Headlines about the theater industry\u2019s troubles have been easy to find lately: layoffs, closures, shrinking audiences and seasons. The good news? There\u2019s still a lot of theater out there.<\/p>\n
Fringe theatergoing is a crapshoot; that\u2019s pretty much a rule. But there is adventure to be had in plotting your way through hundreds of events, almost all of them uncurated. Circus, dance, comedy, cabaret, kids\u2019 fare and more are part of the 27th year of this festival. Ticket prices are low, and offerings include a handful of digital shows. Sept. 7-24 at various locations in Philadelphia; <\/em>phillyfringe.org<\/em><\/p>\n The playwright Robert Schenkkan, a Pulitzer Prize winner for \u201cThe Kentucky Cycle,\u201d dips into musical theater as the book writer of this show, with music by Neil Berg and lyrics by both of them. The Tony Award winner John Doyle directs this tale, which unfolds among the terrified disciples of Jesus, who have gone into hiding in the chaotic aftermath of his and Judas\u2019s deaths. Sept. 8-Oct. 29 at the Goodspeed, East Haddam, Conn.; <\/em>goodspeed.org<\/em><\/p>\n During the pandemic shutdown of in-person theater, when the playwright Paula Vogel championed underproduced plays by staging them virtually, this linguistically inventive drama by Eisa Davis got her full-throated support, and a high-profile digital production. Here is a chance to see it live, in a McCarter Theater Center-Berkeley Repertory Theater co-production. Set in a mostly white California town in 1955, it tells the story of a clairvoyant multiracial teenager who grew up there, and whose world finds new dimensions with the arrival of a Black girl from the South. The play was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2007, when Vogel was on the jury. Sept. 13-Oct. 7 at the McCarter Theater Center, Princeton, N.J.; <\/em>mccarter.org<\/em><\/p>\n A deftly nuanced, easily knowing depiction of marriage won the playwright Donald Margulies the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for his domestic comedy \u201cDinner With Friends.\u201d Now he returns to that territory with this new play, starring Karen Allen and Reed Birney as a long-wed couple having drinks on their Midwestern farm, watching a lunar eclipse on a summer night. James Warwick directs the world-premiere production. Sept. 15-Oct. 22 at Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, Mass.; <\/em>shakespeare.org<\/em><\/p>\n Not even Elevator Repair Service, the venerable experimental troupe best known for \u201cGatz,\u201d a marathon-length enactment of the full text of \u201cThe Great Gatsby,\u201d is heedless enough to stage the whole of James Joyce\u2019s run-on, epic masterwork about Leopold Bloom\u2019s daylong odyssey through Dublin. Directed by John Collins, the company\u2019s artistic director, this world-premiere production instead samples chunks from each of the novel\u2019s 18 episodes, letting them erupt in all their verbosity, vulgarity, vivacity and \u2014 it is Joyce, after all \u2014 opacity. Co-directed by Scott Shepherd, who is also part of the seven-actor ensemble, it has an entirely reasonable projected running time: two hours and 15 minutes. Sept. 21-Oct. 1 at the Fisher Center at Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.; <\/em>fishercenter.bard.edu<\/em><\/p>\n\u2018The 12\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Bulrusher\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Lunar Eclipse\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Ulysses\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018The Pianist\u2019<\/h2>\n