A packed 35th season for InterAct Theatre Company

It’s that time of the year when theater groups in Philadelphia are either launching their 2022-23 seasons, or wrapping up their first offerings for the year. As audience members, we experience theater one play at a time, but companies develop seasons in advance, creating what amounts to a carefully curated playlist.

Sometimes companies go by genre, like a checklist. Comedy, check; musical, check; something relevant and edgy, check and double check; perhaps a classic by a well-known playwright.

But often companies do what InterAct Theatre Company did for its 35th season. They build their offerings around a unifying theme.

“The whole season is putting America in the spotlight,” said Seth Rozin, founder and artistic director of the company founded in 1988 with the goal of fostering international exchange among theater groups. Thirty-five seasons later, its current line-up asks: “How do we exist as a country in the world…what does it mean to be an American at this time?”

Now underway is Death of a Driver, a regional premier, by Will Snider and directed by Charlotte Northeast with Hannah Gold playing a young, idealistic American engineer awarded a grant to build a new highway in Kenya. Akeem Davis plays her driver, who also serves as her chief aide and connection to local politics.

“It’s about their relationship over 13 and 14 years” as the highway project progresses, Rozin said. “There’s the positive impact of the work, but the unanticipated consequences of Americans meddling in the affairs of different countries.”

While Death of a Driver is a regional premiere, the season’s other three plays are world premieres. Up in January is The Last Parade by Stephanie Satie, which Rozin directs. Set in Kyiv in 1995, it focuses on three generations of a Russian Jewish family as they decide whether and where to emigrate. “It’s unusually relevant because of the war in Ukraine, but it also questions the standing that America has now as a beacon of hope,” Rozin said.

Following in March is pay no worship, about two cousins running a wine business on the volcanic island of Fogo in the Cape Verde archipelago. In Francisca Da Silveira’s work, directed by Tyrone L. Robinson, one cousin wants to stay, run the wine business, and enjoy American pop culture from afar. The other wants to go to America, study the environment, and try to save the island amid climate change.

The final play, Kareem Fahmy’s American Fast, set for June, involves an Egyptian American college basketball sensation about to compete in the NCAA Women’s Tournament. But March Madness coincides with Ramadan and the play explores how she balances faith, family, ambitions, and the demands of a (seemingly) secular America. Rozin directs with Zaina Dana.

As is usual for InterAct, performances of Death of a Driver will be accompanied by talk-backs from company personnel and experts. Set designer Marie Laster will join Rozin and literary manager Charlotte Martin for an audience chat following the Nov. 12 matinee and director Charlotte Northeast will join Rozin and Martin following the Nov. 19 matinee. After the Sunday matinees on Nov. 13 and Nov. 20, professors from Temple University’s Africology department, Molefi Kete Asante and Nah Dove, will be participating in talk-backs, respectively.

(Through Nov. 20, “Death of a Driver,” InterAct Theatre Co., at the Drake, 302 S. Hicks St., Phila. 215-568-8079 or interacttheatre.org)

You’ve heard of the Tom Stoppard classic, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Now, from Theatre in the X and Drexel University comes Pac and Biggie are Dead, about two of rap’s biggest artists. On their trip through purgatory, they encounter their own brand of classic — classic hip-hop, drama, and Black history. Joseph (Ankh Fyre) Xavier-Mack plays Pac and Nazeer Harper is Biggie in this play by Biko Eisen-Martin, directed by Carlo Campbell.

(Nov. 10-19, Theatre in the X, Mandell Theater, Drexel University, 3220 Chestnut St., Phila. 215-895-2787 or theatreinthex.com)

In Crossing the Veil, a deceased man’s spirit attends visiting hours at the funeral home where his wife, son, and daughter come to say their final goodbyes. The spirit tries to interact but finds it can’t. What the spirit learns that day doesn’t match his memories of what he thought was true.

Playwright R.T. “Bob” Bowersox found his inspiration at a viewing for his own father, where his brother Paul, a man with 30 years experience in the spiritual practice ofshamanism, indicated that he felt their father’s spirit in the room.

Bowersox, a former QVC host whose show, In the Kitchen with Bob, was the shopping network’s top-rated show for 19 years, also directs the play, which is being produced by the theater he founded, TheatreXP. Bowersox is TheatreXP’s artistic director.

(Through Nov. 26, TheatreXP, Skinner Studio at Plays & Players, 1714 Delancey Place, Phila., 302-540-6102 or theatrexp.org)

The first of Inis Nua Theatre Company’s series of staged readings exploring queer life over the past 40 years takes place Nov. 14 for one night only. In Love Song to Lavender Menace by James Ley, two soon-to-be-ex-employees of the Edinburgh Lesbian and Gay Bookstore reminisce about life in Edinburgh in the 1980s. David Bardeen directs. Free.

(Nov. 14, Inis Nua, Proscenium Theater at the Drake, 302 S. Hicks St., Phila. 215-545-9776 or inisnuatheatre.org)

Check with individual venues for COVID-19 protocols.