San Francisco Playhouse Announces 2018-19 Season

San Francisco Playhouse (Artistic Director Bill English; Producing Director Susi Damilano) announced today the six plays that will comprise its 2018-19 Mainstage Season. Opening the season with a play commissioned and developed by the Playhouse, You Mean to Do Me Harm by Christopher Chen, the company strengthens its commitment to new voices in theatre. The Playhouse's three-play Sandbox Series devoted to developing new works will be announced at a later date.

"Theatre is all about connection-to viewpoints that are different from our own, to the community we live in, and to ourselves," said Bill English, Artistic Director. "Theatre provides a space that allows us to be brave and risk sharing in the lives of the characters on stage. The plays we have selected for our 2018-19 Season emphasize this importance of connection: from stories of self-discovery to journeys of cultural and historical understanding."

Mainstage

The San Francisco Playhouse 2018-19 Season will begin with the World Premiere of You Mean to Do Me Harm, originally commissioned and performed in the Playhouse Sandbox Series, followed by an innovative take on the magical musical Mary Poppins, presented during the holiday season. The New Year will kick off with King of the Yees, Lauren Yee's family comedy about San Francisco's Chinatown. The Mainstage season will continue with the Bay Area Premiere of Dipika Guha's Yoga Play that takes us on a journey toward enlightenment in a world determined to sell it, followed by the Bay Area Premiere of Significant Other, Joshua Harmon's Broadway hit about romantic yearning. The season will conclude with the ever-resonant Tony Award-winning musical Cabaret by Kander, Ebb and Masteroff.

YOU MEAN TO DO ME HARM

September 18 to November 3, 2018

World Premiere by Christopher Chen
Directed by Bill English

An innocuous comment at a dinner of two interracial couples leads to a surreal escalation of Cold War-style paranoia. You Mean to Do Me Harm is a psychological exploration of Chinese and American foreign relations, and of the personal relations we hold most dear. Originally produced as part of last season's Sandbox series, this captivating new play closely examines the different perceptions we operate under and the difficulty of setting our own boundaries.

PRESS OPENING: SATURDAY, September 22nd, 2018

MARY POPPINS

November 14, 2018 to January 5, 2019

Based on the stories of P.L. Travers and the Walt Disney Film
Original Music and lyrics by the Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman
Book by Julian Fellowes
New songs and additional Music and Lyrics by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe
Co-created by Cameron Mackintosh

Directed by Susi Damilano

The entitled children of the stern Mr. Banks have made short work of a string of nannies. When the tattered sorceress Mary Poppins arrives on their doorstep, she must use a combination of magic and common sense to engage the children to drop their silver spoons and lead their deadened dad to kite-flying redemption. A new take on a classic tale, this musical will truly make you believe that anything can happen if you let it-and want to sing "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from the chimney tops!

PRESS OPENING: WEDNESDAY, November 22nd, 2018

KING OF THE YEES

January 16 to March 2, 2019

Bay Area Premiere by Lauren Yee

For nearly 20 years, playwright Lauren Yee's father Larry has been a driving force in the Yee Family Association, a seemingly obsolescent Chinese American men's club formed 150 years ago in the wake of the Gold Rush. But when her father goes missing, Lauren must plunge into the rabbit hole of San Francisco Chinatown and confront a world both foreign and familiar. At once bitingly hilarious and heartbreakingly honest, King of the Yees is an epic joyride across cultural, national, and familial borders that explores what it truly means to be a Yee.

PRESS OPENING: WEDNESDAY, January 23rd, 2019

YOGA PLAY

March 12 to April 20, 2019

Bay Area Premiere by Dipika Guha

At the top of their game, yoga apparel giant Jojomon is hit with a terrible scandal that sends them into freefall. Desperate to recover their earnings and reputation, newly hired CEO Joan stakes everything on an unlikely plan. Yoga Play is a journey towards enlightenment in a world determined to sell it.

PRESS OPENING: SATURDAY, March 18th, 2019

SIGNIFICANT OTHER

April 30 to June 15, 2019

Bay Area Premiere by Joshua Harmon

Jordan, a Jewish gay twentysomething New Yorker who works in advertising, is on a search to find Mr. Right. While surrounding himself with his close group of girlfriends, he learns that the only thing harder than looking for love is supporting the loved ones around you. This funny and heartwarming play asks us what stories we want to pass on-and who we want to share them with.

PRESS OPENING: SATURDAY, May 4th, 2019

CABARET

June 26 through August 31, 2019

Music by John Kander, Lyrics by Fred Ebb, Book by Joe Masteroff

Based on John Van Druten's play I Am a Camera, which was adapted from the short novel Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood

Directed by Bill English

Cliff Bradshaw, an American author working on a novel in pre-WWII Berlin, falls in love with the vivacious Sally Bowles, a singer at the local Kit Kat Klub. Their dream-like romance is tested by the political upheaval that changes their lives dramatically. Even after fifty years, this classic Tony Award-winning musical remains painfully prophetic, reminding us through Sally and the Emcee's lost souls what horrors humans are capable of, lest we ever forget.

PRESS OPENING: WEDNESDAY, July 3rd, 2019

Sandbox Series
The Playhouse's award-winning Sandbox Series of World Premieres will begin its ninth season of new plays in 2018. The lineup for Sandbox Series will be released in a separate announcement this spring.

About San Francisco Playhouse
Founded by Bill English and Susi Damilano in 2003, San Francisco Playhouse has been described by the New York Times as "a company that stages some of the most consistently high-quality work around, and deemed "ever adventurous" by the Bay Area News Group. Located in the heart of the Union Square Theater District, San Francisco Playhouse is the city's premier Off-Broadway company, an intimate alternative to the larger more traditional Union Square theater fare. San Francisco Playhouse provides audiences the opportunity to experience professional theater with top-notch actors and world-class design in a setting where they are close to the action. the company has received multiple awards for overall productions, acting, and design, including the SF Weekly Best Theatre Award and the Bay Guardian's Best Off-Broadway Theatre Award, as well as three consecutive Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards for Best Entire Production in the Bay Area (2016-2018). KQED/NPR recently described the company: "San Francisco Playhouse is one of the few theaters in the Bay Area that has a mission that actually shows up on stage. Artistic director Bill English's commitment to empathy as a guiding philosophical and aesthetic force is admirable and by living that mission, fascinating things happen onstage." San Francisco Playhouse is committed to providing a creative home and inspiring environment where actors, directors, writers, designers, and theater lovers converge to create and experience dramatic works that celebrate the human spirit.

Season Subscriptions are available immediately online at www.sfplayhouse.org, or by calling the box office at 415-677-9596. Packages range from $165 to $440 for Premium Orchestra seating, with savings averaging over 40% off single ticket rates. Single Tickets will go on sale to the public in summer 2018.