News From Broadway

Hari Nef, Taylor Trensch and Carl Clemons-Hopkins among 50 cast in the fifth Breaking the Binary festival

Junie Okafor — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

Hari Nef, Taylor Trensch, Carl Clemons-Hopkins and Marti Cummings are among the 50 performers now cast in the fifth Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival. It runs October 5–11 at MCC's Susan & Ronald Frankel Theater, and every seat is free.

The names fill out the week of readings that Breaking the Binary Theatre laid out last month. The company, founded in 2022 by George Strus (they/them), develops new work by transgender, non-binary and Two-Spirit+ (TNB2S+) artists. This year's festival plays the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space, one program a night, with four new plays stacked into the Saturday.

Monday, October 5: My H8 Letter to the Gr8 American Theatre by the late Zaza Diana Oh, read in the writer's honor and directed by Miranda Haymon. The company is Alex Lugo, b, Bianca Leigh, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, Cheeyang Ng, Dani Martineck, Dom Martello, Mei Ann Teo, Sagan Chen, T Mitsock and TL Thompson.

Tuesday, October 6: Joslyn DeFreece performs Liliana Padilla's solo play Twitch, directed by Jack Ferver. The piece was first developed at the inaugural festival in 2022, and this solo version premiered at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Wednesday, October 7: The Magically Re-Imagined History of J.K. Rowling, with book, music and lyrics by Jaime Jarrett and direction by Emilio Ramos. Hennessy Winkler, Jesse James Rose, Marti Cummings and Evie Schuckman make up the cast.

Thursday, October 8: the five dolls of Cats: The Jellicle Ball — B Noel Thomas, Garnet Williams, Kya Azeen, Leiomy and "Tempress" Chasity Moore — share a stage for the first time since that production closed, in Glitz, Glamour, Girls: A Variety Show, directed by Noax. Bryson Battle, Kalyn West and Nora Schell are the guests.

Friday, October 9: Tony winner Qween Jean takes on the role of Cecilia for the first time in Cecilia Gentili's Red Ink, developed and directed by Nic Cory.

Saturday, October 10: four new plays. our chronicle by DJ Hills, directed by Will Davis, with Hennessy Winkler and Reed Northrup. Boids, a company commission by reid tang, directed by Kedian Keohan, with Che Kabia, Futaba, Ema Zivkovic, Ishmael Gonzalez, Jonny Beauchamp, Kyr Siegel and Sagan Chen. Before Then, There's Now by Ianne Fields Stewart, directed by N'yomi Allure Stewart, who also appears alongside Carmen LoBue, essence lotus, fatima jamal, Gigi Gatekeeper, Jayae Riley Jr, Mariyea, Marquise Vilsón and travis l. tate. And Spin by Jake Brasch, directed by Sivan Battat, with Barsha, clew, Hari Nef, Jax Jackson, Jess Barbagallo, Nora Brigid Monahan, Sabrina Wu and Taylor Trensch.

Sunday, October 11: the closing night, Celebrate, gathers highlights from the more than 50 short scenes and monologues the company has commissioned since 2022 and published with Broadway Licensing/Concord Theatricals. L Morgan Lee directs and co-conceived the evening with Strus; the writers include Chris Bush, Jen Silverman, Kit Yan, Rob Madge and Sasha Velour. JJ Maley, Julie J, Murphy Taylor Smith, Nora Schell and TL Thompson join Lee onstage.

Casting is by The Telsey Office and Charlie Hano, CSA. Esmé Maria Ng produces the festival, with Is Perlman as assistant producer.

All tickets are free and are available through the company's festival page. The festival is Strus's last as artistic director: after the company's November 20 concert of The Danish Girl at Lincoln Center's David Rubenstein Atrium, Strus steps down in December.

Tituss Burgess brings a one-night concert to 92NY on October 26

Teddy Vance — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 11:00:00 -0400

Tituss Burgess takes the stage at 92NY for one night only on Monday, October 26, at 7:30 p.m. in An Evening with Tituss Burgess. Tickets start at $55.

The program mixes musical theater with songs Burgess counts among his own favorites, with Dan Garmon as music director at the piano. It is part of 92NY’s Tisch Music 2026/27 season.

His most recent Broadway role was Mary Todd Lincoln in Cole Escola’s comedy Oh, Mary!, and his other Broadway credits take in Moulin Rouge! The Musical, The Little Mermaid, Guys and Dolls, Jersey Boys and Good Vibrations. Off-Broadway, he created Center of the YOUniverse and starred in it with Jane Krakowski at the Minetta Lane Theatre. He has also written a musical version of The Preacher’s Wife, based on the 1996 film, which premiered at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta.

A six-time Emmy nominee, Burgess is best known on screen as Titus Andromedon in the Netflix comedy Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. His next screen projects are the feature The Cat in the Hat and the series Barbershop and Elephant & Piggie.

The concert lands a few weeks before his return to Broadway as the angel Clarence in It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play at the Broadhurst, which opens on November 18.

92NY is at 1395 Lexington Avenue. Tickets are on sale now from 92NY.

Johnnie Cruise Mercer brings The Good News Suite to 92NY with a new ensemble premiere

Adele Fenwick — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 11:00:00 -0400

Johnnie Cruise Mercer brings The Good News Suite to 92NY on Friday, October 16, and Saturday, October 17, at 7 p.m. The program includes the world premiere of a new ensemble piece, The Unforced Rhythms of Grace. Tickets start at $45.

