2016-2017 Productions
The Cherry Orchard
A Comedy by Anton Chekhov
Allen Theatre
Performance Dates
October 6 - 9, 2016
2015-2016 Productions
By The Way, Meet Vera Stark
A Comedy by Lynn Nottage
Performance Dates
October 8 - 11, 2015
Twelfth Night
By William Shakespeare
Seaver Theatre
Performance Dates
November 19 - 22, 2015
In the Works: Pomona-Scripps Fall Dance Concert
The Pendleton Dance Center
Not included in subscription season.
Performance Dates
December 3 - 5, 2015
Dry Land
By Ruby Rae Spiegel
Allen Theatre
Performance Dates
March 3 - 6, 2016
Urinetown
A Musical
Book & Lyrics by Greg Kotis
Music & Lyrics by Mark Hollman
Seaver Theatre
Performance Dates
April 7 - 10, 2016
2014-2015 Productions
Uncle Vanya
A Drama by Anton Chekhov
Directed by Art Horowitz
Considered by many to be Chekhov’s greatest work for the stage, Uncle Vanya has been categorized as everything from sentimental comedy to tragedy. Instead, Uncle Vanya is an exquisitely drawn portrayal of a deeply troubled extended family of highly idiosyncratic characters. Mostly, they keep their passions, anger and frustrations roiling just beneath the surface. As critic Eric Bentley observed, “Nobody dies. Nobody is paired off. And the general point is clear; life knows no endings, happy or tragic.” Chekhov’s great genius is in leaving us wondering, worrying, and caring deeply over his characters’ fate in the years after the closing curtain has dropped.
Performance Dates
October 9 - 12, 2014
Spring Awakening
The Contemporary Rock Musical
Music by Duncan Sheik, Book and Lyrics by Steven Sater
Directed by Giovanni Ortega
Spring Awakening, a contemporary rock musical, takes its inspiration from Franz Wekekind's 1891 German play of the same name. The original play is one of dramatic literature's most controversial masterpieces, a work so daring in its depiction of teenage self-discovery, it was banned from the stage and not performed in its complete form in English for nearly 100 years. These same incendiary qualities are very much in evidence in the musical, which was adapted by Steven Sater, with music by Duncan Sheik. Spring Awakening opened on Broadway on December 10, 2006, winning eight Tonys, four Drama Desk Awards, and four Olivier Awards.
Performance Dates
November 20 - 23, 2014
In the Works: Pomona-Scripps Fall Dance Concert
December 4 - 6, 2014
The always engaging Pomona-Scripps Fall Dance Concert features original works in progress by student choreographers, dancers, and lighting designers from all five Claremont Colleges. The Concert has a dynamic, energetic, and experimental quality that makes it hugely popular with college audiences.
In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play
A Comedy by Sarah Ruhl
Directed by Betty Bernhard
Allen Theatre
In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play is a stimulating comedy about the search for sexual healing which attempts to answer Freud's famous question: "What do women want?" Our cultural history has generally failed to acknowledge the benefits of female sexual pleasure and has perpetuated the belief that a woman's sexual desire can only be satisfied by a man. Sigmund Freud's theory that women are capable of enjoying other forms of sexual pleasure, while considered controversial and "unhealthy" at the time, has become an important part of modern attitudes about healthy sexual activity for all persons. The prolific Sarah Ruhl was awarded a MacArthur "genius award" for her playwrighting. She is one of America's most accomplished young dramatists, and In the Next Room or the vibrator play is among one of her most popular plays.
Performance Dates
March 5 - 8, 2015
Kitimat (World Premiere)
By Elaine Avila
Directed by Janet Hayatshahi
Co-Commissioned by the Department and the Mellon Elemental Arts Initiative at Pomona College
April 9 - 12, 2015
Kitimat, British Columbia, an industry town in glorious wilderness, finds itself the center of international controversy when the town is asked to vote ‘no’ or ‘yes’ on an upcoming oil pipeline project. The construction of the pipeline will have lasting environmental implications for the town, the region, and our climate. Marta Viveiros, a City Councillor, has worked for years to bring lucrative projects to Kitimat, to give her son work, and the town a future. When Julia, her sister, begins connecting to the environment through hiking and whale watching, Julia starts to object to Marta’s plans. But if Julia opposes Marta publicly, she puts her husband’s, her nephew’s and her daughter’s jobs at risk. As Julia and Marta’s twenty-something children struggle to find a footing in the boom town, Julia remembers the different lives her parents led at the same age, when they first came to Kitimat. All of the Viveiros sift through their family and their town’s past, to find a way to move into the future. As election day approaches, the residents of Kitimat struggle to decide between economic prosperity or protection of the natural world. Inspired by true events.
