Tickets for Center Stage's 2013-14 Season On Sale 7/22

On Monday, July 22, single tickets go on sale for Center Stage's 2013-14 Season. With directors lined up and casting underway, Season 51: Theater for the Heart brings together a roster of remarkable theater artists and stunning stories-from classic masterpieces of comedy to cutting edge work by some of America's most talked-about playwrights.

The season will kick off on September 4 with Animal Crackers, under the direction of Northlight Theatre Artistic Director BJ Jones (A Skull in Connemara). Rehearsals begin in just a few weeks for this gem of American musical comedy featuring 2012 City Paper Best Actor Bruce Nelson as Groucho Marx playing the ineffable Captain Spaulding. Complete casting will be announced shortly for this timeless musical comedy perfect for the entire family.

Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah will helm a pair of plays by two of the country's most exciting playwrights. In October, Kwame directs Marcus Gardley's melodic family drama, dance of the holy ghosts: a play on memory, which brings us the story of blues-man Oscar Clifton as he confronts a history of loves and regrets. In the spring, Kwei-Armah will stage Naomi Wallace's historical saga The Liquid Plain-the World Premiere of which he opened at Oregon Shakespeare Festival on July 6. Winner of the prestigious 2012 Horton Foote Prize for Promising New American Play, The Liquid Plain follows two runaway slaves and an amnesiac sailor as they live a life and plot an escape on the docks of eighteenth-century Rhode Island.

During the Holiday Season, Rebecca Taichman will direct Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel's new musical A Civil War Christmas. Taichman recently helmed a celebrated production of The Winter's Tale ("A miracle of expressly theatrical proportions," Washington Post) for McCarter Theatre and DC's Shakespeare Theatre Company. Set on Christmas Eve in 1864, A Civil War Christmas weaves together carols and folk songs in a "beautifully stitched tapestry of American lives" (The New York Times). Additionally, celebrated choreographer and MacArthur "Genius" Fellow Liz Lerman, originator of the National Civil War Project, will join the creative team as choreographer.

Washington, DC-based director, Derek Goldman, Artistic Director of the Davis Performing Arts Center and Professor of Theater and Performance Studies at Georgetown University, will direct Marie Jones' rollicking Stones in His Pockets. This acting tour de force features a cast of two actors playing more than a dozen characters in a small Irish village overrun by a big budget Hollywood film crew.

In the spring, Center Stage's own Associate Artistic Director and Director of Dramaturgy Gavin Witt will direct William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, the Bard's quintessential romantic comedy filled with revelry, disguises, and pining lovers.

Jeremy B. Cohen (Let There Be Love), Artistic Director of The Playwrights' Center, returns to Center Stage to close the season with Tony Award-nominee Colman Domingo's Wild with Happy-a recent smash hit at New York's Public Theater. Gil, a down-on-his-luck actor, sets out on a heartwarming adventure through love and loss in this shimmering new comedy.

Christmas (and Animal Crackers) in July Special!

When tickets go on sale on Monday, July 22, patrons who act fast can also get a great deal on two of the season's most anticipated family shows. Through July 31, tickets toAnimal Crackers and A Civil War Christmas can be purchased for 40% off with the promo codes 14AnimalJuly and 14CivilJuly.

Tickets can be purchased by calling 410.332.0033, or visiting www.centerstage.org. Full information on the season can be found at www.centerstage.org/2013-14season.

Under the leadership of playwright, actor, and director Kwame Kwei-Armah OBE (Artistic Director) and national arts leader Stephen Richard (Managing Director), Center Stage is an artistically driven institution committed to engaging, entertaining, and enriching audiences of today and tomorrow through joyous and bold performance. The professional, nonprofit theater company is dedicated to the creation and presentation of a dynamic and diverse array of new and classic work, and each year hosts an audience of more than 100,000 in its historic home in Baltimore's Mount Vernon neighborhood. With its signature focus on civic and community engagement, Center Stage, The State Theater of Maryland, enters its second 50 years with a commitment to exploring how art and entertainment communicate in the 21st century, and to igniting meaningful conversation in Baltimore and beyond.