Both performances are in Buttenwieser Hall at the Arnhold Center, as part of Home: Departure and Return, the Harkness Dance Center’s 2026/27 Mainstage season. The season is built around how dance maps home, identity and belonging, and the borders, seen and unseen, that shape them.

Mercer made the suite out of his upbringing in the Black Baptist church, working from scripture he learned as a child. The choreography is meant to help a community move through grief toward release. It also changes with each space and each audience, so no two performances are alike.

The Unforced Rhythms of Grace is written for Black dancers and singers and grounded in contemporary gospel. Each night adds guest artists from New York’s Black dance community, along with singers, actors and musicians. The program also includes a new version of Mercies of a Butterfly, a solo Mercer keeps reworking.

Mercer dances with TheREDprojectNYC Movement Ensemble: Paulina Meneses, TJ Jacobs, Paris Jones and Demietrius Burns. Jean Charlot plays drums and Robert McSweeney horn. The vocal ensemble is Alejandro Jimenez, who also arranged the vocals, with Jaida Forman and Nic Pierre. Whimzee is technical director and lighting designer, Justin Johnson designs sound, and wardrobe is by Pierre Rashad and Ifeyinwa Ogbuagu.

The same season brings Christopher Williams’s Spectre de la Rose to 92NY on October 29 and 30.

92NY is at 1395 Lexington Avenue. Tickets are on sale from 92NY.

Charles Evered’s Class opens the upstairs of the Ear Inn to theater for the first time

Junie Okafor — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:50:00 -0400

The upstairs room at the Ear Inn on Spring Street has never been open to a paying audience. From Tuesday, November 10 it is, for Class, the first production of the new Ear Out Playhouse: a two-hander by Charles Evered, directed by Jeffrey Meek, with a two-week run ending Sunday, November 22.

This is the play's New York City premiere. It runs 80 minutes. Doors open at 6:15 p.m. and the performance starts at 7 p.m., and the company is asking people to come early and look around the room before the show. The Ear Inn, at 326 Spring Street in SoHo, has been around for more than 200 years, and its upstairs has never before been used for a public theatrical production.

The play has two characters. Eric Olsson is Elliot, a well-known acting teacher who has stopped believing in the work, and Taylor Hennings is Sarah, a young actress who turns up looking for something she cannot quite put into words. Their first meeting is a standoff. It turns into a connection neither of them planned, and the line between teacher and student, and between the work and their own lives, starts to slip.

Hennings' screen credits include FBI: Most Wanted and the All Too Well short film. Olsson, seen in Law & Order: SVU and the feature Masquerade, also founded Ear Out Playhouse and is producing Class alongside Kim Waltrip and Larissa Dias.

Evered's earlier plays include Adopt a Sailor, first staged at Town Hall in 2002 and later filmed with Bebe Neuwirth and Peter Coyote, and The Size of the World, which premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre. He has also written for television, including an episode of Monk. Ear Out Playhouse has named him its Playwright in Residence from September 2026 through June 2027, and the residency begins with this production.

Meek, an actor and director based in San Diego, has directed David Auburn's Proof and Neil LaBute's Reasons to Be Pretty, and co-wrote the Bobby Darin film Beyond the Sea.

Costumes are by Gayle Bindman, lighting by Henry Mont and sound by Paul Geluso. Chloe Chin is the stage manager, and Lisa Donadio consulted on casting.

Tickets are $70 on Eventbrite. More on the company is at earoutplayhouse.com.

Spring Awakening extends through April 2027 before its first performance at Studio Seaview

Roman Ashby — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:00:00 -0400

Eight weeks before its first performance, Danya Taymor’s Off-Broadway revival of Spring Awakening has extended its run at Studio Seaview through Sunday, April 4, 2027, on the back of the strongest on-sale the venue has ever recorded.

The producer Seaview announced the extension on October 2, saying the first block of tickets had been the most successful on-sale in Studio Seaview’s history. Nothing else about the schedule moves: performances still begin on Friday, November 27.

The added dates go on sale in two stages. Studio Seaview First Access subscribers get a 24-hour presale, from 9:00 AM ET on Wednesday, October 7 until 8:59 AM ET on Thursday, October 8. The general on-sale for the new block follows at 9:00 AM ET that Thursday.

“The response to Danya Taymor’s production of Spring Awakening has been incredible,” said Greg Nobile, CEO of Seaview. “It is a testament to the enduring power of Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s seminal work and the way this musical continues to resonate with audiences.”

Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik’s rock musical, winner of both the Tony and the Olivier, reached Broadway in 2006 with Jonathan Groff, Lea Michele and John Gallagher Jr., and came back in 2015 in Deaf West Theatre’s revival, directed by Michael Arden. Danya Taymor, a Tony winner herself, takes it somewhere much smaller. Her staging pulls the piece back toward its source, Frank Wedekind’s once-banned 1891 play about adolescents in a provincial German town whose parents and teachers will tell them nothing about sex.

The company was announced in September. Tyler Jordan Wesley plays Melchior, Ashlyn Maddox is Wendla and Ryo Kamibayashi is Moritz, alongside Jack Bateman (Georg), Jada Simone Clark (Thea), Leif Coomer (Ernst), Nando Morland (Otto), Antonio Porciello (Hanschen), Khadija Sankoh (Martha), Grace Slear (Anna) and Amalia Yoo (Ilse). Bateman and Porciello both came through the production’s July open call, which saw 2,532 performers.

