Fiasco Theater announces 2021-22 season

The season includes reimagined versions of classic plays and new works, including multiple productions that allow audiences into the creative development process.

Fiasco Theater has announced its 2021-22 season, including a mix of new works and classic plays. Its fall offerings include two one-night events and one three-night event designed to let the audience in on the company's creative process.

The first show, The Lucky Chance by Aphra Behn, is part of Fiasco's Open Your Ears reading series. The goal of the production is to explore texts and test out performance ideas to see how an audience responds. Emily Young will direct this reading of Behn's proto-feminist restoration comedy from 1688, which takes place September 23 at Theatre Row.

Fiasco's next offering, Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, will be performed on October 7 at Theatre Row. Brecht's play is a morality parable about a poor girl who adopts a young baby and mothers it better than its rich biological parents. The production is part of Fiasco's Some of Its Parts series, which aims to shine a light on the development process of a show. Rather than presenting a full, polished version of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Paul Coffey will present portions of the show, sharing music, design, casting, and movement ideas.

Next, Fiasco will present Aditi Brennan Kapil's Imogen Says Nothing at the Connelly Theater from November 17-19. It is being shown as the inaugural production in Fiasco's Without a Net series, in which a show is performed after only two weeks of table work and rehearsal. The leading title character in Imogen Says Nothing originally only appears in the first folio of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and has no lines. Here, she is the center of the story, and the play is a feminist work that examines the voices cut from the theatrical canon.

Another installment in the Some of Its Parts series, Diamond Alice, will go up in January 2022. The musical, about the the historical 40 Elephants Gang in post-WWI London, features a book by Ben Steinfeld and music and lyrics by Alexander Gemignani.

Later that month, Fiasco will present Shakespeare's Hamlet in collaboration with Deaf West Theatre, featuring both deaf and hearing actors. It will be co-directed by Alexandria Wailes, who associate choreographed and performed in Deaf West's Spring Awakening on Broadway, and Fiasco co-artistic director Jessie Austrian.

Finally, in March, the season will close with director Stephen Buescher's reimagining of A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, which will incorporate improvisation, music, and choreographic movement.

Further details, including dates for the 2022 productions and castings, have yet to be announced.