Park Avenue Armory will open its 20th-anniversary season with Grass, a world premiere by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins written for the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, and Daniel Kaluuya will make his US stage debut in it from February 19, 2027.
Jacobs-Jenkins, one of the Armory's artists-in-residence, has built the play around the size of the Drill Hall, and it is the first of five productions to fill that space in 2027. The season is also the first under Deborah Warner, who now holds the Anita K. Hersh Artistic Director post, although part of it was set in motion by her predecessor, Pierre Audi.
Grass, February 19 to March 28
Kaluuya plays a son who sets out with his mother on a road trip through the American South, trying to piece their family tree back together. On the way the two of them run into strangers and into leftovers of the country's past, in a play the Armory pitches as part fantasia, part memory play and part morality play. The Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe winner is best known on screen for Get Out and Judas and the Black Messiah.
The production reunites the team behind An Octoroon, Jacobs-Jenkins's Obie-winning play of 2014: Sarah Benson directs and Mimi Lien designs the set. Lighting is by Jane Cox and Stacey Derosier, sound by Bray Poor, costumes by Enver Chakartash, special effects by Jeremy Chernick, and wigs and makeup by Cookie Jordan. The Armory has commissioned and is producing it with the National Black Theatre.
Previews run February 19–25, opening night is Friday, February 26, and performances continue through March 28. Tickets start at $40 including fees on the Armory's Grass page.
Peace Camp: A Vigil, June 9 to August 8
Warner brings her own installation to North America for the first time, in a version remade for the Drill Hall. It began on the UK coastline as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad; here it becomes a field of glowing tents wrapped in a soundscape of love poetry and natural sound by the composer and sound designer Mel Mercier. Visitors wander through at their own pace, and once a week the hall stays open overnight, from dusk until dawn.
Einstein on the Beach, September 14–29
Phelim McDermott's new staging of the 1976 opera by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson gets its North American premiere in Glass's 90th birthday year, half a century after the piece was written. It is the last of the three Glass "portrait operas" McDermott has directed, after Satyagraha and Akhnaten. Tom Pye designs, and the Armory co-commissioned the production with English National Opera, Factory International and McDermott's company, Improbable. It opens first at Factory International's Aviva Studios in Manchester, England, from May 29 to June 12, 2027.
Audience Plant 2027, October 14–19
Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch come back to the Armory, where they gave an Artists Studio performance in 2016, with the New York premiere of a site-specific concert installation that grew out of a 2024 commission for the Aspen Art Museum. Every night is its own one-off: a towering performance sculpture and new films commissioned by the Armory, with improvised sessions led by Jason Moran, Ashland Mines, Michael Beharie and Aaron David Ross plus guests.
Guernica Guernica, December 8–20
The Belgian collective FC Bergman closes the Drill Hall year with the North American premiere of a wordless triptych that starts from Picasso's painting and the real victims of the Spanish Civil War. More than 80 performers, led by Stef Aerts, Joé Agemans, Thomas Verstraeten and Marie Vinck, build living tableaux while drones film them and relay the footage to stadium-size screens, asking what images of war do to the people who look at them.
In the period rooms
The Recital Series continues in the Board of Officers Room with recital debuts for mezzo-soprano Beth Taylor, soprano Nikola Hillebrand, tenor Xabier Anduaga and bass-baritone Le Bu, alongside programs from harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and the new-music ensemble Yarn/Wire. In the Veterans Room, Jason Moran's Artists Studio lineup includes bassists Brandon López and Chloë Sobek, the actor, writer and filmmaker Terence Nance, guitarist Ava Mendoza and choreographer Marlon Taylor-Wiles.
Dates for the full season are on the Park Avenue Armory website.