Choreography is by Celia Rowlson-Hall and music supervision by Or Matias, with sets by Christine Jones and Brett Banakis, costumes by Kaye Voyce, lighting by Brian MacDevitt and sound by Cody Spencer. Cynthia Meng is music director and conductor.

The production marked the news with a short extension video:

Tickets for Spring Awakening at Studio Seaview, 305 West 43rd Street, are on sale now, with the extension dates released from October 8.

Katie Rose Clarke will play Dolly Parton on Broadway as DOLLY names its first five actors

Delia Marsh — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Katie Rose Clarke will play Dolly Parton when DOLLY: A True Original Musical begins previews at the St. James Theatre on December 7, heading a first group of five principals whom Parton handpicked herself. Alongside the casting, the producers have committed 30,000 free tickets to New York City public school students over the show’s first year on Broadway.

Clarke brings the title role over from the musical’s world premiere in Nashville last summer, a sold-out engagement that became the most successful production in the history of the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Belmont University. Her Broadway credits include Beth in the Tony-winning revival of Merrily We Roll Along, a long run as Glinda in Wicked, and her debut as Clara Johnson in Lincoln Center Theater’s The Light in the Piazza, staged by Bartlett Sher, who also directs this production.

Carrie St. Louis, who took part in some of the earliest readings of the musical and played the same part in Nashville, is cast as Dolly, the ambitious young singer-songwriter trying to break into the Nashville music business. She has just finished playing Sandra Dee in Just in Time on Broadway. Eleven-year-old Norah Nunes, from Texas and a finalist in the online “Search for Dolly” open casting call, makes a Broadway debut as Little Dolly.

John Behlmann, a GRAMMY and Outer Critics Circle Award nominee, returns from Nashville as Carl Dean, Parton’s husband of almost 60 years; he is currently playing Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby on Broadway. Tony winner Gabriel Ebert, whose award came for Matilda the Musical, plays Porter Wagoner, the country star who first introduced Parton to a national television audience. More casting is to follow.

Speaking for the producers, Adam Speers of ATG Productions said: “It’s a rare privilege to create a musical alongside the person whose story you’re telling, and working with Dolly on this show will always be special.” Choosing the actors, he said, was the part of the production Parton cared about most, and she “wanted performers with strength, kindness, and humanity as well as talent.”

The student tickets come through a partnership with the New York City Department of Education and are aimed at public middle and high schools. Schools can apply to bring groups, and individual students can apply for a pair of tickets so that a parent or guardian can come with them. Fuller details of the program are due in the coming weeks. Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said many of those students would be seeing Broadway for the first time, adding: “What better story to begin with than that of Dolly Parton’s?”

The score pairs Parton’s own hits, among them Jolene, 9 to 5, Coat of Many Colors and I Will Always Love You, with songs she wrote for the show, and she shares the book credit with two-time Emmy winner Maria S. Schlatter. Mandy Moore choreographs, with sets by Derek McLane, costumes by Jennifer Moeller, lighting by Donald Holder, sound by Peter Hylenski and video by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom. Stephen Oremus is music supervisor and Charity Wicks music director. The producers are Parton, Danny Nozell, Speers for ATG Productions, and Gavin Kalin Productions.

Previews begin Monday, December 7, 2026, at the St. James Theatre, 246 West 44th Street, ahead of an opening night on Tuesday, January 19, 2027, which would have been Parton’s 81st birthday. The initial booking period runs through Sunday, November 21, 2027, with tickets on sale at dollymusical.com, and the producers note the show may not suit children aged 8 and under. A video of the five actors coming together as a company for the first time has also been released.

Saycon Sengbloh, Ty Taylor and Britton Smith lead Passing Strange at Pasadena Playhouse

Adele Fenwick — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:52:00 -0400

Ty Taylor, Britton Smith and Saycon Sengbloh will lead a 20th-anniversary production of Passing Strange at Pasadena Playhouse, running November 4–29 with opening night on Sunday, November 8.

Taylor, lead singer of the band Vintage Trouble, plays the Narrator. Smith plays Youth. Sengbloh, a Tony nominee for Eclipsed, plays Mother. The ensemble is Brittany Campbell, Johnny Laveie, Devere Rogers and the singer-songwriter Tanerélle.

The production is the musical’s Los Angeles premiere. Zhailon Levingston directs. He shared the 2026 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical with Bill Rauch for Cats: The Jellicle Ball.

Stew wrote the book and lyrics, and the music with Heidi Rodewald. The semi-autobiographical show follows a young man from South Central Los Angeles on a long search for himself across continents. It opened on Broadway in 2008, received seven Tony nominations and won one, for Stew’s book. It was created with Annie Dorsen, who directed the original staging.

The creative team is Greg Nabours (music director), Tislarm Bouie (choreography), Lawrence Moten (scenic), Devario Simmons (costumes), Jared Sayeg (lighting) and Andrea Allmond (sound). The production is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals.

The first preview is Wednesday, November 4 at 7:30pm.

