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Letter from the Artistic Director

Welcome friends, old and new, to New Canon Theatre Co! First and foremost, I wish to extend our deepest thanks to our venue partners this summer: Sunset Center, Blue Fox Cellars, and the Stanton Center have all shared space with us, allowing us to create, to dream, and to play. I also wish to express our gratitude to our donors, sponsors, and you, our patrons. We are now in Season 3, all because of you! 

We call this season, a “Season of Icons and New Works.” Our two mainstage titles, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill and The Tragedy of Hamlet, feature central characters that are the very definition of iconic, as they at various times have been venerated and lauded in our cultural conversations. In Lady Day…, Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz singer, sits front and center, baring her soul through raw, candid storytelling intertwined with the music that made her famous. With Hamlet, we tackle what has often been named (some would say ad nauseum), “the world’s greatest play,” its text and protagonist iconic in their own right. 

Each story features big “main character energy” (to quote our Associate Artistic Director, Noah Lucé), and it is easy to become swept up by both Billie and Hamlet due to their grandiosity of spirit. However, at their core, these characters (real and imagined, respectively), as well as their narratives, share common themes: love, mortality, theatricality, loss…and these are just a few of the parallels between these two works. Both Billie’s struggles and the tribulations endured by Shakespeare’s tragic prince are universal, familiar, and unique to both the audience and actor. Ask two people their favorite Billie Holiday song and why it moves them, and you will likely get two different answers; see two different Hamlet’s, and you’ll respond differently to how each navigates their quest for revenge amidst debating the very nature of life vs. death. Why? Because we see ourselves in these roles. Their struggles. Their triumphs. Their deep humanity. We all have a little Billie Holiday and a touch of Hamlet in our heart of hearts—so they, as all icons do, continue to endure in their enigmatic singularity.

Icons don’t just appear out of the ether, however—they all have an origin, which is why we are proud to present three phenomenal staged readings to close our summer. Reconsider Me, Is Not That Strange?, and Devil May Care all create beautiful new theatrical worlds that explore our communal and deeply flawed humanity, wrapping us in a collective spirit that both celebrates our individuality and honors our interconnectedness. These gifted playwrights and their stories will no doubt become iconic in their own right, and we thank you for supporting their potential.

I end this note with boundless excitement for where we are, and for what is to come. We are currently preparing our fourth season, and we need your support now more than ever. If you are moved  by, curious about, or appreciative of what we present this summer, I humbly request that you support our ongoing work to present riveting and professional theatre by making a tax-deductible donation. Please visit our website, www.newcanontheatre.org, to learn more. Thank you—and as always: you are all New Canon.

With gratitude,

J. Matthew Gordon

Artistic Director

Co-founder