Plays

What was it to be a woman in 1645? In 1842? In 1999? What about in our millennium? Having begged, bargained, and seized more power than ever, women expect and are expected to be more fully realized, more intelligent, more professionally successful, not to mention more beautiful and fit, more loving and fertile, and for… Read more »

The Road to Mecca, a thought-provoking, inspiring and magical play by South African playwright Athol Fugard, was inspired by the true story of Miss Helen Martins, an Afrikaner widow who lived alone in the boondocks of New Bethesda, South Africa and created The Owl House, which is now a provincial heritage site. Miss Helen is… Read more »

Tony Award nominee for Best Play. From the author of Doubt and Moonstruck comes a romantic comedy set in rural Ireland. Anthony and Rosemary are lovelorn farmers who haven’t got a clue when it comes to love. These hopeless singletons will need to overcome a bitter land feud, familial rivalries and their own romantic fears… Read more »

BOB: A Life In Five Acts, chronicles the highly unusual life of Bob and his lifelong quest to become a “Great Man.” Born and abandoned in the bathroom of a fast food restaurant, Bob energetically embarks on an epic journey across America and encounters inspiring generosity, crushing hardships, blissful happiness, stunning coincidences, wrong turns, lucky… Read more »

Main Stage West is proud to announce the world premiere of Rebecca Louise Miller’s smart, provocative, dramatic play, Capacity, about Mileva Maric’ and Albert Einstein.  SYNOPSIS: She was a scientist, a mother, and the wife of the twentieth century’s most famous scientist. A brilliant, budding physicist in her youth, Mileva
 Maric’ Einstein’s journey is filled… Read more »

Part memory, part magic, Brian Friel’s Dancing At Lughnasa is widely regarded as a modern theater classic. In the play, Michael Evans recounts the nostalgic summer of 1936, at his aunts’ cabin, in the fictional town of Ballybeg just before the dawn of the second world war. It is a tale of haunting, human beauty…. Read more »

Hope illuminates our country’s immigrant experience using storytelling, poignant lyrics and haunting melodies. Timely, Hope is full of humor, pathos and great music. Si Kahn’s other musical plays at MSW include: Mother Jones In Heaven (2014), Joe Hill’s Last Will (Premiere), Precious Memories (Premiere), and Silver Spoon. NO PREVIEW ON THANKSGIVING DAY, NOV. 24  

  The time is 1959. The place is a seedy bar in Philadelphia. The audience is about to witness one of Billie Holiday’s last performances, given four months before her death. More than a dozen musical numbers are interlaced with salty, often humorous, reminiscences to project a riveting portrait of the lady and her music…. Read more »

A dramatic solo tour de force by Wallace Shawn (NorCal Premiere). On a visit to a beautiful but demented place, where the most basic of political struggles is being enacted right outside the window, the narrator falls ill. Slumped on the bathroom floor of a hotel, the traveller is visited by cherished memories of a privileged… Read more »

SHINING CITY – A Moving Drama by Conor McPherson Set in Dublin, Ireland, Conor McPherson’s (The Weir) newest play, Shining City is a ghost story based around the visits of a widower to a therapist, claiming he has seen his dead wife in their house. The therapist has his own problems and the play charts… Read more »