Campbell Theatre

Covering The San Francisco Bay Area & Sacramento Valley Since 2001

Campbell Theatre • 636 Ward St, Martinez, CA 94553

Plays • Musicals • Opera • Dance

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Current Production

• JUN 5 - JUN 21, 2026 •

Frederick Douglass / Staged Reading

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Frederick Douglass turns history into a living voice, putting the thunder, ache, wit, and moral force of one of America’s most important freedom fighters in the spotlight. Built from Douglass’s own writings and speeches, the piece follows the shape of a life that began under slavery and pushed, step by hard-won step, toward selfhood, literacy, escape, and public purpose. The drama is not in cheap theatrics, but in the power of language itself: a man learning that words can become keys, weapons, lanterns, and bridges all at once. Expect a direct, human portrait rather than a dusty museum lecture, with the tension coming from Douglass’s refusal to let cruelty have the final word. The story carries the weight of bondage, the danger of resistance, and the courage required to speak truth in a country still arguing with its own conscience. It is serious, yes, but also deeply alive, reminding audiences that freedom is not an abstract slogan when someone has had to fight for every syllable of it. The result feels intimate, urgent, and bracing, as if the past has stepped forward to look the present squarely in the eye.

Coming Soon

• OPENS JUL 10, 2026 • You Can’t Take It with You / Play You Can’t Take It with You is a glorious collision between buttoned-up respectability and joyful, unbothered weirdness. The story centers on the wonderfully eccentric Sycamore household, where hobbies, schemes, fireworks, ballet lessons, printing presses, snakes, and oddball dreams all seem to be happening at once, usually with no concern for what the neighbors might think. Into this happy human tornado comes a young romance that forces two very different families to meet, and that is where the comic machinery really starts clanking, sputtering, and exploding in the best possible way. The play’s charm comes from the way it treats nonconformity not as a flaw, but as a kind of oxygen. These people may be impractical, noisy, and impossible to organize, but they understand something the stiff suits keep missing: life is short, joy matters, and money cannot hug you back. It is an affectionate, screwball reminder that the sanest person in the room may be the one refusing to act normal, especially when the world keeps insisting that normal is the whole point. That is the joke, and also the sneaky little wisdom hiding underneath it.
• OPENS SEP 11, 2026 • Strange Ladies / Play Strange Ladies marches straight into the fevered fight for women’s suffrage with music in its bloodstream and protest in its bones. Set as America enters World War I, the play follows a diverse group of radical suffragists pressing for the vote while wrestling with the personal costs of public courage. These women are not porcelain saints posed for a history-book photograph. They are strategic, scared, stubborn, funny, angry, exhausted, and still moving forward because the alternative is silence. Period protest songs thread through the story like a rallying cry, giving the drama the pulse of a movement that had to be sung, shouted, organized, and endured. The title hints at the insult hurled at women who dared to demand power, but the play turns that label into a badge of nerve. Without turning history into homework, it captures the pressure of activism, the fractures inside coalitions, and the wild audacity of people who refuse to wait politely for rights that should have been theirs all along. It is history with a raised fist, a beating heart, and a chorus that refuses to hush.
• OPENS OCT 30, 2026 • The Rocky Horror Show / Musical The Rocky Horror Show is a midnight-flavored carnival of sci-fi spoof, glam-rock mischief, and gleefully naughty theatrical excess. It begins with Brad and Janet, two squeaky-clean sweethearts whose wholesome road trip goes spectacularly sideways when a breakdown leads them to a strange mansion full of characters who seem to have escaped from a B-movie, a cabaret, and somebody’s glitter-covered fever dream. From there, the night becomes a wild parade of temptation, identity games, monster-movie parody, fishnet rebellion, and songs that practically kick the doors open. The fun is not subtle, and it is not trying to be. It is bold, cheeky, strange, and proudly ridiculous, with a wink big enough to light the room. Under the camp and chaos is a story about curiosity, repression, desire, and the danger of pretending you are more innocent than you really are. It is theatrical junk food with a sly brain, a big beat, and no interest whatsoever in behaving itself, which is precisely why its oddball spell keeps working. It is a wink, a dare, a singalong, and a glorious theatrical sugar rush all at once.