PlayMakers Repertory Company will take audiences from the bright stages of Broadway to the deep confines of the forest and back again with its 2014-15 season.
The new season, announced Friday, features six main stage plays, such as William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Arthur Miller’s adapted play, “An Enemy of the People”, as well as James Lapine’s and Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.”
The plays were chosen out of hundreds of scripts that were read throughout the year by both PlayMakers’ producing artistic director Joseph Haj and associate artistic director Jeffrey Meanza.
“We’re looking to find work that is, in a general word, relevant,” Meanza said.
“Whether that’s a classic play or a contemporary play, we try to understand who our patrons are and what the University environment is like, so we’re looking for plays that will fit well in that, regardless of genre.”
Fitting the plays into the season’s budget is also a large factor in their selection, according to managing director Hannah Grannemann.
“It’s kind of like alchemy,” she said. “But you start with a couple of shows, and you kind of just stick your way through it and focus on what the audience will find artistically interesting and what you can bring to the audience financially.”
Haj and Meanza consult with various groups within PlayMakers when choosing plays to produce, juggling elements such as size and scale of the plays, opportunity for resident and outside actors and budgeting constraints.
Haj said these multi-pronged components characterize PlayMakers’s mission of bringing a well-rounded repertoire to its audiences.