1972, Chadwick Stokes and Jessie Nelson’s rock opera, names its cast for A.R.T. in Cambridge

Margo Ruiz — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:52:00 -0400

American Repertory Theater has named the company for the world premiere of 1972, a rock opera by Chadwick Stokes and Jessie Nelson that runs at Harvard’s Farkas Hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from Tuesday, October 27 to Sunday, November 22.

The piece is presented as a heightened concert. It opens officially on Sunday, November 1, with the press performance on Wednesday, November 4. Nelson, the Tony-nominated writer of the book for Waitress, directs; Stokes, the singer-songwriter behind the Boston bands Dispatch and State Radio, wrote the score and is also in the cast, as Depot.

It is set in the months before Roe v. Wade. Hannah, pregnant and running from an abusive relationship, falls in with three outcasts riding the rails across America and, after a narrow escape from an illegal abortion, finds her way to the Janes, the underground network of women who risked everything to give others a choice. The writers drew on the real stories of those women.

Gracie McGraw plays Hannah, with Jackera Davis as Louisa, Darren Buck as Eddie and Dr. Don, Khaila Wilcoxon as Harlan, Will Urmston as Pinto and JR King as Demi and Rick. Hannah Foxman (Jane and the Lawyer), Britney King and Darby Patterson play Janes, and Jhardon DiShon Milton and Tommy Ng complete the ensemble.

The design team is Amy Rubin (scenic), Nicole Jescinth Smith (costumes), Ben Stanton (lighting), Justin Stasiw (sound) and Krystal Balleza (hair, wigs and makeup), with choreography by Jill Johnson and music direction by Jacob Yates.

Several performances are followed by conversations included in the ticket price, among them a session with members of the Jane Collective after the Saturday, October 31 performance and one with Heather Booth, a founding member of the Collective, on Friday, November 13. The Schlesinger Library at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute is also mounting free pop-up exhibitions of early-1970s writing, posters and press at 3 James Street on select dates. Standard tickets start at $43, and A.R.T. reports very limited availability.

John Proctor Is the Villain sets its West Coast cast for San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles

Margo Ruiz — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:51:00 -0400

John Proctor Is the Villain begins its West Coast premiere at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco on November 12, the first of three stops for a rolling co-production that continues at Seattle Rep and at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

The San Francisco run is November 12–December 6, with opening night on November 18. The production then moves to Seattle Rep for January 21–February 21, 2027, and to Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum for March 17–April 25, 2027. Jess McLeod directs all three engagements.

Kimberly Belflower’s play is set in a high-school AP English class in a Georgia town with a single stoplight, where five teenage girls start to question the stories, and the heroes, they have been taught to admire. It reached Broadway at the Booth Theatre in 2025 and earned seven Tony Award nominations, Best Play among them. Belflower said she was “over the moon to now bring my play to the West Coast.”

The company is Ameer Ali as Mason Adams, Stevie Allen as Ivy Watkins, Lilla Crawford as Shelby Holcomb, Varinique “V” Davis as Nell Shaw, Olivia Finkelstein as Beth Powell, Kyle Harris as Carter Smith, Mario Houle as Lee Turner, Kaylee Kaneshiro as Raelynn Nix and Erika Vetter as Bailey Gallagher. The understudies are Emma Gardner, Adam Magill, Allie Pratt, Nicholas René Rodriguez and Sharon Shao.

The creative team includes Kate Noll (scenic), Eunice Jera Lee (costumes), Robert J. Aguilar (lighting) and Jeff Gardner (sound), with Leigh Rondon-Davis as associate director and Joy Meads as dramaturg.

Hold and Unreached Things make their New York debuts at the Circle Theater Festival

Roman Ashby — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:51:00 -0400

Two writer-performers bring new plays to the third annual Circle Theater Festival at AMT Theater, October 26–November 15: Bryce Gerson's one-man thriller Hold and Chris Mathis's two-hander Unreached Things.

The festival is run by RJ Theatre Company and TAL Media, and plays AMT Theater at 354 West 45th Street.

Hold is written and performed by Gerson, an actor and filmmaker whose short film Finding won him Best Actor in a Short at the Cannes World Film Festival. It is his Off-Broadway debut and the play's New York premiere. Gerson plays Miles, a volunteer on a suicide hotline who takes a call from a stranger who knows the thing he has spent years trying to bury: the night at college when he ignored a desperate knock on his dorm-room door. Gerson built the piece to run on restraint, with one performer holding the whole thing.

It shares a bill with Ashlyn Hughes' Good Grievers. Performances are October 26 at 8 p.m., November 1 at 2 p.m., November 3 at 8 p.m., November 8 at 2 p.m., November 9 at 9:30 p.m. and November 15 at 2 p.m. The production carries a content warning for themes of suicide and grief. Tickets are on Ticketleap.

Unreached Things comes from Chattanooga. Mathis wrote and directs the one-act and plays Kai opposite Chattanooga actor Cortney Warner as Quinn; a dinner Quinn hosts for Kai's mother turns into a reckoning with love, memory and the conversations the two never finished. Mathis' first produced play, The Body, premiered at the Next Exit Productions New Play Festival in Chattanooga.

"Bringing this story to New York feels incredibly special," Mathis said. It has six performances: October 28 and November 1, 2, 8, 9 and 15. The company asks audiences buying for this show to use the code UNREACHED.

The festival’s full 2026 lineup is here.

