STAGE KISS, DOGFIGHT & More Set for San Francisco Playhouse's 2015-16 Season

San Francisco Playhouse Artistic Director Bill English and Producing Director Susi Damilano announced selections today for the 2015-2016 Mainstage season. Three additional world premieres will be announced soon as part of their Sandbox Series of new plays.

"Announcing a new season is always an exhilarating and terrifying experience," said Bill English, Artistic Director. "As I looked over the explosive and thought-provoking titles we will present, I thought to paraphrase the famous game 'Truth or Dare' into 'Truth AND Dare.' Each one of these plays presents us with a difficult truth, a fresh truth, a complicated truth, and dares us to change and to change the world around us. They dare us to reconsider our world view. This has always been the job of playwrights-prophetic voices who relentlessly distill fresh truths that challenge us to transform ourselves and our community for the better."

San Francisco Playhouse 2015-2016 Season includes two west coast premieres, two musical revivals, and one Bay Area premiere-as well as one play which will be announced soon. Kicking off the mainstage season is Dogfight, a musical comedy sensation and San Francisco premiere. Sarah Ruhl's Stage Kiss follows, examining what happens when former lovers share a stage. The New Year will usher in Colossal, Andrew Hinderaker's genre-defying play about football and dance. Our exploration of difficult truths will continue with another daring play in March, to be announced soon. Springtime will bring with it Red Velvet, a play that won the Most Promising Playwright London Critics Circle Award for playwright Lolita Chakrabarti, followed by the crime noir musical City of Angels, winner of six Tony Awards.

Continuing to build on the momentum of our Award-Winning Sandbox Series, we will add a third show to the lineup, soon to be announced.

Founded in 2003 and boasting 2500 subscribers, the only mid-sized professional venue in downtown San Francisco, San Francisco Playhouse has quickly filled the need for a broad-based intimate, professional presenter of edgy premieres and re-invigorated classics.

Ticket Information
Season Subscriptions are available immediately online at www.sfplayhouse.org, or by calling the box office at 415-677-9596. Packages range from $130 to $360 with savings averaging over 40% off single ticket rates which range from $30 to $125 each. Single Tickets will go on sale to the public on June 1, 2014.

The 2015-2016 Mainstage Season: Truth and Dare

Dogfight - A Love Story
San Francisco Premiere
Music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul; book by Peter Duchan
based on the Warner Brothers film and screenplay by Bob Comfort
Directed by Bill English, Choreography by Keith Pinto, Music Director Ben Johnson September 22rd to November 7th, opens September 26th.

Eddie and Rose: What happens when trouble meets tender? Three young marines are going to war. But before they go they've got one last night. One night to party and play, to tease and taunt. Eddie takes on a cruel bet with his buddies, and Rose is his victim. But she's more than he bargained for. What's Eddie going to do when Rose rewrites the rules and his last night turns into a lesson on the power of compassion?

Stage Kiss - One part life, two parts art. Shake well.
Regional Premiere
Written by Sarah Ruhl, Directed by Susi Damilano
November 17th to January 9th, opens November 21, 2015

Art imitates Life imitates Art. And the dance continues. Prepare yourself for a frothy farce mixing stage drama and backstage lives into an intoxicating delight. This semi-romantic comedy delivers the laughs, tripping lightly through a playground of desire and sexual fantasy. Is this kiss for real?

Colossal - When football and dance collide
West Coast Premiere
Written by Andrew Hinderaker, Directed by Jon Tracy
January 19th to March 5th, opens January 23, 2016.

When football and dance collide, you get more than you bargained for. Start with four full quarters and a half-time show, complete with a dance company, a drum corps, and a fully-padded cast: what have you got? Grace and violence, victory and defeat. Is football a metaphor for life, or just the bread and circuses of our time? Colossal is an epic event that impossibly merges the worlds of football and dance, loss and recovery, and the toughest act of all: being yourself.

TBA - something wonderful to be discovered soon!
March 15th to April 30th, opens March 19, 2016

The stage is empty. The lights are out. Is this a mistake? Or a newly discovered play by Beckett? Will anything ever happen? How long will you wait to find out? How much did you pay for those tickets, anyway, and will your date ever forgive you?

Red Velvet - The Truth Changes Everything
West Coast Premiere
Written by Lolita Chakrabarti, Directed by Margo Hall
May 10th to June 25th, opens May 14, 2016

True story. London, 1833. No black man has ever starred on a British stage-not even as Othello-until tonight. Ira Aldridge, a young black American, breaks more than the color barrier as he battles the entrenched social and theatrical norms of his day, going on to become a living legend, lauded from the footlights of Stratford to the halls of Saint Petersburg.

City of Angels - Two, Two, Two Shows in One
Musical Revival
Book by Larry Gelbart, Music by Cy Coleman, Lyrics by David Zippel
Vocal arrangements by Cy Coleman and Yaron Gershovsky
Directed by Bill English
July 5th to September 17th, opens July 9. 2015

Double your pleasure with this musical comedy that sports two scores, two plots, and if you're lucky ("Do you feel lucky, punk?" Oh wait, wrong plot.), you might even get two happy endings. Take a trip to the '40s when Film Noir ruled the silver screen, and delight as the tales of a struggling Hollywood writer and the filming of his latest noir oeuvre unspool. Where his leading character keeps speaking back to him and the femme fatales won't stay on the screen!