The Play Selection Committee is pleased to announce the following slate of shows.  These shows will be voted on during the Spring Membership Meeting at 2:00 PM on Sunday, April 19th and will determine SCCT’s 2016 Season.

Our slate includes six distinct categories, each of which contains three carefully considered shows.  The Committee will make a short presentation about each category and show during the meeting, and then each category will be voted on individually.

Below, you will find a list of categories, shows, and information about each show.

We hope to see you at the meeting!

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February Musical

American Idiot
Urinetown
The Wedding Singer

May Play

Barefoot in the Park
Blithe Spirit
The Philadelphia Story

June Musical

Crazy for You
The Drowsy Chaperone
The Sound of Music

July Play

Frost/Nixon
The Heidi Chronicles
Other Desert Cities

August Musical

Disney’s High School Musical
The Secret Garden
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown

October Musical

Company
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Sweet Charity

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American Idiot

Book and Lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong
Book by Michael Mayer
Music and Lyrics by Green Day
Cast size:  Large

Green Day’s powerhouse album is brought to life in this electric-rock musical of youthful disillusion.

The two-time TONY Award-winning hit musical American Idiot, based on Green Day’s GRAMMY Award-winning multi-platinum album, boldly takes the American musical where it’s never gone before. This high-octane show includes every song from Green Day’s album American Idiot, as well as several songs from follow-up release, 21st Century Breakdown.

Johnny, Tunny and Will struggle to find meaning in a post-9/11 world. When the three disgruntled men flee the constraints of their hometown for the thrills of city life, their paths are quickly estranged when Tunny enters the armed forces, Michael is called back home to attend familial responsibilities, and Johnny’s attention becomes divided by a seductive love interest and a hazardous new friendship. An energy-fueled rock opera, American Idiot, features little dialogue and instead relies on the lyrics from Green Day’s groundbreaking album to execute the story line.

American Idiot is a high concept show with strong social messages and endless creative possibilities. It will surely add an enticing edge to any theatre’s season.

Urinetown

Music by Mark Hollmann
Lyrics by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis
Book by Greg Kotis
Cast Size:  Medium

A side-splitting send-up of greed, love, revolution (and musicals!), in a time when water is worth its weight in gold.

Winner of three TONY Awards, three Outer Critic’s Circle Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, and two Obie Awards, Urinetown is a hilarious musical satire of the legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, populism, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, municipal politics and musical theatre itself! Hilariously funny and touchingly honest, Urinetown provides a fresh perspective of one of America’s greatest art forms.

In a Gotham-like city, a terrible water shortage, caused by a 20-year drought, has led to a government-enforced ban on private toilets. The citizens must use public amenities, regulated by a single malevolent company that profits by charging admission for one of humanity’s most basic needs. Amid the people, a hero decides he’s had enough, and plans a revolution to lead them all to freedom!

Inspired by the works of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, Urinetown is an irreverently humorous satire in which no one is safe from scrutiny. Praised for reinvigorating the very notion of what a musical could be, Urinetown catapults the “comedic romp” into the new millennium with its outrageous perspective, wickedly modern wit, and sustained ability to produce gales of unbridled laughter.

The Wedding Singer

Music by Matthew Sklar
Book by Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy
Lyrics by Chad Beguelin
Based on the New Line Cinema film written by Tim Herlihy
Cast Size:  Medium

The year is 1985 and the place is New Jersey when a wannabe rock star (professional wedding singer) is left at the altar and finally changes his tune.

The Wedding Singer takes us back to a time when hair was big, greed was good, collars were up, and a wedding singer might just be the coolest guy in the room. Based on the hit Adam Sandler movie, The Wedding Singer’s sparkling new score does for the ’80s what Hairspray did for the ’60s. Just say yes to the most romantic musical in 20 years.

It’s 1985 and rock-star wannabe Robbie Hart is New Jersey’s favorite wedding singer. He’s the life of the party, until his own fiancée leaves him at the altar. Shot through the heart, Robbie makes every wedding as disastrous as his own. Enter Julia, a winsome waitress who wins his affection. As luck would have it, Julia is about to be married to a Wall Street shark, and unless Robbie can pull off the performance of a decade, the girl of his dreams will be gone forever.

The Wedding Singer features a large chorus with many featured roles for actors who sing, and dancers who act. This show works perfectly as a high school’s featured musical or as the highlight of any regional season.

