SEASON 23/24 - Dialed in and Dialed Up!
We're firing our Podcast back up!
Hey everyone! It’s great to be back and to have you in this space with us. Please spread the word of the Podcast and Substack to friends and “Pure-itans” alike!
After wrapping Season 22 and taking some time to catch our breath, I'm excited to fire up the podcast again and dig into what's coming next. If you've been following along, you know this is where we get to geek out about the stuff that really makes our theater tick—the choices, the process, the moment when a story clicks and you realize why it has to be told.
If you're new here or catching up after a break, definitely go back and check out our previous podcast season. It’s available here or where ever you get your podcasts. We had some incredible conversations with actors, designers, economists, and community members about everything from building characters to the realities of making art in a small city. Those talks really capture what we're all about, that place where craft meets community, where the work on stage connects to the work of being human.
Now we're gearing up to introduce you to the playwrights and artists who'll be filling our theater this year, and I'm genuinely excited about these conversations. We're talking Steven Dietz, who just adapted the classic psychological thriller Gaslight; Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder, whose work digs deep into Southern stories; and five other writers who are asking the kinds of questions that keep me up at night—the good kind of keeping you up, where you're turning ideas over and over because they matter.
Over the next few weeks, we'll sit down with each of them to talk shop: how they work, why they write what they write, and what happens when their stories land here in Charleston. Because at the end of the day, that's what this is all about—great stories meeting great audiences! In September we’ll have our first Playwrights festival with most of this season’s playwrights attending. Look for more information here as we get closer! I want to close out this post with this year’s season end letter from Sharon. Looking forward to an amazing year!
Best,
Rodney
Dear Friends,
As Season 22 draws to a close, I’ve been reflecting on what it means to finish something. This season was full of triumphs and challenges - moments of joy and lessons in resilience. In many ways, it reflected the truth of our work: how messy, how beautiful, how complex the path of meaningful theatre can be.
There were real wins. Our Flex Pass program continues to grow, even as national trends show sharp declines in subscription models. PURE bucks that trend because you believe in the work and in how we do it. Still, box office numbers didn’t always meet our hopes. This season asked us to hold both growth and shortfall, momentum and recalibration.
One of the most thrilling moments was receiving our first-ever grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the expanded tour of Septima. And one of the hardest came shortly after: early termination of that same grant. Like many arts organizations, we were told that the message and meaning of Septima—one woman’s lifelong fight to ensure the promise of our democracy belongs to every American—no longer aligned with shifting federal mandates. Still, before the termination, we reached more than 2,000 people across the Southeast, including students and adults throughout South Carolina. We told the story with Southern voices, rooted in Lowcountry culture—voices Septima fiercely championed. That kind of resonance defies measurement. It leaves a mark. And it deserves to carry forward.
If you’ve been with PURE over the past 22 years, you know we always look ahead with belief. The kind of belief Václav Havel described when he wrote that hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that it is worth doing no matter how it turns out. That quote lives at the bottom of every email I send as a quiet reminder of why we begin again, season after season. Because it matters. Becau
se it’s good. Because it’s worth it.
So what’s next?
Season 23 is full of extraordinary stories, written by some of the most exciting contemporary playwrights working today. If you’ve ever been curious about where narrative is headed, what the future of performance looks like, and how theatre still reshapes hearts and minds, you’ll find it at PURE.
The single most important thing you can do for us right now is simple: show up. Support our work. Bring a friend. Stay curious. Stay engaged. Stay hopeful. Be with us.
With gratitude and anticipation,
Sharon Graci