Alley Theatre will reopen with a stellar 75th anniversary season

A still from a play staged at Alley Theatre

All images in this article – courtesy Alley Theater

Fantastic news for theater fans in Houston! Alley theatre will be reopening this October with a stellar season marking its 75th anniversary!

It was only recently that Broadway announced its plans to resume live productions this September. Close at its heels, Houston’s Alley Theatre is also gearing up to open post the shutdown induced by the the coronavirus pandemic.

So, come fall, theatre aficionados will be able to once again experience the familiar tingling anticipation of those seconds just before the curtain rises and a great play or a beautiful musical comes to life on stage.

Alley Theatre will be reopening in style, and how. The theatre company’s celebratory return to live productions coincides with its 75th anniversary as performances resume from 1 October 2021. To mark this occasion, the Tony Award-winning theatre has planned three world premiere plays and one world premiere musical among other shows to make this a stunning revival after the theatre’s more than a yearlong slumber.

Alley Theatre also announced two new additions to its Resident Acting Company in the form of actors Melissa Molano and Christopher Salazar.

Alley Theatre 75th Anniversary Season – Highlights

The theatre’s Anniversary Season that will be kicked off in October 2021 will go on well into the next year. It will flag off with the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Sweat written by Lynn Nottage and directed by Rob Melrose that will run at Hubbard Theatre. This will be followed by Hilary Bettis’ 72 Miles to Go…, a family drama directed by José Zayas. The play will run at the Neuhaus Theatre, another of Alley Theatre company’s venues.

Last year, many shows saw cancellations as the pandemic set in and one among them was High School Play: A Nostalgia Fest by Texan playwright Vichet Chum. It will now come to Hubbard Theatre in 2022, continuing the festivities at Alley. Other plays that will be staged include Amerikin by Chisa Hutchinson, Sense and Sensibility (based on the Jane Austen classic) by Kate Hamill and the off-the-wall comedy Dead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl.

The anniversary will also mark the world premiere of the musical Noir directed by Tony Award-winner Darko Tresnjak which is scheduled to run through June and July 2022.

On playing host to so many promising productions, Melrose, the artistic director at Alley said, “Our 75th season boasts the most world premieres of any of our 74 previous seasons! When founder Nina Vance started this Theatre in 1947, she sent out 214 penny postcards and stated ‘It’s beginning! Houston, this is your Theatre.’ For the 75 Anniversary and beyond, we are committed to being a Theatre for all Houstonians.”