The Coachella Valley and High Desert are blessed with a variety of unique and ambitious local theater companies.
But you would not necessarily know that’s the case in August: Not one of the Coachella Valley companies had a single regular show scheduled during the month. However, perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned over at Desert Rose Playhouse: The company just extended its run of Party by three weeks thanks to brisk ticket sales, so instead of ending on July 31, the comedy will now run through Aug. 21.
In other words … there is indeed a theater audience around during the summer. Well, at least there is if a show involves nudity.
Anyway, here’s what local theater-lovers can look forward to from the valley’s most prominent theater companies during the upcoming season.
Coachella Valley Repertory Company
CV Rep made headlines in July when it was announced that the theater company, which currently resides in the Atrium shopping center in Rancho Mirage, had agreed to purchase the Desert Cinemas theater in Cathedral City.
Wow!
But for now, CV Rep has a season to put on, and every season, founding artistic director Ron Celona chooses a theme. So what can theater-goers expect this coming season? A lot of “Love, Marriage and Life Changing Events.”
The valley’s only Equity Small Professional Theatre will launch its sixth season at the Atrium with Annapurna, by Sharr White, running Oct. 26-Nov. 20. Talk about a life-changing event: “Twenty years after leaving her husband, Emma tracks him to a trailer park in the middle of nowhere for a final reckoning.” From Jan. 18-Feb. 12, things will get a little lighter with Baby. Nominated for seven Tony Awards, “Baby is about three couples on a university campus dealing with the painful, rewarding and agonizingly funny consequences of the universal experience of pregnancy and upcoming parenthood.” The 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama went to Amir Kapoor’s Disgraced, about a Pakistani-American lawyer who is distancing himself from his roots. Meanwhile, his wife, Emily, is a white artist influenced by Islamic imagery. Hmm. The play runs March 7-April 2. The season concludes April 25-May 21 with A.R. Gurney’s Later Life, a story about a romance being rekindled 30 years after it began.
Coyote StageWorks
The last couple of seasons have been turbulent for founding artistic director Chuck Yates’ renowned company. After losing its home at the Annenberg Theater at the Palm Springs Art Museum in 2014-2015, the company returned to the theater for the 2015-2016 season for Art and Agnes, both of which received rave reviews.
As for the upcoming season … well, Coyote StageWorks is the only company in town that has yet to spill any of the figurative beans. When I reached out to Yates via email for information as deadline approached, he politely responded: “I am still securing rights to our new season. It will celebrate Legendary Ladies, who have made their marks in the world. All of the shows are comedic, but legally I can’t announce titles until everything is sewn up.”
Yates would also like you to know that between now and Labor Day, any gifts the Equity professional theater company receives, up to $30,000 total, will be generously matched by Emmy Award-winning television producer and writer David Lee, best known forFrasier and Cheers. So … give!
Desert Ensemble Theatre Company
Now entering its sixth season, the Desert Ensemble Theatre Company—which shares the Pearl McManus Theater at the Palm Springs Woman’s Club with Dezart Performs—in recent years has kept things in the family by producing a lot of company members’ own works, and the 2016-2017 season will be no exception.
DETC’s third annual season-opening gala will take place Nov. 18. Boys Night Out, conceived and directed by Jerome Elliott, features popular local singers such as Charles Herrera and Doug Graham. The season will kick off in earnest with Expressions, a new drama by DETC’s Shawn Abramowitz, focusing PTSD and its effect on both veterans and their families; it runs Feb. 3-12. From March 17-26, the company will produce artistic director Tony Padilla’s Lovesport, a fast-paced comedy: “When middle-aged couple Josh and Marty invite home the younger Gary and Ben for after-party drinks, the wine flows, the weed blows, and relationships are changed.” A third, yet-to-be-announced play will be performed April 21-30.
Desert Rose Playhouse
It’s been a turbulent year for the valley’s LGBT-focused theater company. In January, founders Jim Strait and Paul Taylor pulled off the seemingly impossible: The company mounted an amazing production of the elaborate Angels in America, Part One, in the playhouse’s barely-bigger-than-a-black-box home in Rancho Mirage.
Problem is, few people wanted to go watch such heavy fare: The show tanked financially. That, combined with a drop in donations, jeopardized Desert Rose’s 2016-2017 season.
However, the company has been saved by a boost in donations over the summer—and by a Party: Desert Rose’s nudity-laden summer comedy has been a wild success, so much so that the company just extended its run by three weeks, through Aug. 21.