Christopher Williams brings a reimagined Spectre de la Rose to 92NY for its world premiere

Roman Ashby — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:50:00 -0400

Choreographer Christopher Williams premieres Spectre de la Rose at 92NY on October 29 and 30, the sixth piece in his long-running project of reworking the Ballets Russes repertoire, on a double bill with the New York premiere of La Rhétorique des Dieux.

The series is called Queering the Canon: Reimagining the Ballets Russes, and the new work is a 92NY commission. Fokine made the original in 1911 for Karsavina and Nijinsky: a young woman, home from her first ball, dreams that the rose she carried comes alive and dances with her. Williams, a Bessie Award winner, runs that scenario through the ballroom scene, borrowing its play between fantasy and realness.

The score keeps Weber's Invitation to the Dance among its selections, with sound design by Tei Blow. Two regular collaborators design: Joe Levasseur on lighting and Andrew Jordan, a recent Bessie winner, on costumes.

La Rhétorique des Dieux is danced to excerpts from Denis Gaultier's suite for Baroque lute of the same name. It centers on Phaëthon, thrown down from the gods to the mortal world, and the mythological figures he meets there in present-day disguise. Levasseur lights it; Jordan and Williams share the costumes.

"I'm a firm believer that storytelling must evolve as societies reform over time," Williams said, describing the series as both homage to the start of modern dance and "a gesture of present-day activism promoting LGBTQIA+ inclusivity."

Both performances are at 7 p.m. in Buttenwieser Hall at the Arnhold Center, part of the Harkness Mainstage Series' Home season. Tickets start at $45 on the 92NY website.

Photos: Anthony Gargiula, Spencer Sutherland and Kenzie Ziegler in & Juliet on Broadway

Sol Brennan — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:50:00 -0400

Kenzie Ziegler hangs in mid-leap in front of the neon title sign in the first production photographs of the newest arrivals in & Juliet at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre.

The pictures, by Matthew Murphy, show the three performers who made their Broadway debuts in the musical on Tuesday, September 15: Anthony Gargiula as François, Spencer Sutherland as Romeo, and Ziegler in the featured dance role of Charmion.

Two of the three engagements come with end dates. Ziegler stays with the company through Sunday, November 1, and Gargiula through Sunday, December 6.

They join a company that includes Joey Fatone, back as Lance. Cyrus Veyssi and Aly Michalka are due to join later this fall.

The musical, with a book by David West Read and songs by Max Martin and his collaborators, picks up Shakespeare’s tragedy at the moment Juliet decides not to die for Romeo and sets off to build a life of her own instead.

The clock is running on the Broadway production. It plays its final performance on Sunday, January 3, 2027, more than four years after it opened at the Sondheim.

Spark Theatre Festival NYC returns to The 28th Street Theatre with 67 new works

Junie Okafor — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:49:00 -0400

Three weeks, one building, 67 new pieces. Emerging Artists Theatre's Spark Theatre Festival NYC is back at The 28th Street Theatre from October 5 to 25, with the largest lineup the twice-yearly festival has programmed.

The slate mixes new plays, solo shows, storytelling and dance from emerging and established artists. Emerging Artists Theatre has been developing new work in New York for more than 30 years, and Spark is where much of it gets its first audience.

There are 34 short and full-length plays. Among them: Leslie Bramm's Lady Macbeth and Her Therapist, in which a medieval therapist takes Lady Macbeth on as a client; Kai Farr's Conditioning, about two trans men who meet lifting weights; and Hailey Irwin's Get Through, which follows four queer teenage girls at a California skatepark after an environmental collapse.

Nine solo shows include Max Sharam's Mezzo Cuckoo: Diva Gone Dada, about an out-of-work opera singer haunted by one song; Camryn Graves's Distortion, about a young ballet dancer living with body dysmorphia and anxiety; and Josie Whittlesey's RED, in which a woman says goodbye to her father in a maximum-security prison.

Dance takes 23 slots, including Sharon Simmons-Wright's The Other Side of Hate and Atomi from contemporary company Kafra Collective.

The company follows it straight away with a new event in the same room: the first Spark Musical Theatre Festival NYC, November 2–22, with 32 short and full-length musicals in development.

The 28th Street Theatre is at 15 West 28th Street. Schedules and tickets are on the Emerging Artists Theatre website.

Etai Benson and Alexandra Socha premiere The Book of Steve, a Sondheim tribute, on October 5

Adele Fenwick — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:49:00 -0400

Etai Benson and Alexandra Socha premiere The Book of Steve, their show built on the songs of Stephen Sondheim, at Union House: Center for Jewish Culture on October 5 at 7 p.m.

Benson and Socha are married and wrote the piece together, and they perform it as a two-hander. Katie Birenboim directs and Adam Rothenberg is music director.

The premise sets Sondheim beside Jewish tradition. The couple came to the idea as they grew closer to Judaism and began hearing in Sondheim's writing, with its wit, its anxieties and its arguments with the big questions, something that read to them as distinctly Jewish, although he described himself as an agnostic. In the show he becomes their "Rabbi" Steve, and his songs are the route into older Jewish teaching.

Benson's Broadway credits include Company and The Band's Visit. Socha's include Wicked and Head Over Heels.

The pair tried out material from the show at the recent concert Shana Tova: Stories & Songs of Hope & Renewal. The October 5 performance is billed as the premiere; no further dates have been announced.

