Amber Gray starred as Persephone in the original Broadway production of Hadestown, a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The Kennedy Center’s live season kicks off in October with the musical, which won eight Tony Awards. Photo by Matthew Murphy

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The play will be the real-life thing once again this coming season as local companies and theaters get ready to present three-dimensional actors performing before live audiences.

While the pandemic curtailed much of last season to productions via computer or television, this season’s presentations are scheduled to return to theaters around town.

The Kennedy Center

The Kennedy Center, which celebrates its 50^th

anniversary theater season this year, has slated what it calls “our biggest season ever!” Running from Oct. 13, 2021 to Oct. 2, 2022, the season will consist of 15 revivals — almost all of them musicals that have garnered 45 Tony awards in total.

Among the musicals set for the Kennedy Center will be the ever-popular Hamilton, settling in for a 12-week run next summer and fall (July 12 through Oct. 2, 2022).

A scheduled 14 weeks of performances of the highly acclaimed musical were postponed in 2020 because of the pandemic. The Kennedy Center estimates it lost $250 million in revenue and donations as a result.

The season opens with Hadestown (Oct. 13-31, 2021), winner of eight Tonys, including best musical of 2019. It follows with Beautiful: The Carol King Musical (Dec. 14, 2021-Jan. 2, 2022); The Prom (April 5-10); A Master Calls (May 25-June 12); Jersey Boys (June 14-26); To Kill a Mockingbird (June 21-July 10); The Band’s Visit (July 5-17); Hamilton; Blue Man Group (July 19-31); Dear Evan Hansen (Aug. 30-Sept. 25); and Shear Madness (Feb. 15-Oct. 2). Box Office: (202) 467-4600

Round House Theatre

In Bethesda, the Round House Theatre will return from a season of digital performances to a scheduled season of six live, in-person shows. The productions, according to Artistic Director Ryan Rilette, are designed “to transport audiences around the world.”

After all, Rilette said, “For the last year and a half we’ve all been stuck at home, unable to travel anywhere. But at the same time, we are connected to the entire world by the shared experience of the pandemic.”

The Round House’s 2021-22 season gets underway Sept. 8 with Quixote Nuevo by Octavio Solis, a musical known as a “spirited, contemporary adaptation” of the 16^th-century Cervantes classic, Don Quixote. Running through Oct. 3, the musical is set on the modern-day border area between Mexico and the United States, and features Tejano music, bilingual word play and puppetry.

The season continues with a production of The Great Leap (Nov. 10 through Dec. 5) by Lauren Yee, which will whisk audiences from San Francisco to Beijing as it follows a U.S. college basketball team to China in the 1980s for a “friendship” game. The historical and the personal collide on stage as the different characters show different approaches to sports, life and politics in post-Cultural Revolution China.

Next up will be the U.S. premiere of Nine Night (Jan. 5 to 30, 2022) by British playwright Natasha Gordon. It is described as a “kitchen dramedy” about a British-Jamaican community holding a traditional nine-day wake after the death of a patriarch.

A two-play National Capital New Play Festival from April 5 to May 8 will present two plays by local authors. It’s Not a Trip, It’s a Journey

by Charly Evon Simpson follows four Black friends from New York to the Grand Canyon. It is called “a moving road trip adventure that deftly examines friendship, gender and race in America.”

The second work in the rotation, We Declare You a Terrorist

by Tim J. Lord, is a thriller based on the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis. Box Office: (240) 644-1100

Shakespeare Theatre

The Shakespeare Theatre Company will kick off its new season at Sidney Harman Hall in downtown D.C. on Nov. 30 with Once Upon a One More Time by Jon Hartmere, featuring the music of Britney Spears. The show, which will run through Jan. 2, 2022, was previously announced for a Chicago debut that had to be cancelled.

Simon Godwin, the theater’s artistic director, said the musical is “a rousing update on classic fairy tales…We are beyond thrilled to have our first Broadway-bound production.”

Also scheduled for the new season is a production of Our Town by Thornton Wilder. Associate Artistic Director Alan Paul will direct the theater classic of small-town America.

Other planned productions in the new season (no dates yet) include The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing (an updated version set in a Cable TV newsroom) and Red Velvet by Lolita Chakrabartil, a play about the Black American Shakespeare actor Ira Aldridge. Box Office: (202) 547-1122

Rockville Little Theatre

The Rockville Little Theatre is gearing up its first of three plays, a six-night presentation (Sept. 24-26 and Oct. 1-3) of Neil Simon’s Rumors. The play, described as “an evening of classical farcical hilarity,” will be presented at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Theater on Edmonston Drive. Box Office: (240) 314-8690.