Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater has announced its 75th Anniversary New Play Festival, a three-day celebration of new work running February 27 through March 1, honoring the theater’s founding commitment to commissioning and developing bold American voices.
The festival brings together artists, audiences, and theater leaders for a series of readings and conversations that reflect Arena Stage’s 75-year legacy as a home for plays in development and its enduring commitment to what comes next. The festival lineup includes:
Friday, February 27 at 7:30pm
THE TREATMENT
By Amy Berryman
Directed by Reggie D. White
A newly-released treatment ends human aging and, presumably, death by natural causes. Will is the first to sign up, but, after tragic side effects are revealed, his relationship with his daughter falls apart. Through decades and generations, The Treatment takes a speculative look at a medical marvel’s impact, asking how you take the measure of a life if that life never ends.
Saturday, February 28 at 2pm
EMALANI
By Lee Cataluna
Directed by Mina Morita
A woman caught between love, leadership, and the fight to protect her people’s future. Set against the political upheaval of the 19th-century Hawaiian Kingdom, the play weaves intimate relationships with nation-shaping events, revealing the burden of power and the personal costs of colonialism. Passionate, poetic, and deeply human, Emalani is a story of resilience, grief, and an unyielding devotion to sovereignty.
Saturday, February 28 at 7:30pm
CODE RED
By Emily Mann
Directed by Molly Smith
Code Red illuminates day-to-day life in an environment perpetually alert — the American public school system. Five women in rural upstate New York navigate teaching, parenthood, and friendship while trying to grapple with their greatest fear. When unfathomable situations make for breakroom banter, the question becomes — how do normal people do their jobs when nothing is normal anymore?
Sunday, March 1 at 2pm
BUNK JOHNSON… A BLUES POEM
Book and Lyrics by Ifa Bayeza
Music by Ifa Bayeza and Bunk Johnson
Music Direction by Shawn Wallace
Directed by Hana S. Sharif
June 19, 1949, New Iberia, Louisiana, on the grounds of the hundred-year-old plantation home Shadows-on-the-Teche, trumpeter Bunk Johnson, much to the consternation of his partner Maud, gathers friends together to announce his comeback! Now that he stands poised to resume his rightful place as a world-famous Jazz cat, he’s throwing a party with an exclusive, one-night-only show. The former “yardman” at the Shadows, between tunes, regales his guests with tales of his wondrous, wandering life—how he was there when Jazz was born, played with Buddy Bolden, and taught Louis Armstrong. Maud, whose family once were slaves at the Shadows, just wants to go home. But where is home for the wanderer?
Together, these events underscore Arena Stage’s singular role in shaping the American theatrical canon by supporting artists at every stage of the creative process and ensuring that new stories continue to reach the stage.
Tickets are now available at tickets.arenastage.org.
About Arena Stage
The first racially integrated theater in our nation’s capital and a pioneer of the regional theater movement, Arena Stage was founded in 1950, in Washington, DC. Today, under the leadership of Artistic Director Hana S. Sharif and Executive Producer Edgar Dobie, Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater is a national center dedicated to American voices and artists. Arena produces plays of all that is passionate, profound, deep, and dangerous in the American spirit, and presents diverse and groundbreaking work from some of the best artists around the country. Consistently contributing to the American theatrical lexicon by commissioning and developing new plays, Arena Stage impacts the lives of over 10,000 students annually through its work in community engagement and serves a diverse annual audience of more than 300,000.
