Manoa Valley Theatre brings live, in-person performances back to the stage starting in September with eight plays, including four Hawaii premieres.

The season opens Sept. 2-19 with the Hawaii premiere of “Be More Chill,” a coming-of-age sci-fi musical about teenager Jeremy Heere, who discovers a tiny supercomputer that promises to land him a date with his crush and an invitation to a big party, but then finds there are hazards to being the big man on campus.

That will be followed in November by “The Joy Luck Club,” playwright Susan Kim’s adaptation of Amy Tan’s bestseller about four Chinese immigrant women and their relationships with their American-born daughters. The play runs Nov. 4-14.

MVT then celebrates the holiday season with “It’s a Wonderful Life — A Live Radio Play.” Performed by an African American cast on a stage set up like a radio station, the staging adds a new flavor to the classic tale about a struggling banker who gets a new lease on life with the help of an angel. The production has a brief run Dec. 2-5.

After New Year’s the company has five more plays: “Desperate Measures,” billed as a “Wild West musical comedy” based on Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure,” Jan. 13-30; “The 39 Steps,” a parody of the Alfred Hitchcock film, featuring actors portraying dozens of characters, March 17-27; Lauren Yee’s “Cambodian Rock Band,” a dramatic comedy in which a Cambodian American woman and her father, a survivor of the brutal Khmer Rouge, return to their ancestral homeland, May 5-15; Lisa Matsumoto’s “Once Upon One Time,” a mashup of classic fairy tales told “local style,” June 30 to July 10; and “Spamilton: An American Parody,” an over-the-top take on the Broadway blockbuster “Hamilton” which pokes fun at classic Broadway musicals and the personalities that make them hum.

For more information, visit manoavalleytheatre.com or call 988-6131.