Canterbury Summer Theatre, one of the Midwest's oldest professional summer companies, is pleased to announce its 55th season of plays and musicals, with weekly performances beginning June 14 through August 5.
Drawing on talent from throughout the country, the Canterbury Resident Company will present audiences with a summer slate packed with comedy, music and thrills performed at Canterbury Theatre, located at 807 Franklin Street, in the Uptown Arts District of Michigan City.
Ray Scott Crawford returns for his 38th season as Artistic Director. Crawford is Director of Theatre at Bossier Parish Community College in Louisiana.
Canterbury Associate Artistic Director, David Graham, will helm The Violet Hour, a pre-Jazz Age comedy-drama, to kick off the season. Crawford will direct the classic musical comedy, Dames at Sea, as well as the thriller, Scotland Road, which will premiere at Canterbury, before continuing on to performances in Louisiana.
Canterbury veteran, Lari Leber, returns to direct The Pin-Up Girls, featuring a cavalcade of musical hits inspired by letters home from our troops overseas. Leber previously directed productions of No Way To Treat a Lady, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change and Vanities: The Musical for Canterbury.
Returning for his fourth season as Music Director, John Berst will also stage the country music-infused comedy, Honky Tonk Angels. Berst is a faculty member at the University of Miami Musical Theatre Training Program, and most recently directed John & Jen at Canterbury.
Crawford offers, "Our Canterbury Resident Company is getting ready to set sail with the five exciting and entertaining plays and musicals of the 55th season!"
"With our season moving 'By Land or By Sea for 2023!', we will offer a little bit of everything with our shows, ranging in time from the early 1900s to modern day. We provide toe-tappers on board a luxury liner or the possible lone survivor of the Titanic, preserved on an iceberg in the North Atlantic. We also have a celebration for our service men and women separated from their sweethearts overseas, as well as a tribute to the country-music goddesses of the Nashville scene." he added.
Canterbury theatre seating will be by general admission. Season ticket holders still may reserve specific seating, if the box office is notified in advance of the performances that they wish to attend.
Performance times have changed for this summer, now Wednesdays at 2:00 PM, and Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:00 PM.
Tickets for all Canterbury productions, as well as season discount cards, can be reserved by calling (219) 874-4269 or by e-mail at info@canterburytheatre.org. Reduced ticket prices are available for seniors, groups and students.
Canterbury Summer Theatre is produced under the auspices of the Canterbury Guild, a nonprofit arts organization began in 1969 (as the Festival Players Guild) by Michigan City businessmen and educators with the goal of bringing professional summer theatre to the area.
In addition to its summer initiative, Canterbury has produced its Winter Arts series for over two decades, highlighting a variety of performing arts programming.
For more information, please visit www.canterburytheatre.org
The 2023 Canterbury Summer Theatre Season
The Violet Hour
By Richard Greenberg
June 14-17
It’s April 1st, 1919, and the young independent publisher John Pace Seavering is setting up his office: a couple of dilapidated rooms in a Manhattan tower. With only enough capital to publish one book, John finds himself besieged by two authors. Denny McCleary, John’s brash and gifted college friend, has produced a manuscript so large, it lives in a trio of crates. But John is also being lobbied to publish the memoirs of Jessie Brewster, the popular black jazz singer who is also John’s very secret mistress. As John deals with these two, another drama is playing out in the outer office--a mysterious machine has arrived and is spewing out stacks of pages while John’s hapless assistant strives vainly to stem the flood. However, what's written on these pages will throw John’s every hope and plan into disarray!
Dames at Sea
Book and Lyrics by George Haimsohn and Robin Miller
Music by Jim Wise
June 21-July 1
A long-running off-Broadway hit, which brought stardom to newcomer Bernadette Peters, this delightfully campy show revels in nostalgia for Hollywood musicals of the '30s. Sweet little Ruby from faraway Hometown, U.S.A. has come to the big city make her mark on Broadway. Who should she chance to meet but another boy from Hometown, U.S.A.: Dick, a sailor, who also has ambitions as a songwriter. Ruby begins in the chorus, and by the end of the day, in true Hollywood fashion, Dick saves her doomed Broadway show with a smash tune and Ruby becomes a star on the deck of a battleship, which just happens to be passing by. Dames at Sea is a non-stop ride of romance, laughs and musical delights!
The Pin-Up Girls
by James Hindman and Jeffrey Lodin
July 5-15
From The Andrew Sisters to hip-hop! From World War I to Afghanistan. The Pin-Up Girls sing a cavalcade of hits inspired by letters home from our troops overseas! While singing at their local VFW hall, Leanne and her friends stumble upon a huge stash of letters that go back a hundred years. Inspired by what they find— funny, romantic, heartbreaking and… sexy— the ladies put on a show that celebrates the guys and gals who fight to defend our country!
Honky Tonk Angels
by Ted Swindley
July 19-29
When three gutsy gals from different backgrounds take charge of their lives, they decide to follow their honky tonk dreams to the city of Nashville. Combining 30 classic country tunes (including “Stand By Your Man,” “9 to 5,” “Harper Valley PTA” and more!) The Honky Tonk Angels is a hilarious, foot-stomping good time from the creator of Always…Patsy Cline!
Scotland Road
By Jeffrey Hatcher
August 3-5 (No Wednesday performance)
In the last decade of the twentieth century, a beautiful young woman in nineteenth-century clothing is found floating on an iceberg in the middle of the North Atlantic. When rescued, she says only one word: Titanic. The woman, Winifred, is taken to an isolated spot on the coast of Maine where an expert on the sinking of the liner, a mysterious man named John, has arranged to interrogate her for six days. His goal: to crack her story, get her to confess she’s a fake, and reveal her true identity; his one clue: her enigmatic references to an unknown place called “Scotland Road.” By the play’s end, one of the characters is dead, all the character’s identities have been questioned, and John and Winifred’s shared secret is revealed as they make one final journey to Scotland Road!
(L-R) Massimo Manfredini, Mai Hartwich, Kate Drury, Kendall Shamus and Mitchell Bauer in the 2022 Canterbury Summer Theatre production of The World Goes 'Round: The Songs of Kander and Ebb
(L-R) Kendall Shamus, Mitchell Bauer and Mai Hartwich in the 2022 Canterbury Summer Theatre production of Streakin' Thru the '70s