River Stage and the Theatre & Dance Arts Department
Theatre is for everyone.
Our Department of Theatre & Dance Arts and our producing arm, River Stage, are dedicated to training and empowering our students and our community. Our evolving program is focused on showcasing the collaboration, artistic daring, and diversity that makes theatre such a singular and unique art form. Whether you want to be in the spotlight or you want to run the spotlight, there’s a place for you on our stage.
Our theatre is for everyone.
With our Pay What You Can model, we welcome all members of our campus and local community to our Black Box Theatre located next to the Recital Hall and Art Gallery. Pay what you can. Come as you are. Theatre is for you.
Performances take place at the Black Box Theatre, located in the Visual and Performing Arts Center on CRC's main campus at 8401 Center Parkway, Sacramento, 95823. See CRC Parking and Maps.
See What We're Up To
Follow the CRC Theatre Arts Instagram account: @seeaplayatCRC.
Visit the CRC Theatre Arts Facebook page.
For ticket and performance questions, please call the Box Office at (916) 691-7050.
River Stage 2025-26 Season: This Is Our Story
Touring All Year: Story Explorers
Book, Music & Lyrics by Min Kahng
A musical experience for children with autism and other special needs. Touring and on-campus performances available during the Fall and Spring semesters. Contact AdameR@crc.losrios.edu to schedule a performance.
Birdmocking
October 7 to 11, 2025 at the Black Box Theatre
An original play by Anthony D'Juan
Centering the humanity of a wrongfully-accused father and husband awaiting trial in an Alabama jail, CRC faculty member Anthony D’Juan gives fullness and voice to Tom Robinson and breathes new life into an old story in this reimagination of Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
Rent
November 7 to 23, 2025 at the Black Box Theatre
Book, Music, and Lyrics by Jonathan Larson
The Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical that defined a generation examines the lives of a group of struggling young artists searching for love, meaning, and inspiration amidst the ravages of the AIDS epidemic and gentrification in 1990s New York, featuring contemporary classics “I’ll Cover You”, “Light My Candle”, and “Seasons of Love”.
Rent is presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI). All authorized performance materials are also supplied by MTI.
the S.O.A.P.
The Student One Act Playfest
December 5 and 6, 2025 at the Black Box Theatre
Our playwriting students showcase their original works in this special two-night-only performance, written, performed, and directed by CRC’s TA 395 Playwriting students.
Anna in the Tropics
March 6 to 14, 2026 at the Black Box Theatre
By Nilo Cruz
Set in a Florida cigar factory in 1929, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning play is the story of a newly-arrived “lector” - a man who reads stories aloud to the workers while they roll cigars - and the swirling intrigue and danger that erupt as he reads them Tolstoy’s classic novel Anna Karenina.
Anna in the Tropics is presented by special arrangement with Broadway Licensing, LLC, servicing the Dramatists Play Service collection.
Anna in the Tropics Dates and Details
Gloria
April 24 to May 3, 2026 at the Black Box Theatre
By Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Ambition, corporate culture, and celebrity-obsession collide in the 2016 Pulitzer Prize-nominated comedy (?!) about young editorial assistants trying to climb the publishing industry ladder and the one day in the office that forces them to realize that telling their own stories isn’t up to them alone. Gloria is presented by special arrangement with Broadway Licensing, LLC, servicing the Dramatists Play Service collection.
Past Performances
2024-2025 Season: The Time Is Now
The Time Is Now: Our 2024-25 Season at River Stage
From musicals to dramas, from an Elizabethan classic to contemporary narratives, our 2024-25 season is our most ambitious ever! The Time Is Now for revolution, for epic lives, for healing old wounds, and for some hilarious antics. Our new season has stories for everyone, for all time, for our time. Our tickets are always Pay What You Can, so don’t wait: The Time Is Now.
Reading Series: Play It Straight
October 15 to 19, 2024 at the Black Box Theatre
By Richard Winters, Gary Wright and Kerri Yund
The culture wars derail a high school theater class’s Romeo & Juliet when a sarcastic remark leads to reckoning over queer students' rights.
Play It Straight is a new work by local playwrights and will be a Sacramento premiere!