First look at Ryan J. Haddad’s Good Time Charlie at The Public

Roman Ashby — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:49:00 -0400

The Public Theater has released the first production photographs of Good Time Charlie, the new play by Ryan J. Haddad, now in previews in Martinson Hall ahead of its official opening on Friday, October 9.

The play is being staged in the building where it began. Haddad wrote it as his application to The Public’s Emerging Writers Group and spent two years developing it in that program, and the theater has already extended the run through Sunday, October 25. It brings him back to The Public after Dark Disabled Stories, which received an Obie Award for Best American New Play, and reunites him with the director Danny Sharron, who staged his Hold Me in the Water at Playwrights Horizons.

Its subject is a love of the theater handed down a generation. Charlie wanted a life on the stage, but his parents thought dentistry a safer bet, so he poured his enthusiasm into his nephew Ryan, another theater-mad gay kid with his sights set on Broadway. Across more than thirty years, the play follows gay men of two generations growing up, falling in love and holding on to the art that sustains them, and it is written as a comedy.

“This play is a tribute to families, gay elders, and those who love and revere theater with fervent passion,” Haddad said.

Haddad plays Ryan, with Jonathan Raviv as Charlie, Beth Malone as Janice, Michael Cristofer as Sheldon, Timothy Bagley as Lou, Nael Nacer as Charlie Sr. and Bob, and Artemis Pebdani as Joan and Judy. Sherz Aletaha, Nicholas Barrón and Doug Shapiro are the understudies.

The design team is Afsoon Pajoufar (scenic), Enver Chakartash (costumes), Barbara Samuels (lighting), Ryan Gamblin (sound design and composition) and Robert Pickens (hair, wigs and makeup). Sarah Lunnie is the dramaturg.

Open-captioned, audio-described and sensory-adapted performances are scheduled across the run, the last open-captioned one on Saturday, October 24 at 7pm. For the rest of the company’s year, see our report on The Public’s 2026–27 season additions.

La MaMa's Global Indigenous Theatre Festival marks 50 years of Spiderwoman Theater

Junie Okafor — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:48:00 -0400

Nine days, two stages, five events. La MaMa's Global Indigenous Theatre Festival runs October 30 to November 7 and brings companies from New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Minneapolis to the East Village for Spiderwoman Theater's 50th year.

La MaMa presents the festival in association with Spiderwoman Theater, a Native American women's company and longtime La MaMa resident, and produces it with Loose Change Productions. Everything plays the Ellen Stewart Theatre and the Downstairs Theatre at 66 East 4th Street.

Kōpū opens the festival, October 30–November 1. It comes from Te Pou Theatre, a kaupapa Māori company in Aotearoa New Zealand, and its wāhine performers use live music, poetry and poi to tell their own account of being women.

Invisible Shadows plays the same dates. It is from Minneapolis's Ikidowin Theater Ensemble, written by Sharon Day and directed by Sir Curtis Kirby, and follows urban Indigenous young people finding their way back to their culture in the middle of the opioid crisis.

The second week, November 4–6, pairs Maayuma li Mubirr (Healing Scars) from Australia's Moogahlin Performing Arts with All My R(el)ations, a dance-theater piece about returning to community from Aanmitaagzi of Ontario, Canada.

It closes on November 7 with a 50th anniversary gala for Spiderwoman Theater, created by Murielle Borst-Tarrant.

Prices include fees. A two-show package is $40 and a full festival pass covering all five events is $100. Single tickets and the schedule are on La MaMa's festival page.

Santino Fontana and Taylor Iman Jones join CELEBBRATION, the Fred Ebb Award concert at Symphony Space

Teddy Vance — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:47:00 -0400

Ten years of Fred Ebb Award winners get one night on one stage. Prospect Musicals presents CELEBBRATION at Symphony Space on Thursday, October 8, at 7 p.m., with Santino Fontana, Taylor Iman Jones and 21 more performers singing the winners' songs.

The full title is CELEBBRATION: A Concert Evening of Songs from the Fred Ebb Award Winners (2015-2025). Tony winner Karen Ziemba hosts. Cara Reichel directs, Andy Roninson is music director and Kate Semmens is associate director.

The program pairs songs heard for the first time with favorites from the winners' catalogs. The writers represented are Sophie Boyce and Veronica Mansour (2025), Cheeyang Ng and Eric Sorrels (2024), Freya Catrin Smith and Jack Williams (2023), Julia Riew (2022), Isabella Dawis and Tidtaya Sinutoke (2021), Ben Bonnema and Christopher Staskel (2020), Michael R. Jackson (2020), Benjamin Velez (2019), Will Reynolds and Eric Price (2018), Shaina Taub (2017) and Thomas Mizer and Curtis Moore (2016). Riew also premieres a new song written with Janani K. Jha.

Fontana won his Tony for Tootsie; Jones was in Groundhog Day. The rest of the cast is Robert Ariza, Kim Blanck, Darius de Haas, Jasmine Forsberg, Molly Hager, Tymothee Harrell, Jade Jones, Brianna Kaleen, Marina Kondo, Michael Maliakel, Lauren Marcus, Aubrey Matalon, Katerina McCrimmon, Eric William Morris, Asher Muldoon, Zachary Prince, Pearl Sun, Alyssa Sunew, Talia Suskauer, Kuhoo Verma and Grace Yoo.

