Photo: Samantha Luck, Trevor Brown and Ellie O’Hara embody the eager young singers who find themselves tested — and transformed — under the withering gaze of Maria Callas in ‘Master Class.
Thingamajig Theatre Company opens its 2025/26 Fall & Winter Season at Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts this weekend, with Terrence McNally’s ‘Master Class’, a play as fierce, funny, and unflinching as the woman at its center: Maria Callas.
Performances are Friday, September 26 and Saturday, September 27 at 7pm.
Tickets are available here.
More than a play about opera, Master Class is an encounter with art itself — its cruelty, its transcendence, its impossible demands. McNally imagines Callas in her later years, conducting a seminar at Juilliard. What begins as a lesson for her young singers becomes a searing examination of genius and the toll it exacts.
Laura Moore stars as Callas, with Dale Scrivener as her accompanist. Ellie O’Hara, Samantha Luck, and Trevor Brown portray the aspiring students, and Scott Morehead rounds out the cast as the stagehand. Tim Moore directs.
“Master Class isn’t a museum piece. It’s alive with wit and heartbreak. Callas goads her students, but in doing so she reveals the frailty beneath her brilliance. Audiences will see not just a great artist, but a woman fighting to define her legacy,” says Moore.
The production runs only two nights in September before returning for a few performances each month through November. Tickets are available online here, or by calling 970-731-SHOW (7469).