Arts Club Theatre Company announces 2012/13 season

Among the offerings at the Stanley is Clybourne Park (September 6 to October 7), a Pulitzer-Prize-winning satire by Bruce Norris that unapologetically attacks the conventions of political correctness: In 1959 Chicago, an African-American family moves into a house in the all-white Clybourne Park—50 years later, a young white newlywed couple attempts to buy the same house in a neighbourhood that is now predominantly black. The Stanley will also feature Oliver Goldsmith’s classic comedy of manners, She Stoops to Conquer(October 18 to November 18); Irving Berlin’s White Christmas: The Musical (November 29 to December 23); Marc Camoletti’s Boeing-Boeing, which has a 60s Parisian playboy romantically juggling three air hostesses; the farewell run of the national hit, Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt’s 2 Pianos 4 Hands (March 14 to April 14); and the Motown musical Dreamgirls, by Tom Eyen (May 9 to July 7).

The Granville Island Stage will welcome the lewd singing muppets of Avenue Q (June 20 to August 17), the long-running Broadway musical that features hand puppets singing songs like “The Internet is for Porn”. The venue will open the season on a more serious note, with the Tony Award-winning Master Class (September 27 to October 27), about an aging operatic soprano, inspired by Maria Callas, giving a master class at Juilliard and reflecting on her past. Philip Grecian’s It’s a Wonderful Life (November 26 to December 29), based on Frank Capra’s classic film, will ring in the winter holidays.

The venue will also feature the premiere of M.A.C. Farrant’s My Turquoise Years (April 4 to May 4), a coming-of-age story set in 1960, based on Farrant’s memoir of her 14th summer. Atomic Vaudeville’s Ride the Cyclone (January 17 to February 16), with music and lyrics by Brooke Maxwell and Jacob Richmond, will be presented as part of the PuSh Festival. The critically lauded work will take audiences through an outlandish adventure as a fortune-teller brings members of a high school chamber choir back from the dead, after they’ve perished in a freak roller-coaster accident.

At the Revue Stage, humourist David Sedaris’s hysterical Santaland Diaries (November 22 to December 22) will take an irreverent look at Christmas, and Marcus Youssef will premiere How Has My Love Affected You? (February 28 to March 23), a memoir that delves into family history. Also premiering in the venue will be Yvette Nolan’s The Unplugging (October 11 to November 3), in which two women attempt to survive in a post-apocalyptic Canada.

The company will also tour Bill Richardson and Veda Hille’s 2012 PuSh Festival hit, Do You Want What I Have Got? A Craigslist Cantata; Michele Riml’s sequel to Sexy Laundry, Henry and Alice: Into the Wild; and Patrick Barlow’s Monty Pythonesque adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps.