Dezart Performs is launching its 19th season with the musical “Come From Away,” opening Wednesday, November 18, and running through December 6, 2026. The production tells a true story about a small Canadian town that welcomed stranded airline passengers in the days after the September 11 attacks, when U.S. airspace was shut down and dozens of flights were rerouted north.
A Preview Night and a Three-Week Run
According to NBC Palm Springs, the musical follows the people of Gander, Newfoundland, who welcomed about 7,000 travelers after U.S. airspace closed on September 11, 2001. Figures for exactly how many people were stranded vary by source: Dezart Performs’ own show page describes 38 planes carrying “thousands of people from around the globe” diverted to Gander’s airstrip, while a separate account from Newfound News puts the number of people grounded there at 6,549, with the town’s own records citing 6,579 people aboard the aircraft.
The show itself runs a tight 1 hour and 40 minutes with no intermission, per the theater’s listing. A preview performance is set for Wednesday, November 18, at 7 p.m., and the run continues for three weekends through December 6 — part of a broader shift at Dezart, which says every production this season now runs for three weeks with six performances a week, including that Wednesday preview night, as detailed by BroadwayWorld.
Director Dennis Courtney on Compassion and Craft
Dennis Courtney is directing and choreographing the production. He has said the story’s message of compassion and humanity is what drew him to it, and he reportedly developed the choreography over several months of work. The staging leans minimal by design: the show uses just 12 chairs and three tables to create its locations and transitions, with a 12-person ensemble whose actors take on multiple roles throughout the performance.
That ensemble draws talent from well beyond the desert. The cast includes five performers from the Coachella Valley alongside actors from New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Among the local contingent is Sonia Revis, who plays Diane, a traveler vacationing in Europe who was trying to get home to Dallas when the September 11 attacks occurred.
A Local Performer’s Return to the Stage
Revis performed as a child and teenager before stepping away to pursue careers in business and education for more than 30 years. She returned to theater after moving back to the desert, making “Come From Away” part of a personal second act as much as a professional one.
The musical itself has had a long journey to Palm Springs stages. It premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 2015, moved to Seattle, and opened on Broadway in March 2017, where it earned seven Tony Award nominations and won for best direction of a musical, according to Newfound News. A fully staged production opened in Gander itself in 2023, and the same outlet notes the musical returned there for its fourth season in 2026 — a reminder that the real Newfoundland town at the center of the story still tells its own version of events.
Dezart’s production is billed as blending emotional moments with humor to reflect the complicated mix of emotions people actually carry through a crisis. Tickets are available at dezartperforms.org, and the company cautions that only purchases made through its website or box office are valid, noting it does not endorse third-party resale sites.