The evening is backed by the Fred Ebb Foundation, which supports new musical theater in the name of the lyricist of Cabaret and Chicago. It is a single performance. Symphony Space is at 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street; details are on the Prospect Musicals website.

It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play brings Andrew Rannells, Megan Hilty and Tituss Burgess to the Broadhurst

Delia Marsh — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:47:00 -0400

It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play will have its Broadway premiere at the Broadhurst Theatre this holiday season, with Andrew Rannells as George Bailey and Megan Hilty as Mary, in a strictly limited nine-week engagement that begins previews on Wednesday, November 4.

Opening night is Wednesday, November 18, and the final performance is Sunday, January 3, 2027, so the run covers the whole of the holiday season and ends the weekend after New Year.

Tituss Burgess plays the angel Clarence, among other roles, and the married couple Harry Hamlin and Lisa Rinna complete the billed company: Hamlin as the villainous Mr. Potter and others, Rinna as the town socialite Violet and others. Jerry Zaks, a four-time Tony Award winner, directs.

The format matters as much as the names. Joe Landry’s adaptation of the Frank Capra story, which draws on Philip Van Doren Stern’s The Greatest Gift, puts the audience in the studio of a 1940s radio broadcast at Christmas, where a company of actors performs the tale live on air. The five principals voice dozens of Bedford Falls residents between them, a foley artist makes the sound effects in plain view, and there are carols along the way.

“This production’s unique format as a radio play calls back to the charm of a bygone era, while also folding in exciting surprises to thrill modern audiences,” Zaks said.

The billing draws on television recognition at least as much as on stage credits. Rannells is a two-time Tony nominee, for The Book of Mormon and Falsettos; Hilty is also a two-time nominee, for Noises Off and Death Becomes Her, and remains closely associated with NBC’s Smash. Burgess, a six-time Emmy nominee for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, has played Mary Todd Lincoln in Oh, Mary! on Broadway. Hamlin and Rinna have shared a Broadway stage before, as Billy Flynn and Roxie Hart in Chicago.

Santo Loquasto designs the set and costumes, with lighting by Kenneth Posner and sound by Palmer Heffernan. Andy Einhorn is the music director.

Tickets are sold through Telecharge, and the production’s official site is ItsAWonderfulLifeBway.com.

Waiting for Lefty company meets the press before Classic Stage Company previews

Sol Brennan — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:46:00 -0400

Ten actors, one union hall. The company of Classic Stage Company's Waiting for Lefty has met the press, two weeks before Steven Pasquale's staging of the Clifford Odets play starts previews on October 15.

Waiting for Lefty opens the company's 2026–27 season at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater. Previews run October 15 to November 1, and the engagement ends November 22, 2026.

Behind the cast is a directing debut. Steven Pasquale, known for his work as an actor, is directing for the first time, and he has built the evening on music and movement. Yeller Tooth supplies original music and arrangements. That is the duo of Sahar Milani and Cameron Scoggins, who are also in the cast. Susan Misner choreographs.

The full company is Tala Ashe, Raffi Barsoumian, Austin Durant, Greg Hildreth, Adam Kantor, Doireann Mac Mahon, Zach McNally, Milani, Scoggins and Henry Stram. The press-day photographs were taken by Jennifer Broski.

Odets wrote the play in 1935. It puts the audience in a meeting of Depression-era New York cab drivers, broke and worn down, arguing over whether to strike while they wait for their leader, Lefty, to arrive. Pasquale's version turns the whole theater into that meeting room.

The company is also running a series of post-show talks alongside the run, including a November 7 conversation between Pasquale and Cornell labor-law professor Risa Lieberwitz.

Classic Stage Company is at 136 East 13th Street. Seats start at $83 on the Waiting for Lefty tickets page.

Review Roundup: CREATION STORIES AND ALL THE IMPORTANT IMPORTANTS at the Claire Tow Theater

Walter Pike — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:42:00 -0400

The first notices are in for creation stories and all the important importants, Mfoniso Udofia’s world premiere for LCT3, which opened at Lincoln Center Theater’s Claire Tow Theater on Thursday, October 1. Directed by Tamilla Woodard, the 95-minute play follows a playwright and teacher known only as thegrownwoman through one long day on which her last round of IVF hangs in the balance, shadowed by her nine-year-old self and by a rapping horse of her own invention. The critics part company over the writing rather than over the evening’s lead. TheaterMania and Pages on Stages are moved by it; Vulture finds it self-absorbed; New York Stage Review, Culture Sauce, New York Theatre Guide and Theater Pizzazz admire the ambition and wish the play held its many threads more firmly. On Abigail C. Onwunali, at least, they agree.

The verdict: seven reviews in so far, and only two of them carry a score: New York Stage Review and Culture Sauce both give it three out of five, an average of 3.0. The other five outlets publish no rating. Beyond that the notices pull a long way apart, from Pages on Stages, which calls it a remarkable show, to Vulture, which finds it monotonous and heavy-handed. What every one of them has a good word for is Abigail C. Onwunali.

What are critics saying about creation stories and all the important importants?

Vulture

“Yes, It’s Tough to Be a Playwright”

Reviewer: Sara Holdren

“About two thirds of Udofia’s 95-minute play consists of Onwunali barrelling around the stage describing her own actions. She’s a strong actor (in last spring’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, her late-in-the-story entrance ratcheted the drama to a whole new level), but this is punishing material, monotonous and heavyhanded. Seven years ago, in reviewing Udofia’s runboyrun and In Old Age — two plays from her nine-play Ufot Cycle, which is unfolding in its entirety in Boston — I wrote that the playwright “never does something once or twice when she can do it on a continuous loop.” I wish I could say that’s changed, but Udofia remains committed to reiteration far past the point of dramatic efficacy.”

