EDGE San Francisco

Maybe a new decade doesn’t start until 2011, but do you think the people in Year 10 waited around until 11 to start making lists? And we like the roundness of our new year. So, it’s 10 for 2010, an easily divisible look at what should help make the coming weeks theatrically memorable.

1. WOW factor: Footloose is totally on board with this decennial thing, as it launches its 10th annual Women on the Way Festival. The Jan. 14-31 event is comprised of a rotating schedule of 20 productions that incorporate, to various degrees, theater, dance, movement, and music, and is spread over three South-of-Market venues: the ODC Theatre, Shotwell Studios, and the Garage.

Two local theater veterans provide one of the more theatrically inclined highlights. Terry Baum and Carolyn Myers, who helped found the Lilith Women’s Theatre Collective in 1975 and wrote the widely traveled Dos Lesbos, have come together again for Theatre of the Crackpot Crones. Baum, an urban single lesbian, and Myers, a small-town heterosexual housewife, reteam for an evening of sketch comedy, spoken word, and improvisation based on audience suggestions.

2. Chicago fire: Gay playwright Joel Drake Johnson has been churning up the Chicago theater scene in the past decade, but his Bay Area debut is only now arriving. It’s a world premiere for The First Grade, opening Jan. 28 at the Aurora Theatre. In the new play, which emerged from the Aurora’s Global Age Project, Johnson (himself a former schoolteacher) follows an elementary school teacher’s misadventures amid boisterous first-graders, a depressed daughter, a Ritalin-medicated grandson, and a live-in ex-husband.

3. Rhino redux: For the first time since June, when it closed up its 16th Street stages, Theatre Rhinoceros is cranking up its play-making machinery. Ye olde queer theater is presenting the SF premiere of Tick, Tick - Boom at the Eureka Theatre, with performances beginning Feb. 10. Jonathan Larson’s precursor to i>Rent is the autobiographical tale of a struggling songwriter, his gay best friend, and the woman they both love.

4. Pulp fiction: Ann Bannon’s six novels written between 1957 and 1962 have become touchstones of lesbian fiction, though their original merchandising was boldly flavored with pulp. Beebo Brinker, a young lesbian finding her way to a new lifestyle, was a running character, and the novels became collectively known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. In 2008, an off-Broadway production based on Bannon’s novels opened, and beginning Feb. 25, the Brava Theatre Center will present the West Coast premiere of Kate Moira Ryan and Linda S. Chapman’s The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, a play that, according to The New York Times, "aggressively goes after laughs - but doesn’t settle for caricature."

5. Investing in Ira: It’s one night only, so you have to mark your calendars now if you plan to see Donna McKechnie helping salute the talents of lyricist Ira Gershwin on Jan. 28. The Alcazar Theatre becomes 42nd Street Moon’s temporary home for this "salon" tribute that features a local cast of five, in addition to the Tony-winning McKechnie. For a few extra bucks, you can attend a reception with the cast after the performance.

6. Patience, please: Oscar Wilde came to embody the aesthetic movement of the late 19th century, and there has been speculation that he inspired the "fleshly poet" at the center of Patience. There is no question that Gilbert and Sullivan were ridiculing a movement that many thought was a ridiculous fad. The original 1881 production was a bigger hit than the previous G&S operetta H.M.S. Pinafore, but the topicality of the Patience story-line can be problematic for contemporary audiences. You can see how Lamplighters approaches Patience with its production opening Jan. 15 at Yerba Buena Center, before moving to Walnut Creek on Jan. 29.

7. A winter’s tale: Bay Area audiences first got to know edgy playwright Adam Rapp in 2001, when Berkeley Rep produced Nocturne starring brother Anthony Rapp of Rent fame. Now Custom Made Theatre is producing the area premiere of his recent play Red Light Winter, the story of a toxic bromance and an Amsterdam hooker who isn’t what she seems. Performances begin Jan. 22 at the Next Stage.

8. Daddy’s girl: Paul Gordon, who scored the Broadway adaptation of Jane Eyre and had a TheatreWorks hit with Emma, wrote the songs for a new musical based on Daddy Long Legs. For the libretto, director John Caird (Les Miserables) has gone back to Jean Webster’s original 1912 novel, which also inspired a far different Fred Astaire-Leslie Caron movie of the same name. But the basic premise remains the same: benefactor anonymously provides for needy girl, letters are exchanged, love develops. The chamber-scaled musical moves into the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts on Jan. 20.

9. Oedipus complex: The Magic Theatre starts the new decade with the Jan. 28 world premiere of a contemporary rendering of one of the oldest stories ever writ. In Oedipus el Rey, Los Angeles playwright Luis Alfaro imagines a Sophoclean tragedy set along California’s Highway 99, as the title character struggles with fate and is advised by a chorus of prison inmates.

10. Homeward bound: Playwright Athol Fugard spent most of his career dangerously poking at the policies of apartheid South Africa, and in the 2009 play Coming Home, the post-apartheid attitudes toward AIDS in his homeland provide the backdrop. Opening Jan. 20 at Berkeley Rep, Coming Home follows the dream-seeking Veronica Jonkers, a character first seen in Valley Song, as she returns to her childhood home with a son and a secret.