The plays that start off the American Repertory Theater’s 47th and final Cambridge season were announced Wednesday, and the three titles make for a hardly subtle message for Trump’s America.
The three run August through January, after which Tony-winning artistic director Diane Paulus switches her attention to the Harvard theater’s new home in Allston, where productions begun May 2027, the A.R.T. said.
Eugène Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros” begins the season Aug. 12 at the Loeb Drama Center. Since its premiere in 1959, “Rhinoceros” has been understood as a postwar fable about conformity and fascism, as a simple man name Berenger watches everyone around him in his small French hometown turn into crude, rampaging rhinoceroses. (A film of the play released in 1973 starred Gene Wilder, Zero Mostel and Karen Black.) “Rhinoceros,” using an adaptation from the French by Derek Prouse, is the final production Paulus directs at the Loeb Drama Center in Harvard Square before the A.R.T.’s move.
A world-premiere rock opera called “1972” starts Oct. 27 at Harvard’s Farkas Hall inspired by true stories of the Janes, an underground network of women who helped provide safe abortions. Musician-activist Chadwick Stokes of the Boston indie bands Dispatch and State Radio wrote (with Jessie Nelson of “I Am Sam” and the musical “Waitress”) and co-stars with other actor-musicians. This story too has been a film, a 2022 documentary on HBO called “The Janes.”
The hip-hop musical “Mexodus” begins Dec. 4 at the Loeb Drama Center and continues the theme, revealing a hidden chapter of American history: an underground railroad for freedom-seekers across the Rio Grande into Mexico. It’s created by Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson and features live-looped music.
The trio “tells stories of resilience in the most turbulent of times,” Paulus said. “These productions invite us to draw inspiration from characters who find courage and compassion in human connection.”
Loeb Mainstage, 64 Brattle St., Harvard Square, Cambridge
Harvard University’s Farkas Hall Studio, 10-12 Holyoke St., Harvard Square, Cambridge
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