Barefoot in the Park

By Neil Simon
Cast Size:  4M, 5W

Paul and Corie Bratter are newlyweds in every sense of the word. He’s a straight-as-an-arrow lawyer and she’s a free spirit always looking for the latest kick. Their new apartment is her most recent find-too expensive with bad plumbing and in need of a paint job. After a six day honeymoon, they get a surprise visit from Corie’s loopy mother and decide to play matchmaker during a dinner with their neighbor-in-the-attic Velasco, where everything that can go wrong, does. Paul just doesn’t understand Corie, as she sees it. He’s too staid, too boring and she just wants him to be a little more spontaneous, running “barefoot in the park” would be a start…

“A bubbling, rib-tickling comedy.” – The New York Times

“Critic weeps joyfully…I don’t think anybody stopped laughing while the curtain was up last evening.” – New York Daily News

Blithe Spirit

By Noël Coward
Cast Size:  2M, 5W

The smash comedy hit of the London and Broadway stages, this much-revived classic from the playwright of Private Lives offers up fussy, cantakerous novelist Charles Condomine, re-married but haunted (literally) by the ghost of his late first wife, the clever and insistent Elvira who is called up by a visiting “happy medium”, one Madame Arcati. As the (worldly and un-) personalities clash, Charles’ current wife Ruth is accidentally killed, “passes over”, joins Elvira and the two “blithe spirits” haunt the hapless Charles into perpetuity.

“Can still keep an audience in a state of tickled contentment” – Ben Brantley, The New York Times, 2009

“A world-class comedy” – TheatreMania.com, 2009

The Philadelphia Story

by Philip Barry
Cast Size:  9M, 6W

This Broadway hit starred Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord, of the Philadelphia Lords, a headstrong and spoiled daughter of the privileged. Divorced from C.K. Dexter Haven, she is engaged to a successful young snob. A society weekly sends a reporter and female photographer to cover the wedding arrangements. Tracy finds herself growing interested in the reporter Mike Connor, and following the pre-wedding bash, they take a moonlight swim and are then surprised by Dexter and the fiancé. The following morning her intended smugly forgives her, enraging Tracy, who breaks off the engagement. Connor offers to marry her, but she turns him down and remarries Dexter, the real love of her life, after all.

Crazy for You

Music and Lyrics by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin
Book by Ken Ludwig
Co-Conception by Ken Ludwig and Mike Ockrent
Inspired by Material by Guy Bolton and John McGowan
Cast Size:  Large

Crazy for You is the story of Bobby Child, a well-to-do 1930′s playboy whose dream in life is to dance. And despite the serious efforts of his mother and soon-to-be ex-fiancée, Bobby achieves his dream! Memorable Gershwin tunes include I Can’t Be Bothered Now, Bidin’ My Time, I Got Rhythm, Naughty Baby, They Can’t Take That Away from Me, But Not for Me, Nice Work if You Can Get It, Embraceable You and Someone to Watch Over Me. It’s a high energy comedy which includes mistaken identity, plot twists, fabulous dance numbers and classic Gershwin music.

The Drowsy Chaperone

Music and Lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison
Book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar
Cast Size:  Medium

When a die-hard theatre fan plays his favorite cast album, the characters come to life in this hilarious musical farce.

Winner of 5 TONY Awards (including Best Book and Best Original Score), The Drowsy Chaperone is a loving send-up of the Jazz age musical featuring one show-stopping song and dance number after another.

With the houselights down, a man in a chair appears on stage and puts on his favorite record: the cast recording of a fictitious 1928 musical. The recording comes to life and The Drowsy Chaperone begins as the man in the chair looks on. Mix in two lovers on the eve of their wedding, a bumbling best man, a desperate theatre producer, a not so bright hostess, two gangsters posing as pastry chefs, a misguided Don Juan and an intoxicated chaperone, and you have the ingredients for an evening of madcap delight.

Hailed by New York Magazine as, “The Perfect Broadway Musical” The Drowsy Chaperone is a masterful meta-musical, poking fun at all the tropes that characterize the musical theatre genre. Because of its many featured roles and accessible script, The Drowsy Chaperone will fit perfectly into any company’s season or school’s calendar.

