Live Arts Theater‘s 34th anniversary season includes a powerhouse lineup of four plays, a holiday musical and new works festival for its 2024/25 VOYAGES Season.
The season opens with Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s “An Iliad” performed in rotating repertory with “What the Constitution Means to Me” by Heidi Schreck, followed by a holiday offering — and the return of former Live Arts Artistic Director John Gibson to direct — the musical “The Wizard of Oz.”
Live Arts presents the Virginia premiere of “Marys Seacole” by Jackie Sibblies Drury, followed by Horton Foote’s classic “The Trip to Bountiful.” The VOYAGES Season closes with round three of the Live Arts Waterworks festival, a month-long celebration of new theatrical works that brought in more than 600 submissions and engaged hundreds of volunteers during its second year.
“The plays in Live Arts 2024/25 VOYAGES Season share a tingling feeling of adventure, stepping forward into the unknown future and back into the known past,” says Live Arts Artistic Director Susan E. Evans. “We’ll visit ancient Trojan warriors and our country’s
founding fathers; take a journey to a place you can’t get to by a boat or a train, far, far away, behind the moon, beyond the rain; sail through the centuries and around the globe; and end up at a home beloved in memory, now quite changed.”
Subscribers to the 2024/25 VOYAGES Season get substantial savings of up to 20 percent off affordable single ticket prices, premium seating, and other benefits. Subscription options include discounted packages for educators of all kinds and theater-lovers under 30
years old. As an added bonus, all subscribers now enjoy extra perks, including a 20 percent discount on additional single tickets for Live Arts shows. Single ticket prices range from $28 to $35 with discounts available for students and senior citizens.
Season ticket packages ($110-$275) are on sale now through the Live Arts Box Office online or by phone at 434-977-4177 x123, or online at livearts.org/tix.
Alternating performances will be held September 27 to October 27, 2024 of “An Iliad” and September 28 to October 26, 2024 of “What the Constitution Means to Me.”
“An Iliad,” written by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, and directed by David Minton is a modern retelling of Homer’s classic about war and rage that resonates today.
Heidi Schreck wrote “What the Constitution Means to Me,” which is directed by Cady West Garey and a winner of 2019 and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for Best New American Play. Hilarious, touching, inspiring and thought-provoking, Schreck takes audiences back to her teenage years when she traveled the country giving speeches about the Constitution at American Legion halls to pay for college. Her very personal journey blends with stories of her mother and grandmother, and is dissected into the document penned by our “founding fathers” more than 200 years ago. Act Two forefronts a live debate: Should we abolish the United State Constitution?
L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz” blows onto the Live Arts stage with Music and lyrics by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, directed by John Gibson and with musical direction by Lance Brenner from November 22 to December 15, 2024. The oh-so-catchy musical score from the 1939 film is featured in an enchanting adaption that sweeps audiences from Kansas to over the rainbow. Gibson brings his uniquely personal vision to 0Baum’s fantastic tale about young Dorothy Gale, her dear friends, Professor Marvel and
the yellow brick-laden road they travel together.
“Marys Seacole,” written by Jackie Sibblies Drury and directed by Aiyana Straughn is performed in Virginia for the first time at Live Arts from February 14, 2025 to March 2, 2025. Based on the real-life Mary Seacole, 19th century Jamaican nurse, adventurer and
entrepreneur, the play sets sail on a kaleidoscopic voyage across oceans, time-shifting through the centuries. The audience meets many Marys – a West Indian nanny atching her charge on a Manhattan playground, at nursing school practicing triage; at a contemporary nursing home; Mary on the Crimean battlefield; and more Marys everywhere and every-when, else. The play is the tale of an extraordinary woman, that chronicles the strength and empathy of all women through the centuries paid to care.
“The Trip to Bountiful” is written by Horton Foote and directed by Susan E. Evans, and will run March 21, 2025 to April 12, 2025. A tender and deeply poignant play by one of the most celebrated American playwrights of the 20th century, the story focuses on Carrie Watts cooped up in a two-bedroom Houston apartment with her weary middle-aged son and his bossy wife. Homesick
and determined, Carrie sets out on a bus trip pilgrimage back to the small town of Bountiful, Texas, a place precious in her memories, one last time.
New Works on Water Street curated by New Works Director Adrienne Oliver will bring the 2025 Waterworks Festival from May 16, 2025 to Jun 1, 2025. The festival’s third year continues to celebrate new theatrical voices with a three-week festival, putting the playwright at center stage and diversifying the stories told on the Charlottesville stage. The festival spotlights several pieces developed throughout the season.
Live Arts was founded in 1990 to forge theater and community with the power of more than 1,000 volunteers. Live Arts is a national model for engaged community theater, known for exceptionally high caliber productions, provocative programming and for supporting new works.
Live Arts Theater is at 123 E. Water St., Charlottesville.
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Rebecca Barnabi
