Pasadena Playhouse’s next season includes L.A. premieres, revivals

Josefina López wrote “Real Women Have Curves,” based on her experiences as an undocumented Mexican immigrant working in a Boyle Heights garment factory, nearly 40 years ago.

Since then, López’s script has yielded a play, a feature film starring America Ferrera and, most recently, a Broadway musical. The latter, which opened at the James Earl Jones Theatre in 2025 and closed after 104 performances, will make its post-Broadway debut next spring as part of an original production at Pasadena Playhouse during its 2026-27 season, the theater announced Thursday. Producing Artistic Director Danny Feldman called the lineup “bigger than our Sondheim season.”

The season begins with a new production of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s tragicomedy “The Visit,” directed by Tony Award winner Darko Tresnjak and starring Jefferson Mays. (Fans will remember the pair’s memorable collaboration from this season’s “Amadeus.”) Next up is the long-awaited L.A. premiere of “Passing Strange,” the Tony-winning musical based on the life of L.A.-born musician Stew, directed by Tony nominee Zhailon Levingston (“Cats: The Jellicle Ball”). A yet-to-be-announced winter production will follow, then “Real Women Have Curves: The Musical.” Finally, a revival of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” which brings Alfred Molina back to the Playhouse stage, caps the year.

When Feldman learned that “Real Women Have Curves” did not have a national tour lined up, he took matters into his own hands — believing it essential that a story centering L.A.’s Latino community be told at a time when it’s hurting.

“Celebrating a community is another form of resistance and power in these times,” Feldman said.

The artistic director compared the tone of “Real Women Have Curves” to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show, which many found cathartic for its exuberance.

“[The musical] deserves to have a production at the scale and scope that we do here at Pasadena Playhouse,” Feldman said.

Since Feldman took the reins at the Playhouse in 2016, the historic theater has blossomed into a thriving arts ecosystem. In 2023, the Playhouse received the Regional Theatre Tony Award after its critically lauded Sondheim Celebration spiked both audience engagement and the theater’s artistic profile. Just last year, the theater bought back the building it lost to bankruptcy in 1970, and greatly expanded its educational offerings.

A more risk-averse leader might use such triumphs as permission to take their foot off the gas. Instead, Feldman has assembled a demanding lineup that will require the Playhouse to operate on a larger scale than ever before.

“We’re up for the challenge. We’re ready, and our audiences respond to work when it pushes the limits,” the artistic director said.

Jefferson Mays starred in the Pasadena Playhouse’s recent production of “Amadeus.”

(Jeff Lorch)

That proved true for “Amadeus,” which Feldman called “one of our biggest hits of all time.” The artistic director said the show excelled because of its high production value — something regional theaters are rarely able to execute.

The creative team for “Amadeus” will aim to replicate that success when they reunite for “The Visit,” a play Tresnjak has wanted to tackle for 40 years.

“The work gets so much deeper when you’ve built the trust,” Feldman said. Plus, recycling a star is a classic move for regional theaters, which historically operated as repertory companies that showcased the same group of performers in different roles and thereby exhibited their range.

The artistic director said that he was also compelled by the unique tone of “The Visit,” which Dürrenmatt wrote while Europe was reckoning with its complicity in World War II. The script is as dark as it is entertaining and absurdist.

“It’s a play ultimately about morality and how a community inch-by-inch becomes OK with something that they should not be OK with,” Feldman said. He added that theater excels at getting audiences to laugh in the auditorium, and then mull things over on the way home.

Following “The Visit,” the Playhouse will up the energy with two musicals, “Passing Strange” and “Real Women Have Curves,” (with the undisclosed show falling in between). Feldman considers “Passing Strange” a part of the Playhouse’s ongoing effort to revisit landmark American musicals.

“It was a musical that was revolutionary and changed the game,” he said, characterizing the show as “a rock concert where a play breaks out.”

Strangely, for a coming-of-age story written by an Angeleno about a musician from South Central L.A., “Passing Strange” never made it to L.A. after its 2008 Broadway debut. The musical, which had its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, arrives at the Playhouse just in time for its 20th anniversary.

While “The Visit” and “Real Women Have Curves” will be presented largely as is, “Passing Strange” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” directed by Jessica Kubzansky, will be lightly updated for contemporary audiences.

Williams published multiple versions of his play and never truly stopped revising it, Feldman said, “so we’re trying to figure what best suits our production in our world.” Audiences can rest assured that the emotional core that secured the play’s spot in the theater canon will be preserved no matter what changes are made.

Feldman said he regularly hears the refrain from visitors, “When the world is crazy, I just want to escape. I want to come to you and escape.” But what he thinks people actually mean when they say that is: “I want to be in community. I want to have an experience that is above me and bigger than me, with other people.”

“It’s why I’m making the case that theater is going to be more relevant and important in decades to come than ever before in my career,” he said. The more technology continues to dominate our lives, and the more we become isolated as a result, the more precious those moments in the theater are, Feldman added.

He sensed it when audiences roared with laughter during the Playhouse’s production of “Eureka Day,” and during a beat of pin-drop silence in “Amadeus.”

“Those moments of lightning, of electricity, in a room — that’s what I live for,” he said. “That’s what we do best.”