Courtesy of Moonstone Theatre Company
Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the announcement of Grand Horizons as Moonstone's final play of the season.
After some very understandable delays, Moonstone Theatre Company is finally nearing its first opening night.
The brand-new theater company was set to debut in the summer of 2020, which turned out not to be a great time for lots of folks to sit next to each other in a packed house. But now, more than a year later, the first show of Moonstone's first season is ready for curtain.
“I’m so happy that it’s finally here after such a long delay,” says Sharon Hunter, producing artistic director for the company. “Obviously we’ve had our challenges with the pandemic, but it’s good to see live theater coming back.”
Not that Hunter has exactly been kicked back watching Netflix and baking bread since last March. “I’m not the kind of person that just goes, ‘Oh well, I’ll just wait until the pandemic’s over,’” she says.
When things went south in 2020, she quickly mobilized the St. Louis Theatre Community Task Force to virtually bring heads together for brainstorming and skill sharing on how to maintain the theater scene in a pandemic. But now restrictions are lifting, vaccines are getting boosted, and it’s time again for audiences to fill up theaters.
The season opens with Jake’s Women, a seldom-performed comedy by Neil Simon. Edward M. Coffield, artistic director for the New Jewish Theatre, directs.
“The story is about this writer who has a challenging situation with a lot of the women in his life, but all of these women help him to see what is important in his life,” Hunter says. Novelist Jake has real, imagined, and telephonic conversations with his late wife, current wife, potential next wife, daughter, sister, and therapist.
It will be followed by David Auburn's Proof, which Hunter will direct. “That is a really beautiful story of a father and daughter who are both math geniuses,” she says. “The father suffers from mental illness. The daughter who inherited his genius is worried about inheriting that.”
The season’s third and final show, it was announced November 12, will be the midwest premiere of Beth Wohl's Grand Horizons. The Tony-nominated play follows a couple who, after 50 years of learning every detail about one another, are ready to call it quits. “I was really interested in writing a play about people stepping outside of the roles,” said Wohl in the press release announcing the performance. “But because it's an older woman who initiates that, it spoke to women even more acutely. This is a loud, sexy, funny play about older female sexuality—I'm really proud of it.”
Hunter’s selections for the season all, in their own ways, hew to a specific theme. One source of inspiration was her own complicated grief at her father’s passing, and a dearth of literature to help her through it.
“I wanted to lift the veil on mental health and the family, mental health in relationships,” she says. “That, I think, doesn’t get enough attention in society. All of these plays that I’m choosing have something to do with mental health, but they also have to do with how that effects the relationships you’re in, whether it’s your daughter or your wife or the guy that you’re seeing.”
For future seasons, Hunter will continue to use storytelling as a vehicle for exploring important issues in society. “Next season, my theme is going to be women who rise—women facing challenges, and how did they make that something that they can turn into success?”
Jake’s Women runs Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m, from November 4-21 at Kirkwood Performing Arts Center. Patrons must provide proof of vaccine or negative COVID test within the previous 72 hours and must wear masks. Single tickets are $50, $30 for seniors, and $15 for students.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the announcement of Grand Horizons as Moonstone's final play of the season.