Annual Pomona Spring Dance Concert
Artistic Director, Laurie Cameron
Works by senior majors, faculty, and guest artists
April 30 - May 3, 2015
The Annual Pomona College Dance Concert features a rich array of new and reconstructed choreography by senior dance majors, faculty, and guest artists alike. An exceptionally broad range of themes and styles are explored, and the choreography, dancing and design are always at a very high level of artistic achievement in this fine culmination of the Dance Program's academic year.
2013-2014 Productions
The Rimers of Eldritch
by Lanford Wilson
Directed by Art Horowitz
Set in the mid-20th century in Eldritch, Missouri, a decaying Bible Belt town that once was a prosperous coal mining community, it focuses on the murder of the aging local hermit by a woman who mistakenly though he was committing rape when he actually was trying prevent one.
Performance Dates
October 10 – 13, 2013
In The Blood
by Suzan- Lori Parks
Directed by Kenshaka Ali
Seaver Theatre>
In this modern tragedy inspired by Hawthorne’s “The Scarlett Letter,” Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks takes us into the heart of homelessness, despair, survival and redemption. Hester/La Negrita lives under a bridge with her five fatherless children. Their struggle to survive is a testament to how societies fail some of its members and a rallying call to those still blessed with compassion.
Performance Dates
November 21 – November 24, 2013
Free As Air
Conceived & Directed by Karen Christopher
Free As Airis a collaboratively devised performance work taking on the subject of air. From air looms and flying machines to the preservation of the upper atmosphere, we find a route to uncovering what matters to the individual, to society, and to the ecology that surrounds and supports us.
Free As Air is sponsored in part by the Mellon Elemental Arts Initiative at Pomona College.
Performance Dates
November 21 – November 24, 2013
In the Works: Pendleton Fall Dance Concert
Pendleton Dance Center
The Pomona and Scripps fall dance concert will showcase original works in progress by senior dance majors with lighting by theatre design students.
Performance Dates
December 5 – 7, 2013
Tartuffe
by Moliere
Directed by Leonard Pronko / Allen Theatre
Banned as blasphemous on its first performance in 1664, Moliere’s timeless comedy is as relevant today as in the seventeenth century. Televangelists, abusive father-figures and dishonest politicians are foreshadowed in Moliere’s comedy, but its underlying seriousness never dampens his irrepressible gaiety, as clever servants and wise wives help to keep in balance a world threatened by maniacal fathers and cunning knaves.
Performance Dates
March 6 - 9, 2014
The Medieval Mystery Play Cycle
Directed by Betty Bernhard
Amateur actors in medieval England devised short, but elaborate and spectacle filled “pageant wagon plays” about a variety of religious topics. With titles such as Creation, Temptation, Noah, and Second Shepherd’s Play, the Mystery plays are simultaneously chaste yet bawdy, witty yet moving, and sacred yet profane. Please join us as we perform selected works from these historical plays that are sure to inspire, entertain, and amuse you!
Performance Dates
April 10 – 1, 2014
Soaring: The Annual Pomona College Dance Concert
Artistic direction by Laurie Cameron
First created in 1920 by the dance pioneers Denishawn, Soaring is a seminal work in the history of modern dance. Lyrical and impressionistic, the piece explores the magical potential of human movement as it relates to moving air, flowing fabric, and incandescent light. Carefully reconstructed for the Pomona College Concert, Soaring will be accompanied by a variety of newly choreographed works featuring contemporary and provocative movement styles and themes. The end product will be an exciting, dynamic program of modern dance not to be missed.
Performance Dates
May 1 – 4, 2014