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At a time when our divided society appears to see everything with a political edge on one side or another, Florida Studio Theatre plans a 2024-25 season that leaders hope will boost mainstage attendance and bridge a gap with two major Broadway musicals bookending new plays that address contemporary issues in surprising ways.
Producing Artistic Director Richard Hopkins said the season will open this fall with the Sara Bareilles musical “Waitress,” based on a hit independent film, and close in the spring with the long-running Broadway hit “Jersey Boys,” about the lives and careers of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. It’s a show Hopkins has wanted to produce for years.
Hopkins said the two musicals have high marquee value and have something to say.
“These are shows dealing with real people and how they really behave,” he said. “They’re enlightening and they enliven our spirit.”
In between, the theater will present the regional premiere of “The Heart Sellers,” Lloyd Suh’s award-winning comedy about two young recent Asian immigrants who are homesick and trying to adjust to a new country, and “The Cancellation of Lauren Fein,” a drama by Miami-based lawyer and playwright Christopher Demos-Brown, about cancel culture and its impact on a college professor and scientist.
Highlighting decades of hits in cabaret series
Familiar music also is behind the three original revues the theater is creating for its cabaret series, including “Off the Charts!” a fast-paced survey of Billboard Top 100 hits from the 1950s through the 1990s; “59th Street Bridge,” celebrating the music of such folk-rock stars as Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, John Denver and more; and “Divas: Time After Time,” which is filled with songs by such female superstars as Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston and Cher.
Hopkins said FST has been trying to determine why attendance for its winter mainstage series has not yet recovered to pre-COVID levels, while tickets sales are way up for its summer mainstage and the winter and summer cabaret series.
“There’s not a perfectly simple answer,” he said. “We look at what we’ve been doing. The mainstage puts on some challenging work and if people are a little too challenged they go away. But we also know that our winters had a lot more snowbirds and they were the first not to come back after COVID.”
Hopkins, who has led the theater for more than 40 years, said audiences have told him that they don’t want to be hammered with plays about the problems in society. They want to see plays that offer potential solutions. “They want to know what we can do to change things,” he said.
“Audiences were saying let’s stop fighting with each other and try to solve the problem,” he said. “That was profound and inspirational to me.”
In addition to picking shows (and directing some of them) and overseeing the theater’s growth, including a planned new eight-story apartment and theater complex, Hopkins collaborates with his wife, Rebecca Hopkins, the theater’s managing director, in creating most of the increasingly popular cabaret series productions.
Rebecca Hopkins said the series, which once focused on songs from the 1930s through 1950s, has been moving forward in time to fit the audience who respond to more contemporary song, while still selling out shows with music from the second half of the 20th century.
The theater will later announce a lineup for its Stage III season of edgier plays that may not be appreciated by the mainstage audience.
Here is a look at the season’s shows
Performances are at Florida Studio Theatre, 1241 N. Palm Ave., Sarasota. Subscriptions start at $79 for the four mainstage season shows and $59 for the three cabaret shows. For more information: 941-366-9000; floridastudiotheatre.org
Mainstage
“Waitress,” by Jessie Nelson, music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles.
Nov. 6-Dec. 29, Gompertz Theatre
The Tony-nominated musical is based on the late Adrienne Shelly’s movie about a diner waitress with a talent for baking pies who finds herself pregnant while struggling with her abusive husband and the potential for a new romance. “A musical can be about a woman who gets pregnant but doesn’t want to be pregnant in a marriage she doesn’t like,” Hopkins said. “Leave it to a musical comedy that makes it a joyful experience. It’s not pulling punches, but it really makes you feel inspired.”
“The Heart Sellers” by Lloyd Suh
Dec. 11-Feb. 16, Keating Theatre
This play, commissioned by Milwaukee Repertory Theater where it had its premiere in 2023, is set at Thanksgiving 1973 and focuses on two young Asian immigrant women whose hard-working husbands are not with them. They’re trying to adjust to life in the United States as they talk about their version of the American dream. “They teach us about the immigrant experience. It’s a comedy and very funny and it’s a joy to watch these two ladies and their families and struggles,” Richard Hopkins said. The play’s title is a take-off on the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act that removed discriminatory immigrant policies toward Asians, and people from Southern and Eastern Europe.
Suh received the Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award earlier this year.
Sarasota audiences will get to know Suh’s work this season. This production will slightly overlap with the FSU/Asolo Conservatory production of “The Chinese Lady,” about the first Chinese woman to emigrate to the United States.
“The Cancellation of Lauren Fein” by Christopher Demos-Brown
Jan. 22-March 9, Gompertz Theatre
Demos-Brown got audiences riled up with his earlier play “American Son,” which was nearing the end of its run at FST in 2020 when the theater was shut down for COVID. His new play, which had its premiere at Palm Beach Dramaworks, is about a college professor who is working on a cure for sickle cell anemia. She also has a Black foster son. She says something wrong at the university, and reports of her comments and her efforts to contain the issue spiral out of control. “It’s really about what is right and what is wrong and how far can you go” Hopkins said.
“Jersey Boys” by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. Music and lyrics by Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe
March 26-May 25, Gompertz Theatre
This biographical show, which won four 2006 Tony Awards including best musical, traces the history of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, from when they started singing on street corners through their personal and professional struggles to superstardom on the pop charts. “Our audience has been wanting this and I’ve been trying to get the rights for five years,” Hopkins said. “I fell in love with the show on Broadway and then we saw the off-Broadway version, which I think is even better because the story comes through even more clearly without all the gimmickry. And there’s all that great music.”
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Cabaret series
“Off the Charts!” by Rebecca Hopkins, Richard Hopkins and Sarah Durham. Arrangements by Jim Prosser
Oct. 2-Feb. 9, 2025. Court Cabaret
This revue, an outgrowth of a show for FST’s Children’s Theatre program, “tells the story of pop music and how it got big and the difference from rock ‘n’ roll,” Rebecca Hopkins said. “We start with Elvis and the British invasion and move through Motown, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston.” She said it’s a big story that traces “the history of America” during the period.
“59th Street Bridge” by Richard Hopkins and Rebecca Hopkins.
Nov. 20-March 30, 2025, Goldstein Cabaret
This revue highlights the growing popularity of a variety of folk-rock singers, from John Denver and Simon and Garfunkel, to Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell who came to influence the music scene in the 1960s and ’70s. “These were lyric poets who had a lot to say. I’ve been enjoying getting into that music,” Rebecca Hopkins said.
“Divas: Time After Time” by Richard Hopkins, arrangements by Jim Prosser
Feb. 12-June 22, 2025, Court Cabaret
The word diva has a variety of meanings, but Rebecca Hopkins says for this cabaret show “we mean it in the sense of powerhouse singers who come out and blow you away with their talent. “Divas” will focus on the period from the 1970s through the ’90s, when singers like Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Cher, Mariah Carey, Cyndi Lauper and more were winning fans with big power ballads and more.
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