Coronado Playhouse proudly announces the beginning of their 2021 Season, which will be the 75th anniversary for the Playhouse. The Playhouse is preparing shows that will adhere to standards necessitated by COVID-19, while being comfortable for patrons and performers alike. The shows at the beginning of the year are smaller in scale but will have a big impact in terms of entertainment and significance.
The Playhouse is announcing three full productions and one reading event to start the 2021 season. CPH welcomes back two returning directors and welcomes two debuting directors to their stage.
LOVE LETTERS
By A. R. Gurney
No one forgets their first love
January 22 – February 21, 2021
Directed by Jacob Sampson, debuting CPH director
Love Letters chronicles a half-century of letters between Melissa Gardner and her childhood friend turned love interest, Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, childhood friends whose correspondence begins with birthday party thank-you notes and summer camp postcards. Romantically attached, they continue to exchange letters through angst-ridden boarding school experiences, troubled college years, European adventures, the ups and downs of careers and failed marriages.
Over the course of their lives, Andy and Melissa’s relationship goes through many changes, as the couple goes through periods of estrangement, and the intense, clandestine affair which will accelerate Melissa’s emotional breakdown. Despite the painful differences which will ultimately tear them apart, they remain each other’s most trusted confidante throughout their lives, from childhood to death.
A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters is a tender, tragi-comic, and nuanced examination of the shared nostalgia, missed opportunities, and deep closeness of two lifelong, complicated friends.
Love Letters was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The original Broadway production opened at the Edison Theatre October 31, 1989 and has become a favorite theatre staple.
HARLEM DUET
By Djanet Sears
A Rhapsodic Blues Tragedy
March 19 – April 18, 2020
Note: No performance Easter Sunday, April 4
Directed by Kandace Crystal (American History Theatre, Trinity Theatre Company) debuting CPH director
In what could be a prelude to Shakespeare’s Othello, Djanet Sears’s Harlem Duet recounts the story of Othello and his first wife, Billie (before Desdemona). Their history is told through the lives of three couples during eras of special significance in the Black American Experience.
Set in contemporary Harlem at the corner of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X Boulevards, the tale toes the line of racial identity, sexual politics, and mental illness in the black community. Sears’ script diffuses the action through three timelines: the 1860s, 1928 and the present.
It’s a weighty play, and one that leaves us with no easy answers.
Harlem Duet received Canada’s highest literary honor for dramatic writing, the Governor General’s Literary Award, in 1998. That year it also received the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award.
NOTE: Harlem Duet contains adult language
CONSTELLATIONS
Written by Nick Payne
One relationship. Infinite possibilities.
May 21 – June 20, 2021
Directed by Samuel Young, returning CPH director
Marianne and Roland meet at a party. They hit it off…or perhaps they don’t. They go for a drink…or perhaps they don’t. They go home together…or perhaps they go their separate ways. Maybe she breaks his heart. Maybe he breaks hers.
Suppose that life exists in a multiverse…a set of parallel existences that contain infinitely different outcomes. The possibilities in our lives are, quite literally, endless. Every possible event that could happen, does happen. And if two lovers meet…are drawn together in every version of existence…every possible happy ending and heartbreak that could befall them, will.
Nick Payne’s Constellations takes a chance encounter between two drifting souls and opens a door to the infinite possibilities of their relationship. Constellations is a spellbinding exploration at how the tiniest change in the details of our lives can dramatically alter the lives we live.
LOVE, LOSS AND WHAT I WORE
By Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron, Based on the book by Ilene Beckerman
An intimate collection of stories
One Weekend Only!
April 23 – April 25, 2021
Directed by Mary L. Smith, returning CPH director
This wonderfully witty show tells the life stories of women through the lens of their clothes covering all the important subjects—mothers, prom dresses, mothers, buying bras, mothers, hating purses and why we only wear black. Love, Loss, and What I Wore uses our connection with clothing and accessories, and the memories they trigger, to tell funny and poignant stories that all women can relate to.
From the well-known writers of “When Harry Met Sally…”, “Sleepless in Seattle”, and “You’ve Got Mail” and based on the best-selling book by Ilene Beckerman, this Drama Desk Award-winning play is a unique collection of monologues and ensemble pieces that are both funny and powerful.
Details will be released on the second half of the Coronado Playhouse season later this fall. Those shows will include a twist on our Annual Free Classic and other exciting programming including musicals, 75th anniversary readings and events and additional concerts and cabarets.
Season ticket renewals are available now and new subscriptions will go on sale later this month.
Coronado Playhouse is a qualified 501(c) 3 non-profit organization as San Diego County’s longest continuously run community theatre.
