Arena Stage Announces MY FAIR LADY & More for 2012/13 Season

Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith has announced eight productions on subscription for the company's third year in its new home, the Mead Center for American Theater.

"I'm looking forward with great anticipation to the artists and projects in our third season in the Mead Center," said Smith. "It starts off with a bang with a celebration of American music-first with the explosive musical event One Night with Janis Joplin featuring more than 25 songs from the rock legend, followed by Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, which I cannot wait to direct in the Fichandler, and then Cheryl L. West's blues-infused world-premiere Pullman Porter Blues that Arena will be co-producing with Seattle Repertory Theatre directed by Lisa Peterson."

She continued, "Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival Jackie Maxwell will direct Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire's contemporary social drama Good People about class wars featuring strong American characters, which will play opposite the magical production that catapulted Mary Zimmerman's career 10 years ago, Metamorphoses-complete with an enormous pool of water on the Fichandler Stage. Arena alum Tazewell Thompson will direct his world-premiere play Mary T. & Lizzy K., which is the first of Arena's American President's Project-a multi-year cycle where playwrights and ensembles will develop work inspired by the lives and legacies of our nation's presidents.

"I especially look forward to bringing the D.C. premieres of acclaimed Broadway plays to our audiences with Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities directed by Kyle Donnelly, and the riveting play The Mountaintop by one of our own resident playwrights Katori Hall and directed by Robert O'Hara. Each production in this lineup shines on its own but together they offer a beautiful whole, representing the pulse of America today through the experience of live theater."

One Night with Janis Joplin
Written and directed by Randy Johnson
September 28 – November 4, 2012 in the Kreeger Theater

My Fair Lady
Based on Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Book and Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner / Music by Frederick Loewe
Directed by Molly Smith
November 2, 2012 – January 6, 2013 in the Fichandler Stage

Pullman Porter Blues
A world-premiere co-production with Seattle Repertory Theatre
By Cheryl L. West / Directed by Lisa Peterson
November 23, 2012 – January 6, 2013 in the Kreeger Theater

Good People
By David Lindsay-Abaire / Directed by Jackie Maxwell
February 1 – March 10, 2013 in the Kreeger Theater

Metamorphoses
Lookingglass Theatre Company
Written and directed by Tony Award winner Mary Zimmerman
February 8 – March 17, 2013 in the Fichandler Stage

Mary T. & Lizzy K.
Arena Stage commission and world premiere
Written and directed by Tazewell Thompson
March 15 – April 28, 2013 in the Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle

The Mountaintop
By resident playwright Katori Hall / Directed by Robert O'Hara
March 29 – May 12, 2013 in the Kreeger Theater