Storch Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

"I've always had the feeling, if I just had the chance, I could set the whole world on fire." As a small Kansas town prepares for the annual Labor Day picnic, handsome young drifter Hal stirs up long dormant feelings amongst a group of repressed women, including Madge, a beauty queen who yearns for another life whenever she hears the train whistle blow. Disappointments, resentments and rivalries simmer with the late summer swelter in William Inge's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic about the power of attraction and the perils of unfulfilled desire.

Storch Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

"Look the beast in the eyes, and stare. Say a rebel prayer." When a politically provocative play costs her father his life, 16-year-old Nikita and her mother are forced to flee Moscow for Domikov, a remote Russian town where tyrannical headmistress Ludmilla Mukhina rules the local school with an iron fist. Mired in grief and desperate to return home, Nikita is visited by the spirits of Pussy Riot, the real-life punk-protest collective imprisoned for their art. But when they offer Nikita one of their masks to carry on her father's legacy, Nikita is faced with a dangerous choice: submit or rebel? Book and lyrics by Eloise T. Govedare.

Storch Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Hiro is a self-made woman making it in New York. But she is also single, almost 30 and estranged from her dysfunctional family who lives in Kentucky. When her little sister, a born-again Christian, decides to marry at 22, Hiro takes it upon herself to do whatever she can to stop the wedding and salvage any shred of hope she had about her sister's future. By Leah Nanako Winkler.