Urinetown The Musical
November 8 to 24, 2024 at the Black Box Theatre
Music and Lyrics by Mark Hollmann
Book and Lyrics by Greg Kotis
The Tony Award-winning musical comedy about a drought-stricken place where greed and corruption flow, privilege is peeing in private, and revolution is in the air.
Reading Series: Student One Act Playfest
December 6 and 7, 2024 at 7:00 pm at the Black Box Theatre
Original one act works by the students of our playwriting course get their first public performances!
Orlando
March 7 to 15, 2025 at the Black Box Theatre
By Virginia Woolf
Adapted by Sarah Ruhl
Orlando’s epic life spans five centuries and crosses class, continents, and gender identity in two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee Ruhl’s adaptation of Woolf’s classic novel.
Water by the Spoonful
April 25 to May 4, 2025 at the Black Box Theatre
By Quiara Alegría Hudes
In the 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama, the past is always present for a young veteran who comes home to the ghosts of war and his mother’s addiction.
Twelfth Night
July 18 to August 3, 2025 at Laguna Town Hall Amphitheatre
By William Shakespeare
A shipwreck, a love triangle, mistaken identity, a Fool (and a whole lot of foolishness) collide in one of Shakespeare’s greatest comedies and most beloved works.
Twelfth Night is presented in community with the Cosumnes Community Services District under the stars at Laguna Town Hall.
2023-2024 Season
Electra
“Conviction is strong in me.”
October 13 to 22, 2023
A futuristic twist meets the classical in the Greek tale of Electra. A daughter's honor is tested as she seeks justice for the murder of her father at the hands of her mother.
- Written by Sophocles
- Translated by Anne Carson
- Directed by Janey Pintar
Electricidad
“Find your courage. Find your rage.”
December 1 to 10, 2023
Luis Alfaro’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Electra transforms the Ancient Greek story into a modern day Chicano tale. Set in East Los Angeles, Electricidad vows to avenge her father “El Auggie”, the former leader of the East Side Locos.
- Written by Luis Alfaro
- Based on Electra by Sophocles
- Directed by Ryan Perez Adame
Assassins
“Everybody’s got the right to be happy.”
April 19 to 28, 2024
John Wilkes Booth leads an unlikely ensemble of presidential assassins and would-be presidential assassins in Sondheim’s darkly comedic musical investigation of the American Dream.
- Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
- Book by John Weidman
- Directed by Ryan Perez Adame
Assassins is presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI). All authorized performance materials are also supplied by MTI.
The Importance of Being Earnest
“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.”
July 12 to 21, 2024
Oscar Wilde’s classic satire of Victorian social hypocrisy has it all: double identities, politely savage insults, social climbing, and lots of tea.
- Written by Oscar Wilde
- Directed by Scott Gilbert
2022-2023 Season
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
On stage December 2 to 11, 2022.
Winner of the Tony and the Drama Desk Awards for Best Book, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee features a fast-paced, wildly funny and touching book by Rachel Sheinkin, and a truly fresh and vibrant score by William Finn. This bee is one unforgettable experience.
An eclectic group of six mid-pubescents vie for the spelling championship of a lifetime. While candidly disclosing hilarious and touching stories from their home lives, the tweens spell their way through a series of (potentially made-up) words, hoping never to hear the soul-crushing, pout-inducing, life un-affirming "ding" of the bell that signals a spelling mistake. Six spellers enter; one speller leaves a champion! At least the losers get a juice box.
A riotous ride, complete with audience participation, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a delightful den of comedic genius.
CRC Department of Theatre Arts Presents "Antigone"
CRC Department of Theatre Arts will perform the timeless ancient Greek tale by Sophocles, Antigone from April 21 through April 30, 2023 in the Black Box Theatre.
About the play: The new King Creon is desperate to gain control over a city ravaged by civil war and refuses to bury the body of Antigone's rebellious brother. Outraged, she defies him and honours her brother. Creon takes action against her, risking the wrath of the gods.
Domestic Disturbance
“Love…Sweet…Love…What have you done to me?”
July 7 to 16, 2023
A new musical that chronicles the cycle of domestic violence based on the concept album Domestic Disturbance available on Spotify.
