Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory, founded in 1964 by David Emmes and Martin Benson, is led by Artistic Director David Ivers and
Managing Director Paula Tomei. SCR is widely regarded as one of America's foremost producers of new plays. In its three-stage David Emmes/Martin Benson Theatre Center,
SCR produces a wide range of theatre, ranging from classics, to modern masterpieces, contemporary hits and new plays on the leading edge.
We had seen an outside SCR at the Mission San Juan Capistrano and liked it so much we purchased season tickets for the 2023-2024 season.
The first play in 2023 was Quixote Nuevo.
From one of the storytellers behind the film Coco comes a modern take on Don Quixote bursting with imagination and Tejano music. The valiant knight—a.k.a. Jose Quijano—sets out to find his long-lost love.
But nothing is as it seems, he gets lost in his fantasies and the community wrestles with his dangerous reality. This fast-paced, bilingual fable about the joys and perils of being the
hero of your own story was proclaimed “revelatory” by the San Francisco Chronicle.
After the play we went to a local Denny's for a snaxk.
The second play was A Raisin in the Sun. This groundbreaking drama changed the American theatre forever, breaking down barriers on and off stage. Each of the Youngers, a Black family, has a different view of how to spend their father’s life insurance settlement to better the family. Will they open a business, send Beneatha to medical school or move to an all-white suburb? Praised for its “vigor as well as veracity” by the New York Times, this masterpiece seeks answers to the still-relevant questions posed in Langston Hughes’ poem Harlem: What happens to a dream deferred?
