Off-Broadway's Classic Stage Company has unveiled its 2020–2021 programming, which will be book-ended by two productions from Artistic Director John Doyle.

Kicking things off in the fall will be Doyle's new staging of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and next spring, the New York premiere of his production of Ten Cents a Dream, featuring songs with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorzenz Hart. In between, CSC will present two shows in repertory: Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona's Apartheid-era play The Island, and Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman (which inspired the Oscar-winning film and Tony-winning musical of the same name).

The season will launch this fall with A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare's story of love, chaos, and fantasy. Casting and further details to be announced.

In 2021, CSC will continue its winter tradition of presenting shows in repertory with two 1970s prison dramas. Devised by Fugard, Kani, and Ntshona, The Island transports its audience to the jail where Nelson Mandela spent the majority of his decades-long political imprisonment off the coast of Cape Town. There, two cellmates rehearse Sophocles’ Antigone for a prison concert.

Set in Buenos Aires in the 1970s, Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman follows the relationship between two prisoners—one imprisoned for his political beliefs and the other for his sexuality. Emerging directors will stage both plays, with casting and further details to be announced.

The music of Rodgers and Hart provides the inspiration for Ten Cents a Dance, the story of a love affair between a piano player and a taxi dancer told through six actor-musicians. Seen at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2011, the Off-Broadway premiere will culminate the 2020–2021 CSC season in the spring.