The Sound of Music

Music by Richard Rodgers
Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Book by Howard Lindsay and Russel
Suggested by “The Trapp Family Singers” by Maria Augusta Trapp
Cast Size:  Large

The final collaboration between Rodgers & Hammerstein was destined to become the world’s most beloved musical. When a postulant proves too high-spirited for the religious life, she is dispatched to serve as governess for the seven children of a widowed naval Captain. Her growing rapport with the youngsters, coupled with her generosity of spirit, gradually captures the heart of the stern Captain, and they marry. Upon returning from their honeymoon they discover that Austria has been invaded by the Nazis, who demand the Captain’s immediate service in their navy. The family’s narrow escape over the mountains to Switzerland on the eve of World War II provides one of the most thrilling and inspirational finales ever presented in the theatre. The motion picture version remains the most popular movie musical of all time.

Frost/Nixon

By Peter Morgan
Cast Size:  8M, 2W

British talk-show host David Frost has become a lowbrow laughing-stock. Richard M. Nixon has just resigned the United States presidency in total disgrace over Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. Determined to resurrect his career, Frost risks everything on a series of in-depth interviews in order to extract an apology from Nixon. The cagey Nixon, however, is equally bent on redeeming himself in his nation’s eyes. In the television age, image is king, and both men are desperate to outtalk and upstage each other as the cameras roll. The result is the interview that sealed a president’s legacy.

The Heidi Chronicles

By Wendy Wasserstein
Cast Size:  3M, 5W

Comprised of a series of interrelated scenes, the play traces the coming of age of Heidi Holland, a successful art historian, as she tries to find her bearings in a rapidly changing world. Gradually distancing herself from her friends, she watches them move from the idealism and political radicalism of their college years through militant feminism and, eventually, back to the materialism that they had sought to reject in the first place. Heidi’s own path to maturity involves an affair with the glib, arrogant Scoop Rosenbaum, a womanizing lawyer/publisher who eventually marries for money and position; a deeper but even more troubling relationship with a charming, witty young pediatrician, Peter Patrone, who turns out to be gay; and increasingly disturbing contacts with the other women, now much changed, who were a part of her childhood and college years. Eventually Heidi comes to accept the fact that liberation can be achieved only if one is true to oneself, with goals that come out of need rather than circumstance. As the play ends she is still “alone,” but having adopted an orphaned baby, it is clear that she has begun to find a sense of fulfillment and continuity that may well continue to elude the others of her anxious, self-centered generation.

Other Desert Cities

By Jon Robin Baitz
Cast Size:  2M, 3W

Brooke Wyeth returns home to Palm Springs after a six-year absence to celebrate Christmas with her parents, her brother, and her aunt. Brooke announces that she is about to publish a memoir dredging up a pivotal and tragic event in the family’s history—a wound they don’t want reopened. In effect, she draws a line in the sand and dares them all to cross it.

Disney’s High School Musical

Book by David Simpatico
Songs by Matthew Gerrard and Robbie Nevil and Ray Cham and Greg Cham and Andrew Seeley and Randy Petersen and Kevin Quinn and Andy Dodd and Adam Watts and Bryan Louiselle and David N. Lawrence and Faye Greenberg and Jamie Houston
Music Adapted, Arranged and Produced by Bryan Louiselle
Based on a Disney Channel Original Movie written by Peter Barsocchini
Cast Size:  Large

We’re all in this together in Disney Channel’s smash hit musical featuring the students of East High.

Disney Channel’s smash hit movie musical comes to life on your stage! Troy, Gabriella, and the students of East High must deal with issues of first love, friends, and family while balancing their classes and extracurricular activities.

It’s the first day after winter break at East High. The Jocks, Brainiacs, Thespians and Skater Dudes find their cliques, recount their vacations, and look forward to the new year. Basketball team captain and resident jock Troy discovers that the brainy Gabriella, a girl he met singing karaoke on his ski trip, has just enrolled at East High. They cause an upheaval when they decide to audition for the high school musical, led by Ms. Darbus. Although many students resent the threat posed to the “status quo,” Troy and Gabriella’s alliance might just open the door for others to shine as well.

Disney’s High School Musical is fun for the whole family. Its large cast size and upbeat numbers make it the ideal show for middle and high school productions or the highlight of any community theatre’s season!

