Mack the Knife is back in town when SCT and SRO Lyric Theatre unite to present The Threepenny Opera. Composer Kurt Weill and playwright Bertolt Brecht’s groundbreaking 1928 musical weaves the riveting story of notorious bandit and womanizer MacHeath and his seedy companions in London’s underworld. The haves clash with the have-nots while MacHeath perches in the middle of the storm. With its haunting jazz score, acid harmonies and biting lyrics, The Threepenny Opera originated the popular songs “The Ballad of Mack the Knife,” “Soloman Song” and “Pirate Jenny” and influenced many later works such as Cabaret and Urinetown.

Winner of the 1999 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Play. Norman Allen’s searing one man drama takes the audience on a breathtaking journey that follows the meteoric rise and tragic fall of famed dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. This one-man tour-de-force delves into the hidden recesses of the great dancer’s psyche as he fights for his sanity. In a searing 90 minutes, Nijinsky not only relives his past but embodies the people who inhabit it, including lover Sergei Diaghilev, prima ballerina Tamara Karsavina, and artistic champion Auguste Rodin. Through the passionate telling of his own rise and fall, Nijinsky offers his audience a glimpse into a collapsing civilization and the unraveling of the twentieth century. This play contains mature language and subject matter.

SCT will continue to present up close and personal theatre in its intimate 90 seat theatre throughout its 20th Anniversary season. Ten productions will take stage including seven Springfield area premieres, two Tony Award winners, one Richard Rodger Award winner and one Pulitzer-Prize finalist.

The season begins in June with the Springfield premiere of the French comedy Don’t Dress for Dinner, a sequel to SCT’s 2012 audience favorite, Boeing-Boeing. Director Richard Dines and lead actors Aaron Hooton and Adam Murphy return to their roles from Boeing-Boeing for this production. The summer will round out with two more area premiere musicals. Director Gretchen Teague will stage the Richard Rodgers Award winning musical The Spitfire Grill based on the film of the same name. Then August will see area singer/actress Johnnie Angelia King (Ain’t Misbehavin’, Broadway Rocks) return to the SCT stage as the legendary Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill directed by Richard Dines.

Fall 2014 marks the 25th anniversary of the theatre production that put Springfield, Missouri, in the national spotlight. In October, SCT will present Larry Kramer’s landmark drama The Normal Heart directed by Robert Bradley. Area audiences will have a chance to take a look at a play that created a firestorm in our community in 1989 and assess where we have come in the intervening years.

Following previous productions of Rabbit Hole and God of Carnage, SCT continues its collaboration with local theatre company Resident Artist Ensemble with the play Painting Churches. RAE company member Sarah Wiggin directs the Pulitzer-Prize finalist that deals with a daughter returning to her parents’ Beacon Hill home to move her aging parents to a new home on Cape Cod.

Director David Rice returns to direct two productions. Moonlight and Magnolias is a hilarious look behind-the-scenes of the writing of the screenplay for “Gone with the Wind.” Rice will also return to the work of Conor McPherson (The Seafarer) with Shining City, a contemporary Irish ghost story.

The small stage will be populated with two “large cast” productions. First, director Richard Dines will fill the stage with over 40 characters with Mark Brown’s lauded new stage adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic Around the World in 80 Days. He will do it, however, with lots of creative stagecraft and only five actors. Director Robert Bradley will present an intimate take on Shakespeare’s final masterpiece The Tempest – the original “lost island” play about romance, magic and renewal.

Finally, the season will conclude with the 2007 Tony Award Winner for Best Musical, Spring Awakening. With music by Duncan Sheik and book and lyrics by Steven Sater, Spring Awakening is a rock musical adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s banned 1891 expressionist play about the trials, tribulations and exhilaration of being a teenager. The production will be directed by Richard Dines with music direction by Alex Huff and choreography by Josh Inmon.

Springfield Contemporary Theatre will also introduce a new music series to its schedule beginning in June 2014. SCT’s Sunday Songbook @ Seven series will typically play on the second Sunday evening of each performance run. SCT will present members of our greater theatre community in intimate concert evenings. With music styles as varied as the performers themselves, audiences can expect presentations of musical theatre, jazz, rock and much more.