The season opens with the world premiere of Laura Schellhardt's Upright Grand, July 11-Aug. 10 in Palo Alto. It will be the centerpiece of TheatreWorks' 2012 New Works Festival. According to TheatreWorks, "A father, a songwriter and musician in his own right, watches and nurtures his little girl’s burgeoning talent at the piano. As she grows from a child practicing scales at his side to an internationally sought-after classical pianist, it’s hard to say what is more difficult: watching her grow up or watching her surpass him."
Donald Margulies' Tony-nominated drama Time Stands Still, about "a thrill-seeking photojournalist and her foreign correspondent lover after they return from a dangerous stint covering the war," will run Aug. 22-Sept. 16 at the Mountain View Center.
Following will be Moisés Kaufman's music-filled work 33 Variations. The Tony-nominated play will run Oct. 3-28 at the Mountain View Center. The play centers on a terminally ill musicologist, desperately seeking connection with her daughter as she attempts to solve one of Beethoven's musical mysteries.
The Tony-winning musical Big River, based on Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and featuring a score by country legend Roger Miller and a book by William Hauptman, will be staged Nov. 28-Dec. 30 in Palo Alto.
The Whipping Man playwright Matthew Lopez's Somewhere will receive its regional premiere Jan. 16-Feb. 10, 2013, at the Mountain View Center. "Inez Candelaria and her three children dream of a dancer's life in show business. When they hear the movie version of West Side Story is being filmed in their neighborhood, the family straps on their character shoes and prepares for the big time. But the stakes are higher than just a dressing room with their names on it – with their home slated for demolition, they must dance toward their dreams and never look back." The Mountaintop, Katori Hall's Olivier Award-winning drama about Martin Luther King's final night on earth as he encounters a mysterious young woman at the Lorraine Hotel, will run March 6-31, 2013, in Palo Alto.
TheatreWorks will welcome back Emma and Daddy Long Legs writer Paul Gordon, who has collaborated with Jay Gruska on a new musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. Featuring book and lyrics by Gordon, who authored music with Gruska, Being Earnest will have its world premiere April 3-28, 2013, at the Mountain View Center.
Scottsboro Boys Tony nominee Domingo (Passing Strange, Blood Knot) will offer the West Coast premiere of Wild With Happy, which was previously developed as part of TheatreWork's 2011 New Yorks Festival. It will run June 5-30, 2013. Domingo will appear in his four-actor comedy about "a struggling black actor [who] rejects normal rituals of grief, opting instead for a rapturous road trip to scatter his mother’s ashes in the place where she was the most happy – Disney World!"
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