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Announcing the 2019 Philly Theatre Week Kick-Off!

This year, Philly Theatre Week kicks off with two FREE preview parties at Cherry Street Pier! 

On Friday, February 1st from 5pm-8pm, join Theatre Philadelphia and participating Theatre Week artists for a First Friday drink at Cherry Street Bar. Artists will be previewing work included in the 2nd Annual Philly Theatre Week.

On Saturday, February 2nd from 1pm-4pm, meet participating theatre artists, discover exciting new works, and get a start on planning your Theatre Week Schedule ahead of the fest.

Plus, guests 21+ can enjoy free wine, beer, and cider tastings at both events!

RSVP to First Friday at the Pier:

First Friday at the Pier

RSVP to Saturday's Kick-Off and Open House:

Theatre Week Open House

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February 1st ONLY

Going Dark Theatre

The Confession of Jeffrey Dahmer

*Performance Excerpt 

Based entirely on true events, this acclaimed solo performance puts the audience in a dark basement room alone with one of the most notorious serial killers of the twentieth century. He will tell you everything.

Curio Theatre Company

Three Sisters, By Rashdash, After Chekhov

*Performance Excerpt

The American premiere of a play by UK artists RashDash, Three Sisters, by RashDash, after Chekhov is a wild, irreverent spin on the well-trod classic that entertains with absurdist comedy and bombastic musical numbers while it asks us vital questions. Are women forever doomed to recite the beautiful, brilliant words of dead white men, and what does it mean to produce a play that is both one of the greatest tragedies of all time, and an unfortunate go-to choice when theatre companies decide they need a play that features women? Playing the three iconic women from theatre are the actresses who played three sisters in last season’s Crimes of the Heart at Curio: Colleen Hughes, Rachel Gluck, and Tessa Kuhn. Best enjoyed by patrons 13 years of age and older due to language.

Tribe of Fools

Clown Sex Ed


*Performance Excerpt

Clown Sex Ed is a hilarious romp through the challenges, the failures, and the horror stories of American sexual education. Tara Demmy and Zachary Chiero (Fishtown, Zombies with Guns) poke fun at your gym teacher, your health class and your parents' awkward talk and examine not only what they said but more importantly what they left out.

February 1st and 2nd

Chris Davis

The Presented

*Performance Excerpt 

The Presented explores what it means to be a chosen artist in the world today. In his signature comedic style, Davis examines the issues facing many theater artists today in a fun and hilarious 50-minute show that will make you never want to pursue a career in the arts ever again.

The Savoy Company

Come, Bumpers! A Night of Gilbert and Sullivan and Cocktails

*Performance Excerpt and Table

During Theatre Week, The Savoy Company will perform some of the beautiful works of Gilbert and Sullivan while Jackie Cusack of the Alchemist Society will show you how to make some Victorian-era cocktails. 3 full cocktails included with every ticket! Theatre Week Ticket price includes drinks.

Philadelphia Dramatists Center

Heartbreak Hotel

*Performance Excerpt and Table

During Philly Theatre Week, it's an evening of world premieres! The PDC will present an evening of short plays by Philly playwrights. Each one takes place in a hotel, where love and happiness and love and heartbreak live side-by-side.

Philly Improv Theater

Thank You, Places

*Performance Excerpt and Table

Who needs Broadway when there's a brand new musical to fall in love with every Saturday night at Philly Improv Theater? Thank You, Places is a musical where everything is made up on the spot, from scene to music to lyrics. Come see opening, and closing, night of a brand new, unmissable musical every Saturday!

KweenPen/RunBoyRunProd

Nobody’s Perfect

*Performance Excerpt and Table

Nobody’s Perfect is the love story of an abused and curious woman, Asia, who is in a relationship with her boyfriend Damien who suffers from mental illness. Although she has never been with a woman, Asia’s interest is peaked when she meets Danielle(Dani) her cousin Crystals best friend. In the mist of Asia and Damian’s toxic relationship she leaves abruptly. With closeness comes caution and because of all the things Dani knows about Asia she realizes that the best way to a new beginnings is through proper endings and showing her that trust honesty and love is a process won over time. The question is will time work when Asia still holds on to her past? For Asia this could be the birth of healing and the beginning of a love story but only she will know because after all Nobody’s perfect.

Bright Invention

The Improvathon and Rehearsing Improvisation: It's Not An Oxymoron!

*Performance Excerpt and Table (Plus, Feb. 2nd with Tongue & Groove!)

Improvathon: During Theatre Week, Bright Invention will improvise continuously until we raise $500 for The William Way LGBT Community Center . . . AND Gritty shows up! Come and cheer on this extraordinary feat of improv endurance! What will happen first? The demise of all members of the ensemble? Or the fulfillment of their philanthropic goal and the appearance of their Philly-fave mascot? Not to be missed!

February 2nd ONLY

Mira Treatman

Duets By Strangers

*Table

A group of artists will take a workshop, get paired with a complete stranger, make a performance, and share it with the public - all within the span of 2 weeks. With the support of facilitator Mira Treatman and the little community of participants, the group will work together to bring new performance and cross-disciplinary ideas into the world.

Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

American Girl Live and Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis

*Table

American Girl® Live: Experience American Girl® in an all-new musical, coming to a city near you! American Girl Live is a premiere stage production, featuring all-original songs and unforgettable experiences. Come along to sleepover camp with some new friends for an exciting summer away from home. As bold tales of bravery and friendship come to life, iconic American Girl characters lend a hand through story and song. Join your favorite American Girl characters and the campers as they follow their hearts, share their dreams, and learn the power of friendship.

Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis: This remarkably versatile orchestra, comprised of 15 of the finest jazz soloists and ensemble players of today, performs a vast repertoire ranging from original compositions and Jazz at Lincoln Center-commissioned works to rare historic compositions and masterworks by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Charles Mingus, and many others.

The Hum'n'Bards Theater Troupe

We'll Sleep When We're Dead


*Performance Excerpt

Government-mandated chipping to end the need for sleep provides new ways to exploit workers. Dreams can’t come true when you don’t have any. Slip into your Vintage Pajamas and chase the feeling of dreaming with The Hum’n’bards. With their trademark queer rock style, The Hum’n’bards explore this 24 hour world - with underground Sleepeasies and flood lights blotting out each star in the sky.

Tiny Dynamite

A Play, A Pie, A Pint, Valentine's Day Takeover

*Table

Make your Valentine’s Day “brilliantly casual”™ with A Play, a Pie, and a Pint! Alongside pizza and beer--included with your ticket price--we’ll be serving up LOVE, from the most famous love scenes to the baddest break-up texts. Featuring some of Philadelphia's favorite performers, we offer good times, big laughs, and a look at modern love.

Robert Malissa

A Case for Magic, for lovers of magic and their ambivalent friends.

*Performance Excerpt and Table

Award-winning magician, Robert Malissa puts the art of the trick on trial. He will lie, cheat and smile as he performs original presentations of sleight of hand, mentalism, and sneaky swindles. A show for lovers of magic and their ambivalent friends.

Theatre in the X

The Colored Museum

*Performance Excerpt

Produced in Partnership with the African American Museum in Philadelphia, THE COLORED MUSEUM has electrified, discomforted, and delighted audiences of all colors, redefining our ideas of what it means to be black in contemporary America. Set in a fictional museum where iconic African-American figures are kept for public consumption, its eleven "exhibits" undermine black stereotypes old and new and return to the facts of what being black means.

The Philadelphia Design Center, with Bearded Ladies Cabaret, Power Street Theatre Company, Directors Gathering, and Theatre Philadelphia

Radical Design


*Table

The Philadelphia Design Center, The Bearded Ladies, Directors Gathering (DG), Power Street Theatre, Simpatico Theatre, and Theatre Philadelphia are teaming up to encourage equity and inclusion in the design community in Philadelphia with an event during Theatre Week. We are pooling resources to bring queer designers and designers of color from the area and surrounding cities to come to Philadelphia and meet with local artistic directors, producers, and directors. The goal is to increase the visibility of these designers and to connect them directly with theater makers and leaders in the city.   

Inis Nua Theatre Company

Box Clever

*Table

In a women’s shelter in East London, Marnie is doing her best to care for her four-year-old daughter. But it would be a lot easier if she had the support of her case workers, or could finally ditch the three useless ex-boyfriends that keep hanging around her. Mouthy, headstrong and maybe just a tad crazy, Marnie is going to prove to everyone that she’s a competent mother. Because she is…isn’t she? Directed by Tom Reing.

ENAensemble

chasing the moon

*Performance Excerpt and Table

ENAensemble’s presentation of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Mallarmé, Stravinsky’s Three Japanese Lyrics, and Kassof’s Three French Songs, features a highly theatricalized interpretation of the works. Actors will move through the music and the space as an ensemble of nine players and four singers give voice and urgency to this paranoid, beautiful, troubled, obsessive, funny, and tragic music.

Juniper Productions

Play Tastings and Best of Cocktail Plays

*Table

Play Tastings: Delicious new plays by Philly playwrights at Green Soul! You'll get just a taste of plays by Alexandra Espinoza, Sam Henderson and Robin Rodriguez at a gorgeous new restaurant venue in Philly.

Cocktail Plays: BE SHAKEN AND STIRRED! Juniper Productions returns to Philadelphia Distilling with the Best of Cocktail Plays, an evening of curated short plays from our first two seasons of Cocktail Plays. Arrive an hour before or stay after show time to enjoy cocktails paired with the evening’s plays, as well as light dinner fare.

Philadelphia Theatre Company

The Bridges of Madison County


*Table

Francesca Johnson, a beautiful Italian woman who married an American soldier to flee war-ravaged Italy, looks forward to a rare four days alone on her Iowa farm when her family heads to the 1965 State Fair. When ruggedly handsome National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid pulls into her driveway seeking directions, what happens in those four days may very well alter the course of Francesca’s life.



The Wilma Theater 

Romeo and Juliet


*Table

No balcony. No tights. An age old feud, violence and power, spiraling out of control. A generation seeking more meaning than their parents’ world will allow. A burgeoning love that tries to defy it all. Join Blanka Zizka and the HotHouse Company for a music-infused retelling of Shakespeare’s famous love story, featuring a live onstage band led by Philadelphia singer/songwriter Gracie Martin.

TEATRO del SOL

Good Cuban Girls


*Table

Marisol is home from college for the summer-with a big secret. How will she break this news to the matriarchs of her family without inducing her grandmother's instantaneous death? Good Cuban Girls is a coming of age story that navigates the first generation American struggle for cultural preservation in the face of exile.

*Stay tuned for our announcement of the Kick-Off performance schedule!

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Download 2019 Theatre Week Guide

Find Out More: www.phillytheatreweek.com

Find Out More: www.phillytheatreweek.com

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