Custom Made Theatre Announces 2018-2019 Season

"We are beyond excited to announce our 20th anniversary season, and our fourth at 533 Sutter Street," beams Brian Katz, Artistic Director of Custom Made Theatre Company.

"A lot of thought went into the line-up for 2018-2019. Did we want to have a season of 'greatest hits' to bring back plays a new generation of fans missed? Did we want to do all new work? All classics? What would make our 20th season special?"

"In the end, we decided the best way to celebrate was to continue what we have done for the previous nineteen seasons: a curated journey through the excitement of new work and seeing modern classics in a new light. We wanted a season that highlighted why we've been an integral part of San Francisco's independent theatre community for two decades - our eclectic, moving, and unexpected choices." Katz explains.

One nod to Custom Made's past was to launch the season with their fifth Edward Albee play, the controversial The Goat, or Who is Sylvia. Albee has been a "sweet spot" for Custom Made. His The Play About the Baby won the company its first "Best Production" award from the Bay Area Critics Circle, and their Three Tall Women was an audience favorite. The upcoming season adds a third visit to the Sondheim canon, the first was Custom Made's award-winning Bay Area premiere of Assassins in 2007, this time with his rarely produced Passion, a chamber opera perfect for Custom Made's intimate stage.

Audiences will be intrigued by genre-bending comedies from Bess Wohl (Small Mouth Sounds, a hit for A.C.T. last season) and Aaron Posner's follow-up to his hysterical Stupid F*cking Bird, two playwrights representing a bright future for American theatre.

Custom Made is thrilled to bring back Bay Area legend Stacy Ross in Sarah Treem's crucially insightful play When We Were Young and Unafraid, which looks at the dangerous world abused women lived in before Roe v Wade, and of course long before #MeToo. Young and Unafraid is a quintessential Custom Made title, as many of our past productions have used historical stories as metaphor for our current political battles," Katz explains.

"It's been an amazing journey, and we hope that this eclectic season launches twenty more seasons of moving, thoughtful, and intimate theatre at Custom Made."

Custom Made Theatre Company proudly presents its 2018-2019 Season:

The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?

by Edward Albee (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)

directed by Paul Stout

Sept 20 - Oct 20

Winner of the 2002 Tony Award for Best Play, The Goat is about a profoundly unsettling subject: the irrational, confounding, and convention-thwarting nature of love. Martin-a hugely successful architect who has just turned fifty-leads an ostensibly ideal life with his loving wife and gay teenage son. But when he confides to his best friend that he is also in love with Sylvia, he sets in motion events that will destroy his family and leave his life in tatters. Albee's boundary-pushing play is puzzling, powerful, bawdy, and disturbing.

In The Heights

Music and Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton)

Book by Quiara Alegría Hudes

Directed by Nikki Meñez

Nov 8 - Dec 15

Before there was Hamilton, there was In the Heights, which tells the universal story of a vibrant community in New York's Washington Heights neighborhood. It's a community on the brink of change, full of hopes, dreams and pressures, where the biggest struggles can be deciding which traditions you take with you, and which ones you leave behind. Custom Made will take this Tony Award winning musical and reduce it to its intimate stage, empathizing the richness of the communities that make up our cities

REGIONAL PREMIERE

When We Were Young and Unafraid

By Sarah Treem (Showtime's The Affair, The Here and Now)

Directed by Tracy Ward

Jan 13 - Feb 9

Stacy Ross returns to Custom Made to star in this vital play, set the early 1970's, where Agnes (Ross) has turned her quiet bed and breakfast into one of the few spots where victims of domestic violence can seek refuge. But to Agnes' dismay, her latest runaway, Mary Anne, is beginning to influence Agnes' college-bound daughter Penny. As the drums of a feminist revolution grow louder outside her tiny world, Agnes is forced to confront her own presumptions about the women she's spent her life trying to help. When We Were Young and Unafraid reminds us that the path to today's rights were perilous and their future is not guaranteed, while telling a personal tale of change and redemption.

REGIONAL PREMIERE

American Hero

By Bess Wohl (Small Mouth Sounds)

Directed by Allie Moss

March 7 - April 6

A comic look at what's left of the modern American Dream. At a Toasted Subs franchise in the local mall, three up-and-coming "sandwich artists"-a teenager, a single mom, and a downsized refugee from corporate banking-are perfecting the mustard-to-cheese ratio according to the company manual. But when the owner stops providing the resources to make those perfect lunches, they become unlikely allies in a post-recession world. American Hero is a supersized dark comedy about life, liberty, and the pursuit of sandwiches.

REGIONAL PREMIERE

Life Sucks

By Aaron Posner (Stupid F*cking Bird)

Sort-of-adapted from Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov

Directed by Brian Katz

May 2- June 1

In this brash reworking of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, a group of old friends, ex-lovers, estranged in-laws, and lifelong enemies gather to grapple with life's thorniest questions-and each other. What could possibly go wrong? Incurably lustful and lonely, hapless and hopeful, these seven souls collide and stumble their way towards a new understanding that Life Sucks! Or does it? Posner's follow-up to his Stupid F*cking Bird (seen at SF Playhouse) is Mel Brooks meets Chekhov: lowbrow, dirty, passionate, and unexpectedly tender.

Passion

Lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim, Book by James Lapine

Directed by Stuart Bousel

June 20 - July 27

Bold, unexpected and thrilling, Passion is one of Stephen Sondheim's most emotional works. Intimate, raw, erotic and dark, it explores universal, yet often unspoken, truths. Passion is set at a remote military outpost in 1863 Italy, where a handsome army captain, separated from his beautiful - but married - mistress, is forced to re-evaluate his beliefs about love when he becomes the object of the obsessive, unrelenting passions of Fosca, his Colonel's plain, sickly cousin. Many consider this haunting, intensely emotional one-act chamber opera to be Sondheim's deepest and most powerful evening of musical theatre.