- Music by Joe Archie
- Lyrics by Carla Fleming
- Adapted for the Stage and directed by Anthony D’Juan
2021-2022 Season
Junie B. Jones
On stage December 2021.
Junie B. Jones, First-Grader, is excited about the upcoming Holiday Sing-Along and Secret Santa gift exchange at her school. Too bad tattletale May keeps ruining all of Junie B.'s fun. So when Junie B. draws May's name for Secret Santa, she comes up with the perfect plan to teach her nemesis a lesson! But will the Christmas spirit of peace and goodwill interfere before she can give you-know-who what she deserves? A hilarious and endearing tale based on the best-selling book series by Barbara Park.
In Love and Warcraft
On stage March 2022.
The CRC Department of Theatre and Dance presents an exciting, contemporary play, In Love and Warcraft.
When your world is all URL, how do you fall in love IRL? A delightful intersection of humor, love and subculture, In Love and Warcraft offers a fresh comedic look at the collision between online gaming and In Real Life (IRL) relationships.
Evie Malone - gamer girl, college senior, and confirmed virgin - has it all figured out. Not only does she command a top-ranked guild in Warcraft with her online boyfriend; she also makes a little cash on the side writing love letters for people who've screwed up their relationships. Love is like Warcraft, after all. It's all about strategies, game plans, and not taking stupid risks.
The Comedy of Errors, by William Shakespeare
On stage May 2022.
A rollicking explosion of mistaken identity and general insanity!
One of Shakespeare's earliest, silliest, and most delightful plays presents an opportunity for CRC performers to stretch themselves in new, exciting ways that are fun, outrageous, surprising, and rarely "Shakespearean" (or boring). Don't miss out on this farcical tour-de-force.
2020-2021 Season
My Mother *&^%$#! College Life
On stage October 2020.
What’s in the minds and hearts of college students today? In a collection of monologues, poetry, spoken word and a few dialogues, this diverse ensemble questions everything they encounter: social justice and gender identity, self-awareness and relationship boundaries, future prospects, Covid - 19 and roommate etiquette. What emerges is a humorous and heartbreaking portrait of a new generation struggling with higher education’s promise of “personal transformation.”
Structured in three acts, the play begins with matriculation and ends with graduation. The monologues in Act I, titled “Great Expectations,” focus on encounters with new friends, financial aid, antidepressants, homework, sex, sleep deprivation and online courses in physics and math. Act II, “Paradise Lost,” features parties, budding and broken relationships, unexpected encounters with race and religion, sexual orientation, pandemics and promises and hitting rock bottom. Act III, “Metamorphoses,” portrays students emerging from years of challenge and change with surprising insights, political convictions and plans for a scary, uncertain future.
The mixture of serious and comedic monologues captures the extreme difficulty—sometimes absurd and at other times overwhelming—of self-discovery and community-building. While the monologues convey the sense that students often feel alone in their quest for great success or simply survival, the ensemble itself presents a very different truth—at least they’re alone together.
Tommy and the Time Machine and Other Stories
On stage December 2020.
Tommy is a young mouse who lives with his scientist father in a grand laboratory. Tommy’s father has invented a time machine and despite his father’s warnings Tommy can’t help but try it out. Chaos ensues as Tommy zips back and forth along the timeline altering the course of history. The future is doomed if Tommy can’t fix his mistakes in the past. All of the characters will be various styles of rod puppets. The production is geared toward children 5-10 years old.
2019-2020 Season
The Servant of Two Masters
On stage December 6 to December 15, 2019.
Identities are mistaken, engagements are broken and lovers are reunited in Carlo Goldoni’s commedia dell’arte masterpiece.
Mayhem erupts when the wily servant Truffaldino hatches a zany scheme to double his wages by serving two masters at once. The virtuosic physical comedy of The Servant of Two Masters is a delight for young and old alike.
COVID-19 Updates
For the latest on-campus safety protocols please see COVID-19 Updates.
360-Degree Tour
Explore CRC's Visual and Performing Arts Center, Art Gallery, Black Box Theatre and Recital Hall in a virtual 360-degree walking tour.