The Club of Broken Fasts

During its 2026 Studio Collaborative Season, the Long Beach Playhouse offers outside, local theatre companies and performing arts organizations the opportunity to produce their own shows in LBP's Studio Theater.

The Studio Collaborative: THE CLUB OF BROKEN FASTS
Company: ADDSSP Inc., Dina Cataldi, Producer
Dates:

• Jan. 9 - 8 PM
• Jan. 10 - 8 PM
• Jan. 11 - 2 PM
  

The Club of Broken Fasts is a madcap take on the 1985 John Hughes classic, rendered in Shakespearian verse. You know the story: Brian the Brain, Claire the Princess, Andrew the Jock, Allison the Madwoman, and Bender the Wretch are all stuck in Saturday detention under the not-entirely-benign watch of Vice Principal Vernon. Together, they spend the day joking, musing, fighting, kissing, flouting authority, and, hopefully, growing up. Through elevated language and spectacular design melding iconic ’80s looks with Elizabethan sensibilities, The Club of Broken Fasts transforms this classic coming-of-age tale into a dramatic stage comedy fit for the Globe itself!

Or if you prefer, in verse:
It’s forty years since first we came to see
The work of teen movie auteur John Hughes.
See it re-writ in verse, with endless glee!
You know the story, though the words are new:
Brain, princess, jock, madwoman, and a wretch,
One Saturday, sit in their school detain’d;
And, ere the strike of four, all rules reject,
Their secrets, nay, their very souls laid plain.
But one day’s liv’d within our humble show,
Yet in that day, such marvels come to pass
That something more of life you’ll come to know
When you behold the Club of Broken Fasts!