Student Matinees

Experience Tony Award-winning theatre with your students, right here in Silicon Valley! These low-cost, daytime performances are held specially for school groups, offering youth in our community the chance to engage with the stories we tell onstage, amid an audience of their peers. Before the show, educators receive a Guidebook full of information and activities to connect the art onstage to the work in their classroom. After the show, TheatreWorks hosts a talk-back between the cast and the student audience.

Student matinee tickets will go on sale eight weeks before each performance. If your school would like to attend multiple matinees, please place an order for each show when the ticket  request window opens. Student tickets are $10 each; chaperones are free. We ask that you have at least one chaperone for every ten students.

 

Read on to learn about the lineup for the 2023/24 school year!

The 25th annual putnam county spelling bee

Thursday, Dec 7, 2023 @ 11am
Lucie Stern Theatre, Palo Alto

Music and Lyrics by William Finn
Book by Rachel Sheinkin
Conceived by Rebecca Feldman
Additional Material by Jay Reiss
Directed by James Monroe Iglehart

Six ambitious, hilarious middle schoolers–played by some equally-hilarious adults–go head-to-head in this riotous musical. The rules here are simple: Prove you’re the best speller on stage, and you secure a spot at the national spelling bee. Falter on “hasenpfeffer” or “crepuscular” and nothing but a consolation juice box awaits. Will your favorite fall to pressure and puberty, or emerge victorious? And which audience members will join them onstage as contestants themselves? Find out in the new classic that captures all the chaos, heartbreak, and elation of becoming a childhood champion.

Recommended for grades 7–12.

Ticket request for this matinee will be accepted October 16–November 27, 2023.

August Wilson’s

How I Learned What I Learned

Thursday, February 8, 2024 @ 11am
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts

By August Wilson
Co-Conceived by Todd Kreidler
Directed by Tim Bond

One of the greatest playwrights of our time returns to the stage in this open-hearted memoir charting one man’s journey of self-discovery through adversity, and what it means to be a Black artist in America. Originally performed by August Wilson himself, How I Learned What I Learned recounts his early days as a young poet, his first few jobs, encounters with racism, a stint in jail, divine connection with music, and the luminosity of love. Helmed by acclaimed Wilson interpreter Tim Bond, and brought to life by award-winning actor Steven Anthony Jones, this captivating production provides unique insights about the man behind some of the most celebrated plays of the 20th century.

Recommended for grades 7–12.

Ticket request for this matinee will be accepted Dec 18, 2023–Jan 29, 2024.

Tiger Style!

Thursday, April 25, 2024 @ 11am
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts

By Mike Lew
Directed by Jeffrey Lo

Ivy-League graduates and squabbling siblings Albert and Jennifer Chen spent their whole childhoods totally crushing it. But adulthood? Epic fail. After he’s passed over for a promotion and her loser boyfriend ghosts her, they do what any self-respecting thirtysomethings would do: Blame their parents and run away to China. Problem solved…right? (Spoiler alert: Wrong. So, so wrong.) From the OC to Shenzen, Mike Lew’s hilarious new satire is a claws-out look at the triumphs and traumas of tiger parenting and what it takes to make it out the other side alive.

Recommended for grades 10–12.

Ticket request for this matinee will be accepted March 4–April 15, 2024.

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can’t make it to the student matinee?

Contact us for a special student / educator discount code, and get tickets for just $5!