Classic Stage Company Announces 2024-25 Season

Classic Stage Company, led by producing artistic director Jill Rafson, has announced complete programming for its 2024-25 season.

In March-April of 2025, Classic Stage Company will present the previously postponed production of Wine in the Wilderness, written by Alice Childress (Trouble in Mind) and directed by Tony Award winner LaChanze (Once On This Island, The Color Purple) in her New York directorial debut. Set against the backdrop of the 1964 Harlem riot on a hot summer night, Wine in the Wilderness is a rarely-seen play from Childress. Bill Jameson’s friends introduced him to a model for the final piece of his triptych on Black womanhood, but this woman, Tomorrow Marie, is no mere muse.

The season continues in May-June of 2025 with William Inge’s Bus Stop, directed by Jack Cummings III in a co-production with the National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO) and Transport Group. In William Inge’s 1955 classic, a bus is forced to take shelter from stormy weather outside and a mismatched group of dreamers and cowboys, waitresses and outcasts find unexpected warmth in one another. This production of Bus Stop will be the first to feature an all-Asian American cast.

The season also includes the previously announced productions of Arlekin in Residence, presented by the MART Foundation. Their productions will include the off-Broadway transfer of Our Class, written by Tadeusz Słobodzianek and directed by Igor Golyak, from September 12–November 12, and a new adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, adapted and directed by Golyak, starring Richard Topol as Shylock, from November 22–December 22.

Throughout the fall, CSC will also produce a new reading series, The Rediscovery Readings, which will amplify the voices of women who shaped the American theater in the early 20th century.

Performance schedules, casting, and full creative teams for these productions will be announced at a later date.