Reactions to the big reveal yesterday of next season’s shows are flooding Paramount’s website, phone lines, email and social media with comments, messages and subscription purchases! It seems we’ve reached a connection with our audience over these past several years. Our company’s stunning achievement and all your support has brought us to this moment. We are about to embark onto a theatrical odyssey of attractions familiar and new. There’s something for everyone mirrored in the 20th Century kaleidoscopic panorama of destinations we’re offering, so get on board and fasten your seat belts: here comes Season 10!

This fall will blast off with the heart and soul and head-banging fervor of Rock of Ages directed by Amber Mak. Every bit of its 80’s metal-band flashback nostalgia has something here for all of us to sing along to and bring us all together no matter what’s happening in the world. With Amber at the helm there’s no doubt we’ll all be feelin’ like rock stars following her lead to the power of Don’t Stop Believin’!

For your holiday spectacular now a family tradition at Paramount, is Rodgers and Hammerstein’s timeless gift of Cinderella this year. Just imagine the enchantment our creative team will conjure up: from rags to riches and pumpkins to carriages, this most sumptuously memorable music is universally loved by generations!

Time literally and hysterically repeats itself in the musical adaptation of the 90’s Bill Murray comedy film classic Groundhog Day, added to the National Film Registry for being deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” When the show debuted on Broadway in 2017, Murray went to see it and was moved to tears during the performance, as the New York Times reported him saying when the show was over: “The idea that… (Mr. Murray trailed off, trying to collect his thoughts)… The idea that we just have to try again. We just have to try again. It’s such a beautiful, powerful idea.”

There’s something for everyone mirrored in the 20th Century kaleidoscopic panorama of destinations we’re offering, so get on board and fasten your seat belts: here comes Season 10!

In 1902, a new kind of music called Ragtime sent a century spinning accompanying industrialization, immigration, class and racial conflict. Based on E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel, this historical fiction is exquisitely scored by 1998 Tony Award winning Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. On Paramount’s stage, injustice and hope two-handedly play America like an old piano tune at once devastatingly poignant and refulgent, resonant and relevant.

I’m off to the final run-through of The Secret of My Success right now across the street in the Main Rehearsal Hall in the Art Center; the “Designer Run” for administrative and creative staff and crews. The world premiere production moves into the theater this week for moment to moment teching of scenery, lighting, costume, sound, etc. More about that next time. (I can feel my pulse quicken in anticipation!)

Love & thanks,

Jim