Ophelia's Jump Announces Productions for its 2024 Season

FEATURING A MUSICAL, MODERN CLASSICS, THE ANNUAL SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
AND TWO WORLD PREMIERES

Artistic Director, Beatrice Casagrán (2023 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle recipient of Gordon Davidson Award for distinguished contribution for the Los Angeles theatrical community) announces Ophelia’s Jump Productions (OJP) season programming with a collection of plays that are guaranteed to entertain with compelling stories and educate current and new generations of theatre lovers. The ambitious 2024 Season will showcase two world premieres and the Annual Midsummer Shakespeare with productions in two locations. Memberships and sponsorships are available online now at opheliasjump.org.

THE MUSICAL OF MUSICALS January 26 - February 18
Music by Eric Rockwell, Lyrics by Joanne Bogart, Book by Eric Rockwell & Joanne Bogart

Directed by Beatrice Casagrán, Music Directed by Bill Wolfe In this hilarious satire of musical theatre, one story becomes five delightful musicals, each written in the distinctive style of a different master of the form, from Rodgers & Hammerstein to Stephen Sondheim.

“Funny, charming and refreshing! It hits its targets with sophisticated affection!”

 – New York Magazine

THE REVOLUTIONISTS March 7 - April 7
By Lauren Gunderson, Directed by Sheila Malone

Four beautiful, badass women lose their heads in this irreverent, girl-powered comedy set during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. Playwright Olympe de Gouges, assassin Charlotte Corday, former queen (and fan of ribbons) Marie Antoinette, and Haitian rebel Marianne Angelle hang out, murder Marat, and try to beat back the extremist insanity in 1793 Paris. This grand and dream-tweaked comedy is about violence and legacy, art and activism, feminism and terrorism, compatriots and chosen sisters, and how we actually go about changing the world. It’s a true story. Or total fiction. Or a play about a play. Or a raucous resurrection…that ends in a song and a scaffold.

“It’s simply a brilliant script…” - CityBeat Cincinnati

LA TEMPESTAD or, SHAKESPEARE GOES CARIBBEAN  July 11-21
By William Shakespeare, Directed and Adapted by Beatrice Casagran
part of the Midsummer Shakespeare Festival in Claremont
performed at the Sontag Greek Theatre, Pomona College

A story of shipwreck and magic, The Tempest begins on a ship caught in a violent storm with Alonso, the king of Naples, on board. On a nearby island, the exiled Duke of Milan, Prospero, tells his daughter, Miranda, that he has caused the storm with his magical powers. Prospero had been banished twelve years earlier when Prospero’s brother, Antonio—also on the doomed ship—conspired with Alonso to become the duke instead. Prospero and Miranda are served by a spirit named Ariel and by Caliban, son of the island’s previous inhabitant, the witch Sycorax. This bilingual adaptation is set on La Isla de la Juventud off the coast of Cuba in 1895. The production is grounded in Cuban culture's vibrant mixture of Spanish and African music and religion, featuring live music with original arrangements of Cuban and Afro-Caribbean music.

KNIGHT OF THE BURING PESTLE July 11-21
By Francis Beaumont, Directed by Caitlin Lopez
part of the Midsummer Shakespeare Festival

A joyful celebration of the universal capacity to improvise, this delightful Elizabethan comedy is a rough and rowdy romp filled with MUSIC and MERRIMENT! As a group of players gathers to present a play about the elopement of star-crossed lovers, they are abruptly interrupted by a grocer and his wife. They have a different kind of play in mind–an outrageous hero’s quest of derring-do…The Knight of the Burning Pestle. And they know just the fellow to star–their apprentice, Rafe. This new subplot–invented on the fly–takes over the stage in surprising and disruptive ways.

SECOND DEATH OF A MAD WIFE (WORLD PREMIERE) October 18-November 10
By Kelly Mcburnette-Andronicos, Directed by Beatrice Casagrán

Whatever happened to Jack the Ripper’s wife? Bunny Maybrick began life in an opulent Alabama mansion and is ending it in a squalid shack full of cats in rural Connecticut. She’s already given away most of her meager belongings, but the heavy contents of her soul are harder to leave behind. That is, until a local prep school boy, Theo Voss, becomes an accomplice in Bunny’s meandering, mad, death-bed confession that includes adultery, arsenic addiction, and murder.

“Kelly McBurnette-Andronicos has written a wonderfully creepy and surreal'Northeastern Southern Gothic Noir,' her wildly theatrical sense of the absurdfiring on all cylinders here." -Doug DeVita

TWELVE OPHELIAS (a play with broken songs) September 6-29
By Caridad Svich, Directed by Beatrice Casagrán

Shakespeare’s Ophelia rises up out of the water dreaming of Pop-Tarts and other sweet things. She finds herself in a neo-Elizabethan Appalachian setting where Gertrude runs a brothel, Hamlet is called a Rude Boy, and nothing is what it seems. In this mirrored world of word-scraps and cold sex, Ophelia cuts a new path for herself.

“A whimsical riff on Hamlet which imagines an afterlife for Elsinore’s unluckiest lass.
A twisted take on the tragedy.” -Charles Isherwood, The New York Times

CJ, AN ASPANGLISH PLAY (WORLD PREMIERE) November 29-December 22
By Mercedes Floresislas, Director to be determined

The play re-imagines A Christmas Carol as a Mexican-American coming of age story. Carolina Juarez (CJ) is the disaffected teenage daughter of a woman who struggles with depression and drug addiction. CJ is temporarily sent to stay with her aunt and Deaf grandmother who suffers from dementia. CJ, who speaks little Spanish and no ASL, cannot communicate with her Grandmother and wants little to do with her family. During a teenage tantrum, she destroys a stuffed monkey beloved by her grandmother, bringing the toy to life and ushering in a series of Aztec deities who teach CJ about her Mexican heritage and her grandmother's life, giving her a new understanding of the many struggles that her grandmother endured as a young Deaf Latina trying to raise her baby. CJ finds an understanding and appreciation for her grandmother and for own culture and learns that communication comes in many forms.

LOCATIONS 

Ophelia’s Jump Theatre, 2009 Porterfield Way, Suite H, Upland, CA 91786

La Tempestad will be performed at the Sontag Greek Theatre, Pomona College

TICKET INFORMATION General admission and special pricing for college students with ID. Pay What You Can/Pay it Forward Thursdays. Specific information, group discounts and Season Packages available at opheliasjump.org or by phone at 909-734-6565.

ABOUT OPHELIA’S JUMP Celebrating it’s 11th Season, Ophelia’s Jump is a non-profit regional theatre company based in Claremont and performing in Claremont and Upland. Ophelia’s Jump Productions was founded in 2013 by women and queer artists and educators who believe that the purpose of theatre is to create unending conversations, spark imagination, incite conscience, and elicit a visceral response. OJP aims to invigorate the creativity and intellect of our community by working with local and regional artists to tell compelling stories and educate new generations of theatre lovers. Ophelia’s Jump is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation.

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