Today’s Highlights:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by John Gordon & Ruby Rich, featuring Sam Andrews (Snug & Mote), Kaleb Baker (Demetrius), Martin Challinor (Puck), Aaron Cirillo (Lysander), Isabel Criado (Hermia), Robert Daniel (Flute), Catherine Desciak (Hippolyta / Mustardseed), Caroline Feduccia (Starveling / Cobweb), Rosalind Joyce (Snout / Peaseblossom), Julianne Lorndale (Helena), James Mackey (Oberon / Theseus), Abdullah Naser (Nick Bottom), Ruby Rich (Titania), and Tony Savage Thorn (Egeus / Peter Quince), opens at Off-Broadway’s A.R.T/New York Theatres.
Enemy of the People, newly adapted & directed by Bart DeLorenezo, featuring Jay Paulson, Jason McBeth, Cara Mitsuko, Dennis Dun, DeJuan Christopher, Clay Hollander, and Lauren Campedelli, closes at LA’s Odyssey Theatre.
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The LA Women’s Theatre Festival will present Encore! on Fri. Oct. 16 at 7 PM at the Glorya Kaufman Community Center (Glorya Kaufman Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City), hosted by Terrie Silverman and Jenny Cadena.
Katie Chin, Vanessa Cruz, Sarai Hicks, Marissa Mahoney, Rheagan Wallace.
An evening of solo theatre and dance performances (participants TBA)
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Rebecca Chace’s Obit will run Sept. 17 – Oct. 4 at Theater for the New City, directed by Will Steinberger.
Richard Topol and Carolyn Holding.
When an advance-obituary writer arrives to interview a college president about his life and legacy, a routine professional encounter becomes an armed interrogation. She is carrying a gun, a grievance, and the power to decide how the world will remember the man she holds responsible for ruining her family.
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The Latino Theater Company will present The Dance and the Railroad, by David Henry Hwang, to run Oct. 1 – Nov. 1 (opening Oct. 3) at at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, directed by Katherine Chou.
Leonard Wu and Scott Keiji Takeda
Lone and Ma are immigrant laborers building the transcontinental railroad during the Chinese Railroad Workers’ Strike of 1867. The two men form an unexpected bond through their shared love of Chinese opera. Together, they practice the ancient art form atop a mountain in the Sierra Nevada, finding connection and a sense of possibility even as their fellow workers below confront brutal labor conditions, isolation and cultural displacement. A play about labor, identity, friendship and the power of artistic expression.
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Obit, by Rebecca Chace will run Sept. 17 – Oct. 4 at Theater for the New City, directed by Will Steinberger.
Richard Topol (Philip Stern, the college president) and Carolyn Holding (journalist Maya Hawthorne and her long-dead mother, Angela).
President Stern is also an art monster, who hopes this interview will solidify his legacy with a glowing obituary in the Times. What follows is a cat and mouse game in which the armed journalist demands answers from the man who ruined her life years earlier. The two characters engage in an intricate dance of charm and cruelty, vulnerability and shame. The deck is stacked in favor of the obituary writer, because the subject will never be able to read what she writes. But she may never actually find out why he ruined her mother, which in turn ruined Maya. It’s a play of interrogation, professional power, and control of a person’s legacy that explores whether revenge can ever produce truth. You can come for the revenge, stay for the suspense, and leave arguing about justice.
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Manhattan Theatre Club has announced its Broadway 2026-27 season:
Dates, casting, and additional information TBA.
Celebrity Autobiography at the Imperial Theatre
Paranormal Activity, directed by Felix Barrett
School Girls: Or, The African Mean Girls Play, directed by Whitney White
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Purpose, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, will run Sept. 10 – Oct. 11 at Boston’s Huntington Theatre, directed by Josiah Davis.
Phyllis Yvonne Stickney (Claudine Jasper), Ezra Knight (Solomon Jasper), Ugo Chukwu (Soloman “Junior” Jasper), Haradoo Effeh (Morgan Jasper), OMari K. Chancellor (Nazareth Jasper), and Kalyne Ashley Coleman (Aziza Houston).
A wildly entertaining new play, diving headlong into the life of a prominent and influential political dynasty. Encircled by civil rights leaders, pastors, and congressmen for decades, the Jasper family is a foundational pillar of Black American society. That is, until their youngest son returns home with an unexpected dinner guest, and their carefully curated existence begins to fracture. Don’t miss this searing and hilarious exploration of faith, class, ambition, and heritage.
Off-Broadway’s MCC Theatre has announced its 2026-27 season:
Casting TBA.
Anon, by Anne Washburn (begins Sept. 2026.), directed by Anne Kauffman. . when a gay Pride flag unfurled across the street from Jeanie, an increasingly Tick toker, in a suburban Texas, two seemingly different households… freak out. How well do you know the people you live among, in an America where the line between fantasy and reality has become increasingly optional.
The Heart Sellers, (Jan. 27 dates TBA) by Lloyd Suh, directed by May Adrales. When Jane and Luna, two immigrant strangers, meet on Thanksgiving in 1973, they decide to spend this strange, new holiday together over an evening full of shared laughs, dreams, and a frozen turkey that refuses to thaw.
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (June 2027 dates TBA), directed by Anne Kauffman.
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A live taping of Confessions of a Sugar Baby, written & performed by Allison Dayne, and directed by Cameron Lopez, will take place Fri. Sept. 25 at 8 PM at Santa Monica’s The Crow (2525 Michigan Ave., with free parking, at Bergamot Station Arts Center).
A raw, fiercely comedic 60-minute solo show, every word true. When an uninsured 29-year-old actress collapses and is given eight months to live,the hospital demands $800,000 in cash upfront at a predatory 785 interest rate, her parents have already liquidated their retirement for her father’s cancer, and her trust-fund boyfriend declines: “I don’t think it’s healthy for me to help you fix your financial needs. I’m a feminist.” She refuses to take on the debt, even if it means dying: “The moment you have debt, you’ve invited someone to own you. And I’m not interested in being owned at all.” Then a clinic nurse gives her the only useful advice of her diagnosis: “You’re a white girl with a fat ass in Atlanta. You know what to do.”