Pasadena Playhouse wades into the vaccine debate with 2025-26 season led by Tony winner ‘Eureka Day’

Pasadena Playhouse announced a 2025-26 season Thursday led by Jonathan Spector’s satire “Eureka Day,” a newly minted Tony Award winner for best revival of a play, which centers on a mumps outbreak at a progressive private school in Berkeley whose PTA tries to come up with a vaccine policy that suits everyone — to hilarious results in an era of vaccine skepticism.

“In these times we need laughter and we need to be able to think critically about ourselves,” Playhouse producing artistic director Danny Feldman said. “An audience laughing together is such a good entrance to heavy themes and big ideas.”

Next up will be Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus,” which opened in 1979 and won the Tony for best play in 1981 with Ian McKellen winning lead actor honors. Director Miloš Forman made it into a 1984 film, which won eight Oscars including best picture. Shaffer also won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. The story is a fictional account of the contentious relationship between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his rival, Antonio Salieri, the court composer of the Austrian emperor.

Calling “Amadeus” one of the great pieces of historical fiction for theater, Feldman said it’s a show he’s been planning for the Playhouse for quite some time.

Another Feldman favorite, and the third show on next season’s calendar, is a world-premiere adaptation of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s 1947 musical, “Brigadoon.” The adaptation, by Alexandra Silber, remains true to the original, Feldman said, but “really puts it forward for today’s audience ... with covert but impactful changes that sharpen it in an exciting way.”

The two-person hip-hop musical, “Mexodus,” rounds out the main stage offerings. A fifth show will be announced at a later date.

Written by and starring Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, “Mexodus” explores the little known history of the Underground Railroad to Mexico. Using looped musical tracks that the men lay down live during the show, the production follows the journey of an enslaved man who flees south and meets a rancher.

“It’s more of a musical experience than a traditional musical, so it’s very genre busting and innovative,” Feldman said of the technique used to bring the music to life. “It’s a bit of a magic trick.”

Two family shows are on the schedule: “The Song of the North,” created, designed and directed by Hamid Rahmanian for children ages 6-12; and “The Lizard and El Sol,” originally developed and produced by the Alliance Theater in Atlanta for ages 5 and younger.

The former will be presented on the Playhouse’s main stage, which is a departure from past family programming. “Hamid Rahmanian’s Song of the North,” based on a classic Persian love story and presented near the Iranian New Year, promises breathtaking visuals through the use of 483 handmade shadow puppets wielded by talented puppeteers.

“The Lizard & El Sol,” staged at local parks as well as in the Playhouse courtyard, tells the charming tale of a lizard in search of the newly missing sun. It’s based on a Mexican folktale and presented mostly in Spanish, although it can be enjoyed by non-Spanish speakers too, Feldman said.

“We don’t look at our family programming as separate,” says Feldman. “It’s really core to our mission.”

The season announcement comes during a banner year for Pasadena Playhouse. The State Theater of California celebrated its 100th anniversary in May, and in April it announced it had raised $9.5 million to buy back the historic campus it lost to bankruptcy in 1970 — putting the company in charge of its fate for the first time in more than 50 years.

That good news came two years after the theater became the second-ever L.A. organization to win the the Regional Theatre Tony Award.

“As we purchased our building and came into this moment of thinking about the next century, it felt like there was a very big assignment with this season,” Feldman said. “How are we turning the corner into our next chapter?”

His answer: “An expansion and continuation of what I think we do best at the Playhouse,” which is to think about the presentation of art and theater through a California lens.

Feldman said that with it being the state theater, he feels a unique responsibility to ensure that the work presented on the Playhouse stage engages with the world — but that it is also theater for everyone.

“What I love about this year is that it really is the full spectrum,” Feldman said. “Comedies and tragedies and musicals and plays — old things and new things and kids’ things.”

For tickets and additional information about the upcoming season, go to pasadenaplayhouse.org.