Artistic director Jim Strait got a late start on the 2016-2017 season due to the financial uncertainty, but here’s what he’d confirmed as of our press deadline: The season will kick off with Poz, by Michael Aman, running Sept. 30-Oct. 23: “A delightfully unlikelycomedyset in 2003, (Poz is) the story ofEdison, a young actor/waiter with leukemia, and Robert, an older HIV+ man.” The company’s annual holiday show has not yet been nailed down, but it’ll run Nov. 18-Dec. 18. From Jan. 20-Feb. 12, Desert Rose’s annual “Gay Heritage Production” will be Charles Busch’s campy and hilarious Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, along with its companion piece, Coma, a retelling of Sleeping Beauty. That will be followed up by Del Shores’ Southern Baptist Sissies, running March 17-April 9. The final show of the season, scheduled for April 28-May 21, can’t quite yet be announced.
Desert Theatreworks
The theater company that calls the Arthur Newman Theatre at the Joslyn Center in Palm Desert home has already kicked off its packed-with-shows fourth season: Artistic director Lance Phillips-Martinez does things a little differently, running his company’s “season” from May through April. So what’s in store for the rest of the season? The Realistic Joneses is a comedy about two small-town neighboring couples who share more than the same last name; that’s slated for Sept. 16-24. Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced will be performed Nov. 4-11, followed by Christmas My Way: A Sinatra Holiday Bash Dec. 9-18. Desert Theatreworks will kick off 2017 with a dose of Neil Simon: 45 Seconds From Broadway is on the boards Jan. 27-Feb. 5. Musical The Drowsy Chaperone will take the stage March 9-19, and the season will conclude with the musical Next to Normal April 21-30.
Dezart Performs
Dezart Performs shifted its focus for the company’s eighth season in 2015-2016: Gone was the annual Play Reading Series. That means that for the company’s upcoming season, for the first time, artistic director Michael Shaw will not be producing any world-premiere shows.
However, the 2016-2017 season lineup is a doozy nonetheless. Coming off of Dezart’s most successful season ever, Shaw and company will kick off at the Pearl McManus Theater at the Palm Springs Woman’s Club with Harvey Fierstein’s dramedy Casa Valentina, running Nov. 4-13. The stars of this show: Straight men who happen to enjoy dressing up as women. That will be followed on Jan. 13-22 by Clybourne Park, the 2012 Tony Award winner for Best Play and a 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner, which “takes a razor-sharp jab at race and real estate in a fictional Chicago neighborhood. The two explosive outrageous acts are set 50 years apart.” Dezart Performs’ popular one-night-only live-radio-show fundraiser, On the Air!, will return to the Camelot Theatres on March 9. Dezart Performs’ ninth season will conclude March 31-April 9 with Chapatti, an “unlikely love story” between two animal-lovers by Irish playwright Christian O’Reilly.
Palm Canyon Theatre
The granddaddy of local theater companies usually offers an ambitious mix of one-week productions and longer-running fare, and that will again be the way things are done during the 2016-2017 season. It all starts with farce Noises Off, running Sept. 15-18. There’s trouble, right here in River City, when the classic The Music Man hits the stage Sept. 30-Oct. 9. Changing things up is Jekyll and Hyde, on the slate from Oct. 21-31. Palm Springs Pride always brings the fabulous Bella da Ball’s Broadway in Drag! pageant; this year, mark your calendars for Nov. 4. Del Shores is huge in the Coachella Valley this year; get in the mood for Southern Baptist Sissies happening later at Desert Rose with Sordid Lives, running at Palm Canyon Nov. 11-20. Based on the famous movie, Meet Me in St. Louis runs Dec. 2-18, followed by Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat Jan. 20-Feb. 5. Head to Argentina—figuratively, of course—for Evita Feb. 17-March 5; that will be followed You Can’t Take It With You, running March 16-19. Sweet Charity brings Neil Simon’s words to the stage March 31-April 16; Ira Levin’s Deathtrap follows April 27-30. Get down with Rock of Ages May 12-21, before Palm Canyon concludes the season with its summer show, In the Heights, running July 7-16.
Theatre 29
Community-theater company Theatre 29 flies under the radar—even though the company often turns out excellent productions up in the High Desert, which anyone can see for a low, low price: General admission tickets are usually just $15. The company produces “seasons” based on the calendar year, and has thus far only announced shows for the remainder of 2016. The Summer Youth Theatre gets the spotlight in Aladdin Jr., running Aug. 5-7. The musical The Secret Garden will take the stage Aug. 26-Sept. 24; that will be followed by Theatre 29’s annual “Halloween Haunt,” Resurgence, taking place Oct. 14-31. Perhaps this show will win a major award: A Christmas Story will be performed for your enjoyment Nov. 18-Dec. 17.