Shadowbox Live announces 2023 season featuring nine shows

Shadowbox Live will celebrate its 35th anniversary next year with a full lineup of company-created shows and encore runs.

"It's a nice milestone, especially coming out of the pandemic. We’re still standing and standing strong," CEO Stacie Boord said.

The 2023 season will feature nine productions, including four original sketch comedy and music shows, a new musical, a new musical revue tribute, and several revivals of past hits.

"As we put together our 2023 season, we wanted to do something brand-new but also bring back our more popular shows," Boord said.

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"Nothing is off the table for our team. It's about what stories we’re inspired to tell and how we tell them – sometimes dance-driven, sometimes video-, script- or music-driven," she said.

With strong support from theatergoers, the 50-member resident ensemble troupe has been able to survive and thrive by creating a variety of original works.

"Creating original work all the time is pretty terrifying, but we like to go outside our comfort zone and explore things we haven't done before," Boord said. "Shadowbox Live can do this because our patrons are adventurous and encourage us to push ourselves in new directions."

This is the first time that Shadowbox Live has firmed up its often-changeable schedule enough in advance to announce a full annual season.

"The pandemic hiatus allowed us more time to get ahead, and our shows are better for it, with consistent quality," Boord said.

All performances take place at 503 S. Front St., with the former 275-seat space reconfigured for 2023 to a more intimate 164 seats, allowing patrons to select seats in advance and sit with people they know.

"Climax: The Greatest Hits" (Jan. 5 to April 29): The sketch comedy and music show celebrates the best company-created sketches of 2022 – such as "Sexual Re-education," about a football coach whose sex-ed students teach him a lesson.

"No Return: The Deadly Dance of Bonnie and Clyde" (Jan. 12 to Feb. 26): The encore run of the popular 2022 dance-theater piece retells the legendary 1930s tale of the world's most famous outlaws and their doomed romance.

"Flower Power: The Music and Movement" (March 2 to June 4): The two-act concert-style musical tribute, an encore run of a pandemic-limited 2022 world premiere, celebrates the music, poetry and hippie culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s, an era that inspired significant political and social movements.

"Body Language" (May 4 to Aug. 5): The new sketch-comedy-and-music show explores love and relationships.

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"Take on Me" (June 8 to Sept. 3): The new jukebox musical, written by Shadowbox head writer Jimmy Mak and accented with rock and pop songs of the 1980s, revolves around an independent record store and its quirky employees as they try to survive a mega-store buyout.

"Wild Things" (Aug. 10 to Nov. 11): The new sketch-comedy-and-music show celebrates the wild fall and Halloween season with well-known characters from Frankenstein to Cookie Monster.

"Thunder and Lightning" (Sept. 7 to Nov. 5): Shadowbox Live and ProMusica Chamber Orchestra collaborate and perform legendary rock ‘n’ roll together - in an encore run of a 2019 premiere whose planned 2020 encore was postponed because of the pandemic - to pay homage to two iconic rock bands: Led Zeppelin and Queen.

"Holiday Hoopla" (Nov. 16 to Dec. 23, 2023): The 32nd-annual edition of the company's most popular sketch-comedy-and-music show celebrates the hustle, bustle, stresses and joys of the holiday season with new sketches and some old favorites.

"Not So Silent Night" (Nov. 26 to Dec. 17, 2023): The company's popular original holiday musical, in its third-annual production, revolves around a disc jockey taking requests and dedications on Christmas Eve during stormy weather.

All openings and performance times are subject to change, as new shows develop, Boord said.

Tickets, on sale six weeks before each opening, cost $40 to $65 per seat for tables of one to six people.Call 614-416-7625 or visit shadowboxlive.org.

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@mgrossberg1