Current Season
ANNOUNCING OUR 2024/2025 SEASON: “OLD STORIES, NEW VOICES”
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte theatre program is proud to announce its 2024/2025 theatre production lineup, titled, “Old Stories, New Voices.” Each show in the 2024/2025 season is a contemporary adaptation, a spinoff, or a modern reimagining of a world classic—a play that has stood the test of time and brilliantly articulates universal themes that offer revelations, insights, and clarity to readers and theatregoers of any era. Each of the shows in the season will give a fresh take on these classic stories, and each of the four plays will be accompanied by a secondary event that explores the original source material and asks the question: What makes a story a classic? Details and dates of these secondary events will be announced prior to the season beginning in September. Stand by.
New this year, the 2024/25 theatre season will also feature FREE final dress rehearsal preview performances for high school students and teachers, as well as a free high school matinee performance of Clybourne Park. If you are a high school teacher or student and interested in attending one or more of these events, please reach out to Chair of Theatre, David Janowiak at djanowi1@charlotte.edu.
We hope to see you at the theatre!
David Janowiak, Chair of Theatre, UNC Charlotte
ANTIGONE NOW
by Melissa Cooper
September 26-29, 2024
Black Box Theater, Robinson Hall
In the midst of a bombed-out city still feeling the aftershocks of war, the rebellious and intense Antigone defies her uncle to bury her disgraced brother and starts a revolution of her own. This contemporary response to the myth of Antigone brings powerful, modern prose to an ancient and universal story.
CLYBOURNE PARK
by Bruce Norris
November 14-17, 2024
Anne R. Belk Theater, Robinson Hall
Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and London’s Olivier Award for Best Play, Clybourne Park is a bold play about race, real estate, and the volatile values of each. Inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s classic play, A Raisin in the Sun, this acclaimed work explodes in two outrageous acts set 50 years apart. Act One takes place in 1959, as nervous community leaders anxiously try to stop the sale of a home in a white community to a Black family. Act Two is set in the same house in 2009, as the now predominantly African American neighborhood battles to hold its ground in the face of gentrification.
THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD
by Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle
February 13-16, 2025
Black Box Theater, Robinson Hall
J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World was first staged in the Abbey Theatre in 1907. A hundred years later the story is retold by Nigerian-Irish playwright, Bisi Adigun and one of Ireland’s best-known writers, Roddy Doyle. The original western farmers and villagers are now tough Dublin gangsters. The runaway playboy of the story, Christy Mahon, is re-imagined as a Nigerian refugee, Christopher Malomo. This adaptation highlights the changes that have occurred in Ireland, including the issues of immigration and inequality. The script was first commissioned by Adigun’s theatre company, Arambe Productions, Ireland’s first and only African Theatre Company.
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
by William Shakespeare
March 20-23, 2025
Anne R. Belk Theater, Robinson Hall
This contemporary re-imagining of Shakespeare’s classic production will meditate on the tragically timeless dimension of this comedy – on corruption of state from the top down, of dangerous desire, of violence, but also of determined faithfulness – and on Shakespeare as prophetic time-traveler.