Cygnet Announces Season Eleven Lineup

Cygnet Theatre, currently halfway through their tenth anniversary season, is getting fired up about the next lineup of plays and musicals that they're preparing for their eleventh season. Cygnet Artistic Director Sean Murray and Executive Director Bill Schmidt have assembled a package of plays and musicals for the 2013-2014 season that they feel just may be their most exciting yet. Cygnet's eleventh season will feature seven productions performed in their home, the Old Town Theatre in Old Town San Diego State Historic Park, including two plays performed in a rotating repertory, two musicals, two San Diego premieres and a holiday revival. "The scripts that we have assembled all went through the 'is-this-exciting?' filter!" says Murray. "We feel that we have put together a line-up that continues to serve our eclectic, artistic-whiplash tastes here at Cygnet. All of the stories in next season's list concern relationships, love and the challenges of making personal connections."

Cygnet's ongoing love affair with the works of Stephen Sondheim (A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Assassins) continues as their new season launches with Company, the Tony Award-winning musical exploration of marriage and commitment.

In the fall, Cygnet offers up a creative treat for theatre-philes: two very different comedies, linked together through a playful twist, playing opposite each other in a rotating repertory: Oscar Wilde's classic comedy, the delicious The Importance of Being Earnest and Tom Stoppard's wilde [sic!] take on it, Travesties. Earnest, a comedy of mistaken identities and surprising twists, is a mash up of Downton Abbey style and Oscar Wilde's wit. Paired with the vaudeville-style of ideas, wit, revolution, politics and history that is Travesties, both plays will be performed on alternating nights throughout the run.

In December, Cygnet continues its seven-year tradition of presenting a holiday production in the style of a 1940s live radio program. They will bring back the WCYG Playhouse of the Air production of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, adapted by Sean Murray with an original score by Billy Thompson.

Cygnet has snagged the rights to present the Southern California premiere of Jordan Harrison's Maple and Vine, a sensation last season Off-Broadway at New York's Playwrights Horizons. A comedy about a couple who have become allergic to their 21st century lives and decide to move into a closed-community of 1950s re-enactors who forsake their cellphones and sushi for poodle-skirts, milkmen and Tupperware parties. They are soon surprised by what their new neighbors--and themselves--are willing to sacrifice for happiness.

Cygnet loves to mount exciting musicals, and in the first local professional production, they bring Spring Awakening to the Old Town stage. The youth-inspired rock musical is an eight-time Tony Award-winner with an electrifying score by Duncan Sheik and book and lyrics by Steven Sater. The show is an intoxicating story of youth, sexuality and self-discovery that is sure to awaken passion in the heart. Contains mature themes, sexual situations and strong language.

Saving the most hilarious and provocative for last, Cygnet is jumping up and down with excitement to bring The Motherf**ker with the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis (The Little Flower of East Orange) to San Diego for its premiere. The "high-octane verbal cage match about love, fidelity and misplaced haberdashery," is set smack in the center of New York's Hell's Kitchen. A Broadway hit that is exhilarating, hilarious and totally irreverent, this comedy is also, surprisingly, an examination of acceptance, loyalty and above all, love. As is apparent from its title, this play contains drugs, violence, sexual situations and a strong f**king language.

New subscription sales will be available beginning March 1st. For more information regarding subscription packages, please contact the box office at 619-337-1525 or visit www.cygnettheatre.com or visit the box office at 4040 Twiggs Street. Discounts are available for students, active-duty military, seniors and groups of 10 or more.

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