The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts Announces 2022-2023 Season with Two World Premieres and More
The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County has announced its lineup for the 11e season of THEATER UP CLOSE, created in collaboration with Zoetic Stage and City Theatre. This season’s Theater Up Close series returns with five extraordinary productions, including two world premieres from Miami playwrights Michael McKeever and Vanessa Garcia, a Florida premiere and the regional premiere of Heidi Schreck’s Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning play , What the Constitution Means to Me.
“The Arsht Center was very proud to bring the 10th Anniversary Theater Up Close series to South Florida theater enthusiasts,” said Liz Wallace, vice president of programming for the Arsht Center. “We welcome the community to a strong, varied, engaging and challenging 2022-23 season.”
“We at Zoetic Stage are extremely excited to partner with the Arsht Center for our 11th season! Our lineup for the 2022-2023 season has been carefully curated, crafted with stories about personalized American experiences, igniting a wanderlust filled with moments surrounding human connectedness and moving forward,” said Zoetic Stage Artistic Director Stuart Meltzer.
“City Theater is very pleased to be included in the Arsht Center’s Theater Up Close series for the opportunity it affords our company to bring to audiences engaging full-length plays that we are excited to produce, such as the premiere regional premiere of Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution means to me. We expect it to resonate with South Florida audiences as powerfully as it did on its multi-selling sell-out tour at Broadway,” said City Theater Artistic Director Margaret M. Ledford.
The THEATER UP CLOSE 2022-2023 lineup includes the following:
Zoetic Stage and Adrienne Arsht Center present
MLIMA’S TALE – Florida premiere!
By Lynn Nottage
Directed by Stuart Meltzer
October 13 – 30, 2022
Mlima is a magnificent African elephant trapped by the underground international ivory market. As he follows a trail littered with a tale of greed, Mlima takes us on a journey through memory, fear, tradition and the gloom between want and need. From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Sweat and Ruined, Lynn Nottage, Mlima’s Tale is a gripping and haunting fable brought to life.
City Theater and Adrienne Arsht Center present
WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME – Regional premiere!
By Heidi Schreck
Directed by Margaret M. Ledford
December 1-18, 2022
Playwright Heidi Schreck’s timely and uplifting play became an off-Broadway and then Broadway sensation, where it received two Tony Award nominations, the Pulitzer Prize nomination and countless other accolades. Hilariously hopeful and painfully human, Heidi becomes a teenager herself, earning tuition by winning constitutional debating contests across the United States. Each edit leads to a startling narrative as adult Heidi traces the deep connection between four generations of women and the founding document that shaped their lives. Theatrical, personal and groundbreaking, Schreck’s play breathes new life and understanding into the Constitution and imagines the impact of its evolution on the next generation of Americans.
Zoetic Stage and Adrienne Arsht Center present
AMERICAN RHAPSODY – World premiere!
By Michael McKeever
Directed by Stuart Meltzer
January 12 – 29, 2023
Over the course of sixty years – beginning in 1969 and ending in 2032 – the Cabot family tries to keep up with the world as it evolves around them. Epic in its scope yet intimate in nature, American Rhapsody weaves the lives of its main characters through the ever-changing landscape of the American zeitgeist as it speeds through the last half of the 20th century in the turmoil of today and beyond: civil unrest, the women’s movement, the greed of the 80s, the horrors of 9/11, the financial crisis of 2008, same-sex marriage, the COVID-19 pandemic. As the family evolves into a new America, their cultural identity as members of other races and sexual orientations intermarries and redefines what the family thought they were.
Zoetic Stage and Adrienne Arsht Center present
CLOSE TO NORMAL
Music by Tom Kitt
Book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey
Directed by Stuart Meltzer
March 16 – April 9, 2023
Next to Normal is a deeply moving rock musical that explores how a household copes with crisis and mental illness. Winner of three 2009 Tony Awards, including Best Musical Score, and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize, Next to Normal was also chosen as one of the top 10 shows of the year by critics from publications across the country. including the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Rolling Stone and New York Times.
Dad is an architect. Mom rushes to prepare lunches and pour cereal. Their daughter and son are bright and well-behaved teenagers. They seem like a typical American family. And yet, their life is anything but normal, as the mother has been manic-depressive for 16 years. Next to Normal takes audiences inside the minds and hearts of each character, presenting their family history with love, sympathy and heart.
Zoetic Stage and Adrienne Arsht Center present
#GRACED – World premiere!
By Vanessa Garcia
Directed by Sarah Hughes
May 4 – 21, 2023
Catherine is on the hunt for something authentic as she embarks on a “Lewis-and-Clark-esque” journey across America sponsored by Monteverde Moonshine with her new lover and coworker, Lewis. Along the way, they pick up a wayward nun named Rosalie who has just suffered a profound loss, meet a homeschooled queer teenager named Blake, and delve into the layers of migration and gender inequality that make up America. During her travels, Catherine asks herself more questions than answers about the “real America”, her own identity and what authenticity still means.
