2018 – 19 Season
The 2018-19 season celebrates 20 years in a way that honors our past while looking ahead to the future, keeping our head up in the stars while our feet are planted firmly on the ground. It re-embraces the plucky ensemble spirit that defined our earliest steps and cemented us as an important addition to the Tampa Bay area arts and culture scene.
Tampa Bay Times Best of the Best
- Best Local Theater
Creative Loafing Best of the Bay
- Best Theater Company, Reader's Choice
- Best Stage Director, Reader's Choice – David M. Jenkins
Mainstage Season
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
By John Cameron Mitchell And Stephen Trask
Extended! Aug. 17 – Sep. 15, 2018
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm; Sep. 15 Special Performance: 9:50pm
Tickets start at: $29.50
Preview Performances: Aug. 15 – 16 | Wed. – Thr. 8pm | Tickets start at: $18
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
The gold glitter standard of queerglam rocker musicals, Hedwig and the Angry Inch follows German immigrant-turned-transgender-Kansas-trailer-park-wannabe-rock-goddess Hedwig Robinson during one life-changing night of her musical act. Full of TMI, towering go-go boots and cult hits “Exquisite Corpse,” “Wig in a Box,” “Tear Me Down” and more, this campy romp reveals the blistering realities of self-acceptance that defy gender identity.
Edgar & Emily
By Joseph McDonough
Oct. 12 – Nov. 4, 2018
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Tickets start at: $29.50
Preview Performances: Oct. 10 – 11 | Wed. – Thr. 8pm | Tickets start at: $18
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
In January 1864, reclusive poet Emily Dickinson receives a surprise guest: Edgar Allan Poe. Although Poe died 15 years prior, he arrives quite alive and just as energized by death as ever before—one could say death kindly stopped for Emily, after all. Though the evening pits the pendulum of both poets’ personalities against the other in this comic fantasia, Emily and Edgar find they have a lot in common despite their differences. The heart tells the tale, you know.
Othello
By William Shakespeare
Directed by David M. Jenkins
Extended! Jan. 11 – Feb. 9, 2019
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Tickets start at: $29.50
Preview Performances: Jan. 9 – 10 | Wed. – Thr. 8pm | Tickets start at: $18
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
Backstabbing politicians, two-faced frenemies, gaslighting, treachery, true love and the never-ending cultural complications of a “black ram tupping a white ewe,” Shakespeare’s Othello might as well be talking about this year’s headlines. And in this production, it does. Othello features Jobsite’s signature modern spin on a favorite Shakespeare play.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [revised]
By Adam Long, Daniel Singer & Jess Winfield
Directed by Katrina Stevenson
Mar. 15 – Apr. 7, 2019
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Tickets start at: $29.50
Preview Performances: Mar. 13 – 14 | Wed. – Thr. 8pm | Tickets start at: $18
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
The unholy drought is over. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) returns (now [revised]) after a (much too long) 14-year absence from our stage. The original “Bad Boys of Abridgment” squished all 37 plays plus a few sonnets to boot into a 90-minute time-lapse performance of Some of the Greatest Theatre of All Time. This season, Jobsite dusts off the Chuck Taylors, dons the doublets and delivers a fair number of pratfalls, terrible puns, mis-readings and madcap capers for this chaotic, comprehensive dash through The Bard’s greatest hits.
Hedda
Adapted by Lucy Kirkwood from the play by Henrik Ibsen
Directed by Stuart Fail
May 10 – Jun. 2, 2019
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Tickets start at: $29.50
Preview Performances: May. 8 – 9 | Wed. – Thr. 8pm | Tickets start at: $18
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
Hedda, still mourning the father she adored, returns from her honeymoon with a husband she doesn’t love, to a flat they can’t afford and a pregnancy she doesn’t want. Trapped by her past and terrified by her future, bored by her life but too cowardly to walk away from it, she finds herself caught between three men. Ultimately, something has to give. In this updated version of Ibsen’s classic, set in 21st-century Notting Hill, thrilling young British playwright Lucy Kirkwood reworks the Hedda Gabler tale into a daring glimpse at her choices from a woman’s point of view.
Constellations
By Nick Payne
Directed by Summer Bohnenkamp
Jul. 12 – Aug. 4, 2019
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Tickets start at: $29.50
Preview Performances: Jul. 10 – 11 | Wed. – Thr. 8pm | Tickets start at: $18
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center
What if every decision we’ve made—and not made—exists simultaneously in infinite parallel universes? So goes this bracing, glorious love story of Marianne and Roland, an urban beekeeper and a physicist, whose myriad possibilities unfold in sumptuous arcs and trajectories that challenge the distinction between choice and destiny. Nick Payne’s critically-acclaimed triumph melds science and romance into Constellations, a play that comes along every so often to disrupt our notion of what can be done in theater and what it means to be alive and in love.
Ensemble
Job-side Productions
Jobsite Rocks! 20th Anniversary Show
Dec. 1, 2018
Sat. 7pm
Tickets start at: $25–$75
Jaeb Theater, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
Join us for our annual end of the year party, this time also packaged up with our official 20th birthday! Expect an early mingle with food and drinks and your favorite Jobsiteers, followed by a few short presentations and then our traditional epic evening of music and variety acts well into the night. We’ll of course also have our groovy silent auction and the legendary raffle of doom.
