A fifth production is yet to be announced for the forthcoming 2007-2008 season presented at San Francisco's Orpheum, Curran and Golden Gate Theatres.
Billed as a "pre-Broadway engagement," The Wiz run will build upon the production director Des McAnuff and collaborators began last fall at La Jolla Playhouse. "[Producer-owner] Carole Shorenstein Hays and SHN provide a true creative home, offering support and encouragement during the early critical development of a new show. Our production of The Wiz takes the timeless story by L. Frank Baum, blends it with the contemporary music and lyrics of Charlie Smalls for an experience that resonates to the pulse of 2008," said McAnuff in a statement. "We are reinventing The Wiz with a multiracial cast and a wired Web sensibility. This will be theatre that you enter rather than watch."
Following on the culturally diverse theme, the Royal Shakespeare Company's A Midsummer Night's DREAM will retell the Bard's classic fantasy with "actors, dancers, martial arts experts, musicians and street acrobats from across India and Sri Lanka," according to an announcement. The work seen in India — at Delhi, Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras) and Kolkata (Calcutta) — as well as Stratford-upon-Avon and London now makes its North American debut.
The 2007-2008 schedule (subject to change) follows:
Book by Alice Walker, adapted for stage by Marsha Norman
Music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray
Directed by Gary Griffin with choreography by Donald Byrd
Directed by Tim Supple with choreography by D Padmakumar and M Palani
Book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar
Music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison
Directed by Casey Nicholaw with choreography by Josh Rhodes
Book by William F. Brown based on L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"
Music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls
Directed by Des McAnuff SHN owns and operates San Francisco's Curran, Orpheum and Golden Gate Theatres. For more information on the Best of Broadway series, visit shnsf.com.