The Secret Garden

Music by Lucy Simon
Lyrics and Book by Marsha Norman
Based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Cast Size:  Large

This enchanting classic of children’s literature is reimagined in brilliant musical style by composer Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of ‘Night Mother. Orphaned in India, 11 year-old Mary Lennox returns to Yorkshire to live with her embittered, reclusive uncle Archibald and his invalid son Colin. The estate’s many wonders include a magic garden which beckons the children with haunting melodies and the “Dreamers”, spirits from Mary’s past who guide her through her new life, dramatizing The Secret Garden’s compelling tale of forgiveness and renewal.

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown

Based on The Comic Strip “Peanuts” by Charles M. Schulz
Book, Music and Lyrics by Clark Gesner
Additional Dialogue by Michael Mayer
Additional Music and Lyrics by Andrew Lippa
Cast Size:  Small

Though considered a “good man” by his friends, Charlie Brown can’t seem to win the heart of the Little Red-Haired Girl, nor his friend Lucy, her crush, the piano-playing Schroeder. Meanwhile Snoopy and Linus daydream and the rest of the friends battle with kites, school, baseball and misunderstandings before finally coming to realize what makes them truly happy.

Company

Book by George Furth
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Cast Size:  Medium

Sondheim’s game-changing musical is a sophisticated and honest look at modern, adult relationships.

From musical theatre’s most renowned composer, Company is largely regarded as a trailblazer of the dark-comedy, modern-musical genre and the winner of 7 TONY Awards including Best Musical, Best Score, Best Lyrics and Best Book.

On the night of his 35th birthday, confirmed bachelor Robert contemplates his unmarried state. Over the course of a series of dinners, drinks, and even a wedding, his friends — “those good and crazy people [his] married friends” — explain the pro’s and con’s of taking on a spouse. The habitually single Robert is forced to question his adamant retention of bachelorhood during a hilarious array of interactions.

Company features a brilliantly brisk and energetic score containing many of Stephen Sondheim’s best known songs. The strength of the piece lies in its vivid yet real characters, meaning impressive technical aspects aren’t necessary to convey the story. It can be told as effectively with a cavalcade of automated set pieces as it can with a chair or two. Every audience member will see reflections of themselves in at least one of the characters on stage.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

A Musical by Rupert Holmes
Cast Size:  Large

This wildly warm-hearted theatrical experience kicks off when the Music Hall Royale (a hilariously loony Victorian musical troupe) “puts on” its flamboyant rendition of an unfinished Dickens mystery in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The story itself deals with John Jasper, a Jekyll-and-Hyde choirmaster who is quite madly in love with his music student, the fair Miss Rosa Bud. Now, Miss Bud is, in turn, engaged to Jasper’s nephew, young Edwin Drood. Our title character disappears mysteriously one stormy Christmas Eve-but has Edwin Drood been murdered? And if so, then whodunnit? Musical numbers include The Wage of Sin, Perfect Strangers, Both Sides of the Coin, Don’t Quit While You’re Ahead and Moonfall. The giddy playfulness of this play-within-a-play draws the audience toward one of the play’s most talked-about features, which allows the audience to vote on the solution as prelude to the most unusual and hilarious finale!

Sweet Charity

Book by Neil Simon
Music by Cy Coleman
Lyrics by Dorothy Fields
Based on an original screenplay by Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Plaiano
Cast Size:  Large

Have you ever known a girl who wanted something so badly that she tried too hard to get it? Meet Sweet Charity, the girl who wants to be loved so much that she has lost sight of who she is. Charity sings, dances, laughs and cries her way through romances with the “animal magnetism” hero, the “ultra-chic continental” hero, and the “impossible-to believe-but-he’s-better than nothing” type hero. Her world is the all too real world of Times Square, and the people who pass through her world are as deceptively charming a group as ever swept across any stage. From her cynical, hard-core trio of girlfriends at the dance hall, to the phony evangelist, the Coney Island “fun people,” the Central Park “strollers” and the YMHA “self-improvers,” every character is interesting. This is a bright and sophisticated show in every sense. Cy Coleman has captured the rhythms and sounds, and Dorothy Fields the vernacular and fun of New York. It’s a comedy in every sense of the word. Neil Simon has a particular talent for looking at the truly amusing side of life. It’s a dancing show too, with great opportunity for use of dramatic movement. Wonderful musical numbers include Big Spender, If My Friends Could See Me Now, Too Many Tomorrows, There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This, I’m a Brass Band and Baby, Dream Your Dream.