Wallace Thurman’s
FIRE!!
Written and adapted by Marilyn Campbell-Lowe and Paul Oakley Stovall
In 1927, FIRE!!, a quarterly “Devoted To Younger Negro Artists” was published in Harlem and changed the future of American literature. Including illustrations, poems, essays, short stories and plays, FIRE!! was the first all-Black magazine, by a young group of writers and artists including Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas, John P. Davis, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett, Lewis Grandison Alexander, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. This theatrical happening will weave together the lives of legendary giants as they speak their incendiary stories, make explosive music, dance, debate, collaborate and celebrate their work from FIRE!!
OCT 8 - NOV 2, 2025
Gilbert & Sullivan’s
The Pirates of Penzance
Launch your holidays by celebrating a beloved model of a modern major comedic opera! On his 21st birthday, a dashing young pirate apprentice prepares to finally be freed from servitude. Arriving back on land for the first time, he plans to live a dutiful and honorable adulthood. But there’s a snag - check his birth certificate! A bevy of local beauties, conscientious pirates and their King, a wily and witty old waiting woman, an incompetent madcap Major General, a troop of troglodyte policemen, and a parade of ingenious paradoxes all portend to make Quintessence your delightful winter destination!
NOV 19, 2025 - JAN 4, 2026
Shakespeare’s
“RARE ACCIDENTS”
The escapades of Prince Hal & Falstaff
An abridgement of Henry IV parts 1 & 2
“Succession” was not the first time we obsessed over who dad was going to choose to take over. His father killed a king and usurped a kingdom, but the prodigal Prince Harry spends his days consorting with commoners and playing pranks with his philandering old knight, Sir John Falstaff, rather than studying statecraft and preparing to be the next King of England. A civil war is threatened when Hotspur and his father, the Earl of Northumberland, claim their right to the throne, forcing Hal and Falstaff from the tavern to the battlefield. In this struggle for the divine right to wear the crown, Shakespeare’s epic family drama challenges what makes a good son, a good friend, and a good leader.
FEB 11 - MAR 15, 2026
Molière’s
The Hypochondriac
Translated by Sir Ranjit Bolt
There is more than one way to afford health care. Argan is convinced his undiagnosable illness is fatal and that he must spend his wealth on celebrated doctors to survive. Anxious over medical bills and a profligate second wife, he schemes to marry his beautiful daughter to a doctor to ensure free health care. Can his daughter’s loveless marriage give Argan the insurance he needs against illness, or will he survive sickness without his tridaily enemas and realize that the true ills threatening his life, happiness and survival are not medicinal? Sir Ranjit Bolt (The Venetian Twins) writes a lacerating and witty new translation of Molière’s final comedy.
APR 15 - MAY 10, 2026
