triblive.com: On Wednesday, the new company announced its first full season, which will run throughout 2027. The season includes seven productions — one of which will be announced in the future — along with a “spirited holiday celebration,” education programs and more.
5 comments:
As someone with no relevant experience or qualifications, I think this seems like a pretty well balanced season! Some new, some old, some eternal classics and some cool experimental work. I'm a little interested in seeing a map of how many regional theatres are doing Cabaret and/or Les Mis, because I've heard of a couple. People respond to the world around them in similar ways, even if they may not realize it initially. I did some additional research and found 2 interesting things
1. There is going to be a seventh show in Confluence's inaugural season (as mentioned briefly in the article), but “the licensing isn’t quite set yet.”
2. Interim Artistic Director Kyle Haden described the season as “like a great dinner party, bringing together guests who might not normally share a table,” which is code for "there's no theme" in my book.
Given what Confluence is going for this season, though, I share Susan Tsu's belief that it's probably for the best that City Theatre did not join them, lol. Still, this looks pretty fun, though the lack of Benedum hurts my soul ):
I am always a bit nervous at mergers as there will be something lost when two organizations merge into one. Therefore, I was happy to see that Confluence got off the mark with an array of season offerings that feel like both parents of the merged entities. The CLO part of the merger provides the crowd-pleasers – Les Miserables and Cabaret, while the Public Theatre offers Purpose, a Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning show that Pittsburgh audiences have not seen before. Staging "Les Mis" and "Cabaret" in quick succession over the summer is quite an ambitious move as both shows are rather weighty musicals with themes of individuals struggling with the times of history. My most anticipated production is the Matt and Ben in the Greer Cabaret theatre due to the interesting premise. Flex tickets for four and more shows were a nice idea. Overall, time will tell whether the unified entity will continue to take risks with its programming or resort to sure titles.
Its been very interesting watching this process happening in Pittsburgh throughout the last few years. There has been a lot of back and forth that I have heard about and not all of the things are positive. I think it can be super hard to find compromises and solutions to something like a merger. Because everyone feels so personal about where they work and the things that theyve done, it might prove challenging to make sucha drastic change and have your theatre dissolve into a bigger one. I hope that just because confluence theatre has now grown and is starting it’s season, there will still be places for people to work and jobs that people can keep. I think this is what would scare me the most about merging is that my jobs would get smaller or that they would stop existing at all. This new season looks super fun and interesting. I am especially excited that they are also doing Matt and Ben like we did last year. I would love to hear more about this performance in August.
Overall, I think that the Confluence Theater of Pittsburgh’s first season shows a lot of promise for the up-and-coming company. I think that classic options such as “Les Miserables” and “Cabaret” is a great way to showcase the all-out production skills of the company. I also think the large amount of subscription options provides a very accessible way for theatergoers of Pittsburgh to see a variety of shows by the company. Additionally, the run time of all the shows is fairly long, which surprises me as the company is very new. I wonder what the Shakespeare Monologue is, as I haven’t heard of it before. Finally, I am assuming that the company will be the new hosts of the Gene Kelly awards, as that was also listed in their season. Overall, I am already impressed with the Confluence Theater of Pittsburgh and am looking forward to seeing what their productions will look like.
the confluence theatre announcing their season is a big push forward as multiple theatres had to combine together to avoid closing. This is a big push in the right direction for the management teams to come together and produce a season. For producing multiple well known plays and musicals they will guarantee ticket sales for these shows to support the rest of their development work.
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