City Theatre unveils 2023-24 season

It’s as Pittsburgh as a Primanti sandwich and parking chairs: Tami Dixon’s “South Side Stories Revisited” will kick off the 2024 portion of the City Theatre’s 2023-24 season.

The play is one of five shows on the slate the theater released late Saturday.

“South Side Stories Revisited” finds itself on the schedule 10 years after the world premiere of “South Side Stories,” written and performed by Dixon after she spent two years interviewing South Side residents to get their life stories and cobble them into a riveting one-woman play. Building upon the original text, “South Side Stories Revisited” will explore how the area has changed. Directed by Matt M. Morrow, it will open Jan. 13, 2024, and runs through Feb. 18.

The theater’s season formally opens in September with “Somewhere Over the Border,” a co-production with Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera and People’s Light (Malvern, Chester County). It was inspired by the true story of playwright Brian Quijada’s mother’s journey from El Salvador to the U.S. The musical incorporates cumbia, Mexican mariachi, Boleros, American rock and hip-hop.

That production will be followed in November and December by “Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley.” The play centers around around Mary Bennet, the middle sister in Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice.” The story is set two years after the end of “Pride and Prejudice.” It’s the story of Christmas at Pemberley, propelled when an unexpected guest’s appearance sparks dreams of love.

After “South Side Stories Revisited,” March brings “Fat Ham,” directed by Monteze Freeland. A Pulitzer Prize-winning new play, the work is described as “uproariously funny” and straight from Broadway. At the center of “Fat Ham” is a character called Juicy described as a queer, pensive, young Black man finding his way in the world when the ghost of his father demands Juicy avenge his murder.

The season concludes with “Andy Warhol in Iran,” an imagined experience of an encounter with a young Iranian radical. Many may not be aware that in 1976, Warhol traveled to Iran to take Polaroid pictures of the Shah’s wife.

Founded in 1975, the City Theatre stages their works at 1300 Bingham St. on the South Side. For more information on tickets, call the theater’s box office at 412-431-2489.