The American Repertory Theater has announced that its season will end with “Passing Strange,” a rock musical about a young musician who swaps out his middle-class L.A. upbringing for punk rock and protest in 1980s Amsterdam and Berlin.
The 2024-2025 season began in late August with a production of “Romeo and Juliet” and will include a diverse set of shows: “Diary of a Tap Dancer,” “The Odyssey” and “Night Side Songs,” all productions commissioned by the theater, before ending with “Passing Strange.”
The shows take audiences from ancient Greece to 1980s Berlin with stories about everything from cancer to tap dancing, but all are about what it means to be human, said Dayron Miles, the A.R.T.’s associate artistic director.
“I’m so excited for audiences to get to question that with us,” Miles said.
“Romeo and Juliet” asks how we define ourselves and how we can break away from or lean into the tradition of what’s come before, a theme from Shakespeare that was reflected in its staging. It “had a minimal set, to put the emphasis on language and provide a platform for the words to soar, and as an audience member, I really did hear the play differently as a result,” Miles said.
“Diary” thinks heavily about legacy, not only of writer and dancer Ayodele Casel, but of those before her who led the way. “Odyssey” is about an epic, yearslong expedition of discovery, a quintessential example of the hero’s journey. “Songs” explores what it’s like to receive news about your life that makes you reconsider it, and how that can alter the way you choose to live it. And “Passing Strange” is a story of self-discovery and what it takes to find one’s true self.
“With the question of what it means to be human, there’s also this question of how that impacts you and the people around you,” Miles said. “I consider this to be especially relevant today, in the cultural and political moment we’re currently in.”
It’s a large number of commissioned works, but Miles said the theater is “constantly nurturing and developing projects, and we always want to use our shows to expand the boundaries of theater.”
‘Diary of a Tap Dancer’ (Dec. 12 – Jan. 4)
“Romeo and Juliet” closed Oct. 6, and the season resumes in December with “Diary,” by Casel, an award-winning and critically acclaimed tap dancer telling the story of her life while honoring the histories and legacies of women tap dancers before her.
Casel was born in The Bronx, but raised in Puerto Rico. “She didn’t speak any Spanish, but she found she could communicate through dance,” Miles said. “When she moved back to The Bronx, she had lost some of her English, but again, she was able to communicate through dance.”
That universality, and Casel’s experience with tap as liberation, underscores a production that interweaves dance, narrative and song. Casel performs in the show alongside other dancers.
The A.R.T. team met Casel during her 2019-2020 fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, where she was researching tap and began developing “Diary.” In 2021, her show “Chasing Magic” was staged by the theater.
“This production is going to be a truly joyful experience for anyone watching,” Miles said.
‘The Odyssey’ (Feb. 9 – March 16)
Kate Hamill’s reimagining of the classic “Odyssey,” in the works since 2017 and another piece commissioned by the theater, returns after offering the briefest of glimpses last year: a one-night reading.
“Hamill is one of my favorite adapters and writers in American theater,” Miles said.
Her take on “The Odyssey,” Homer’s epic poem following Odysseus’ journey home after the Trojan War, will be a more balanced one that also tells the story of his wife, Penelope. While the original Greek tale saw men go off to war while women waited at home, this version shows violence affects everyone: “My adaptation does not really believe that [Penelope] just sat there for 20 years weaving,” Hamill said.
“In this version, Penelope is going to get the agency she’s always deserved,” said Miles, describing the play seen in an exploratory workshop a couple weeks ago as an “epic, reimagined in a theatrical way … it’s going to be thrilling.”
It’s still the saga Hamill’s father would read her as a bedtime story, Hamill said, just not the same version. “There’s lots of swearing in this play, there’s sex in this play, there’s certainly violence in this play, because I want it to feel real to people who are in combat,” Hamill said.
‘Night Side Songs’ (March 27 – April 13)
The third commission for the season is produced in association with the Philadelphia Theatre Co. It was written by Daniel and Patrick Lazour, who had a premiere at the A.R.T. in 2019 with their musical “We Live in Cairo,” about six revolutionary students coming of age, inspired by the young Egyptians who took to the streets in 2011 to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak.
“Songs” is about a woman who receives a cancer diagnosis and how her life changes, exploring the relationship between patients and caregivers. It’s a sing-along – the audience participates.
“It is beautiful, it is emotional, and the form in which it unfolds is going to be an amazing shared experience,” Miles said.
(“Night Side Songs” will take place at a “Cambridge-area venue to be announced.” All other shows will be at the Loeb Drama Center.)
‘Passing Strange’ (May 20 – June 29)
The season ends with “Passing Strange,” a rock musical that premiered on Broadway in 2008. It follows an anonymous protagonist on his journey to express himself through music, while bringing a new kind of music to the musical theater stage.
“I had the chance to see it at the Young Vic,” Miles said, referring to the London theater where the show had its European premiere. “Wow … it was simply electric.”
Written by Stew, a professor of the practice of musical theater writing at Harvard, the play won a Tony for Best Book. This is its first U.S. revival.
“It’s amazing to get to tell this story of a Black man who wants to be a musician, but I think in many ways it’s actually a very universal story,” Miles said, calling the musical a “study of self-discovery that we can all relate to.”
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