.com

  • Lily Janiak
    Lily Janiak

    Lily Janiak joined the San Francisco Chronicle as theater critic in May 2016. Previously, her writing appeared in Theatre Bay Area, American Theatre, SF Weekly, the Village Voice and HowlRound. She holds a BA in theater studies from Yale and an MA in drama from San Francisco State.