Village Theatre is excited to announce the second season of the Beta Series.
Built on Village Theatre’s long-standing commitment to new musicals, Beta Series productions help to launch promising new works into the next phase of development by providing writers with actors, basic sets and costumes, and an audience of smart, sophisticated, and savvy theatre-goers.
Beta Series audiences are given the opportunity to provide feedback as changes are made following every performance based on audience responses. No two shows are alike, and audiences are encouraged to attend multiple times to see the evolution of the script and score.
The subscription-based series will consist of three new works.
“How to Break” is a musical fusion of hip-hop and social justice with book and lyrics by Aaron Jafferis, songs and lyrics by Rebecca Hart and a beatbox score by Yako 440.
Ignited by an electric collision of theatre, breakdancing and lyrical flow, this ground-breaking new musical follows two teenage hip-hop dancers as they battle not only their disease, but also the hospital caregivers, for control over their own bodies.
With a score backed by a beatboxed soundscape of the patients’ breaths and IV beeps, tensions rise as race, class and language create life-threatening rifts between the patients and their treatment team.
As the doctor and therapist wrestle over the health benefits of art versus painkillers, the teens attempt to break through their diagnoses in search of a gut understanding of what it means to be ill – both metaphorically and literally. The show plays Jan. 5-14, 2018.
“Afterwords” is a folk musical about sisterhood, art and love, with music and lyrics by Zoe Sarnak and book by Emily Kaczmarek.
When an accomplished young war reporter’s mentor is killed on assignment, his diaries are left to her care. But their pages provide her with more questions than comfort, chronicling his turbulent midlife love affair and pointing mysteriously toward two artist sisters mourning the loss of their volatile mother.
As entanglements deepen and past collides with present, these young women relay three sides of one story through the show’s music, set and book.
“Afterwords” shows three women bound by notes scribbled down on paper, and the art we make from the love that makes us. The show runs Feb. 16-25, 2018.
“ZM” is a zombie-filled Broadway musical comedy, with music and lyrics by Mark Hollmann and book and lyrics by Greg Kotis — the hilarious duo behind the Tony Award-winning show “Urinetown.”
From Hollmann and Kotis comes the story of a remote American town where one fast-food franchise is test-marketing a new sandwich that, apparently, turns people into zombies.
“The Walking Dead” meets “The Book of Mormon” in this hysterical new musical that follows two teenage fast-food workers who set off to penetrate the corporate behemoth behind this franchise fiasco and learn the terrible truth about the source of the plague and the outcome it was designed to create … all while navigating teenage love.
Can the two young lovers save their relationship? And their brains? And the world? Find out when the show plays from June 1-10, 2018.
“These three shows are a great example of the varied landscape of musical theatre today,” Village Theatre Associate Artistic Director Brandon Ivie said in a press release. “Unique voices tackling challenging stores with great creativity and theatricality. I love each of these shows and can’t wait to share them with our audiences.”
All Beta Series subscriptions include a ticket to each of the three shows in the season, but the date of attendance is up to the subscriber.
After subscribing, ticket holders may call the box office at any time to schedule their tickets, giving subscribers the option to schedule all three shows at one time, or to handle them as they come.
To learn more about subscribing to the Beta Series, contact the box office at (425) 392-2202.
About Village Theatre
Based in Issaquah, with operations in Everett, Village Theatre is a leading producer of musical theatre in the Pacific Northwest.
Producing entertaining, quality productions since 1979, Village Theatre has grown into one of the region’s best-attended theatres, with more than 20,000 subscribers and 220,000 projected total attendance each season.
Through its Village Originals program, Village Theatre is nationally recognized for its contribution to the development of new musicals, having supported the development of over 160 new works to date.
Village Theatre also takes pride in nurturing tomorrow’s audiences through its Youth Education and Outreach programs, KIDSTAGE and Pied Piper, serving over 58,000 young people and their families annually.
