Ensemble Theatre Company of Santa Barbara Reveals 2024-25 Season

Ensemble Theatre Company of Santa Barbara has announced its 2024-2025 season: “Legends and Legacies.” Featuring an electrifying lineup of timeless classics and contemporary masterpieces sure to captivate audiences!  Opening with the recent Off-Broadway hit comedy, Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, followed by a celebration of four musical legends in, Million Dollar Quartet. In February, one of the most iconic tales of all time, written 425 years ago by William Shakespeare, Hamletwill hit the stage of The New Vic with a modern feel. Spring will have the incomparable Hershey Felder performing his amazing show about one of America’s greatest composers, George Gershwin, in George Gershwin Alone. And, ETC’s 46th season Will Close with Justice, about the first female justices appointed to the highest court in our nation.

“In planning the 46th season, I was inspired by the idea of legends and legacies, and I found myself contemplating the hallmarks that make a legend or legendary tale,” said Scott DeVine, ETC’s executive director. “Certainly, some legendary tales involve such profound imagination that you wonder how someone came up with the idea.  But it’s the individual legends that stood out to me, as many of them never realized the impact they would have on the world in their own lifetimes. My hope for this season is that audiences will experience these stories and consider the mark they will leave on their own families, community, and world. As a theater community, we have an obligation to tell new stories of inspiration, while keeping timeless classics alive for future generations.  For ETC, I believe our legacy will center around our ability to continue bringing high-quality theater to Santa Barbara that entertains long-time theater lovers while attracting new theater goers who will discover their own passion for this four-thousand-year-old art form while experiencing one of these legendary tales.”

ETC’s 2024-25 season begins with the recent Off-Broadway hit, Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors by Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen. Ever wondered what would happen if you took Bram Stoker’s legendary vampire tale and put in into a blender with the comedic influences of Mel Brooks, and Monty Python? That’s just what happens in this lightning-fast, laugh-out-loud 90-minute quick-change magical romp. Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors runs October 10 - 27, 2024.

Next, the Tony® Award-nominated musical, Million Dollar Quartet, by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux. Step back in time to December 4, 1956 for one of the greatest jam sessions ever recorded when a twist of fate brought together four music icons: Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins. Experience the magic of their impromptu jam session as they redefine rock 'n' roll history, featuring an incredible score of rock ‘n’ roll, gospel, R&B and country hits, performed live onstage by world-class actor/musicians. Showcasing hit songs including “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Walk the Line,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” “Hound Dog,” and more. Million Dollar Quartet runs December 5 – 22, 2024.

The most famous thriller ever written is given a visceral, frightening, and moving new modern dress production when it hits the stage of The New Vic in February. ETC’s modern production of the timeless classic, Hamlet, will reinvent Shakespeare’s tragedy for the 21st century, drawing new resonance from this 425-year-old play’s investigation of family, madness, murder, and forgiveness. Young Hamlet returns home from university to find his father dead, his inheritance stolen, and his mother remarried to his uncle. When the ghost of his father returns from the grave and pressures his son into a mission of revenge, Hamlet jump starts a chain of events that will redefine his relationship to his parents, his mortality, his nation, and himself.  Hamlet runs February, 6 – 23, 2025.                                                                                                                                                   

ETC welcomes the incomparable Hershey Felder as George Gershwin Alone in April. The story of America’s great composer who, with the groundbreaking “Rhapsody in Blue,” made a “Lady out of Jazz.” The show incorporates the composer's best-known songs from “The Man I Love” and “Someone to Watch Over Me”, through the hits of An American In Paris and Porgy and Bess, to a complete performance of “Rhapsody In Blue”. George Gershwin was born in 1898 to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn. Together, he and his brother, Ira, wrote standards such as “The Man I Love,” “Someone to Watch Over Me,” “Embraceable You,” “Fascinating Rhythm,” “I Got Rhythm,” “’S Wonderful” and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” His groundbreaking opera, Porgy and Bess, is now considered an American classic. All told, George Gershwin wrote more than 1,000 songs for the stage and screen as well as works for the opera house and the symphony orchestra. In 1937, Gershwin died of an undiagnosed brain tumor at the age of 38, never knowing how famous and beloved he and his work would become. George Gershwin Alone runs April 3 - 20, 2025.

The 46th season concludes with the Southern California premiere of Justice, by Lauren Gunderson. Justice explores the first women on the U.S. Supreme Court – Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor – at the height of their power. Following the fraught confirmation process of Justice Sotomayor, we uncover the true sisterhood of these three iconic Americans as they inspire, challenge, and usher in the next generation of changemakers and trailblazers in American jurisprudence, while fighting private battles of their own. They confront and comfort each other about equal justice under the law, legal strategy, civic responsibility, as well as husbands, motherhood, kids, dreams, and sorrows, all while setting a new course for our country and the world. Justice runs June 5 – 22, 2025.

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