Read Sara Holdren’s full review at Vulture

TheaterMania

“Abigail Onwunali Triumphs in Mfoniso Udofia’s Complex Creation Stories”

Reviewer: Dan Rubins

“Thegrownwoman narrates her day in third-person, a smile plastered on her face and a forced lilt in her voice. It becomes clear that the narration isn’t for us; it’s the engine she needs to barrel through her day, pushing aside the soul-breaking burden of trying to conceive on her own. Onwunali navigates Udofia’s complex text with marvelous lucidity and emotional range. Because thegrownwoman has perfected this performance for herself, we believe her too, and when she finally cracks open, releasing her despair, it’s wrenching.”

Read Dan Rubins’s full review at TheaterMania

New York Stage Review

“A Magical Drama About a Wanna-Be Mama”

Reviewer: Michael Sommers · 3 out of 5

“Yes: There is a lot going on here between Udofia’s maximalist play and its accouterments in LCT3’s sumptuous, well-acted production that opened Thursday. Tamilla Woodard, the director, rolls everything out smoothly, but some of that overabundant content flies by awfully quickly for certain demographics to grasp. Fortunately for everyone in the audience, the central role of thegrownwoman is performed by Abigail C. Onwunali, who urgently and beautifully depicts her ever-striving character with an expressive face, a bold physicality, and a melodic voice. Initially hidden beneath her costume as a spooky Cousin It-like raffia bush in the opening nightmare sequence (remember that?), a fun Donnetta Lavinia Grays returns later to sing up more than one storm as a swaggering cartoon hero. Like Onwunali, a member of the recent Joe Turner’s Come and Gone company, Savannah Commodore is a natural charmer whose wide-eyed amiable child here sympathetically watches a future version of herself implode.”

Read Michael Sommers’s full review at New York Stage Review

Culture Sauce

“‘Creation Stories’ finds fertile ground in a blocked writer longing for motherhood”

Reviewer: Thom Geier · 3 out of 5

“She also studs the material with a lot of humor, from the names of fictional pregnancy-advice websites (Ovaryachiever.com) to Grays’s patter-perfect rap rejecting the woman’s assertion that he’s just a deus ex machina to lead the protagonist to her required epiphany. “I’m not God in the machine,” Mr. Cornell retorts, “I’m more akin to Chekhov’s Pony.” There’s a great deal of playfulness here, of subverting dramatic tradition while calling out the subversions at the same time. The storytelling is enhanced by Jason Adrixxone-West’s elegant set design, Alan C. Edwards’s lighting, and Katherine Freer’s projections that conjure both storybook simplicity and the awesome evocation of the cosmos.”

Read Thom Geier’s full review at Culture Sauce

New York Theatre Guide

“How a playwright escapes the grind”

Reviewer: Caroline Cao

“A playwright writing about writing doesn’t have to be an exhausting meta-affair — it can be an imaginative one. Through a Nigerian American mythic lens, Mfoniso Udofia’s personal play is a chronicle of health, writer’s block, and self-care, but it doesn't explore all these themes deeply enough. Somewhere in the stars, there’s a future iteration of creation stories and all the important importants that could be as expansive as its charms require.”

Read Caroline Cao’s full review at New York Theatre Guide

Theater Pizzazz

Reviewer: Stuart Miller

“The “Grown Woman” references Samuel Beckett at one point and there’s a Beckett-ian frustration and futility we feel while watching her push a cart through Costco and around the city, talking herself into going on. But Beckett often aims for the head, not the heart and this play seems to want both, which puts it in conflict with itself. The minimalist and abstract set is visually arresting but takes us away from the woman’s very real pain. What keeps it grounded and intimate are the performances, especially the fully present, deeply emotional Onwunali, whose life and hormones are tossing her to and fro.”

Read Stuart Miller’s full review at Theater Pizzazz

Production photographs by Valerie Terranova.

Pages on Stages

“Expecting Unexpecting”

Reviewer: Mason Pilevsky

“Though centered around a serious topic, it’s important to note that creation stories and all the important importants isn’t sad or heavy. Udofia’s script is incredibly well written— sometimes time flies and sometimes it lingers, but the familiarity of thegrownwoman sits comfortably with the audience, even in moments of the character’s distress. By allowing us to sit comfortably with the stressful minutia of living, Udofia allows us to sit comfortably with the stressful expansiveness of the universe such that we experience vastness in the hands of someone we trust, without terror or denial. Centered around the loss of thegrownwoman’s ability to be everything she expected to be, we taste the grandeur of everything she didn’t expect to be. creation stories and all the important importants showcases the importance of a good cry, and it is truly a remarkable show.”

Read Mason Pilevsky’s full review at Pages on Stages

For more from the season, read our roundups for Degenerates at Playwrights Horizons, School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre and How Shakespeare Saved My Life at the Public Theater, or go back to our first look at the production photographs.

creation stories and all the important importants runs at LCT3’s Claire Tow Theater, 150 West 65th Street, through November 1, 2026. The running time is 95 minutes with no intermission.