Voices Festival Productions (VFP) Artistic Producing Partners Ari Roth and A. Lorraine Robinson have announced a robust new lineup for the company’s 2026/27 season, unified under the title “Breaking the Binary.” The season comprises twin series — Voices from a Changing Nation this fall, and the longer-running Voices from a Changing Middle East Festival this winter — presenting four limited-run productions and five workshop readings that explore identity, resistance, and reconciliation across two continents and nearly a century of history.
“Breaking the Binary points to the multivalent perspectives that embody the VFP programming spirit,” said Roth. “Voices from a Changing Nation traverses the 1930s, 1960s, and present day to find common citizens and new immigrants working through class, racial, and religious division toward a common song and vision amid political violence. Our Middle East Festival similarly shows Israeli, Palestinian, Iranian and American diasporic artists and their characters wrestling with trauma and transformation, grappling with what comes after devastation. This is the biggest season we’ve ever undertaken – and exactly the moment to tell these stories.”
VOICES FROM A CHANGING NATION
The season opens with the fall series, Voices from a Changing Nation, examining what it means to be American in a moment of profound division — told through music, memory, and the people living this history in real time. The series anchor production: WOODY SEZ: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF WOODY GUTHRIE (October 8–25, 2026) performing at a new venue for VFP, Dupont Underground, at 19th and New Hampshire Avenue NW, an increasingly in-demand site in the city. The international hit musical brings its unstoppable spirit and foot-stomping energy back to DC this election season, celebrating “America’s greatest ballad maker” — the rambling troubadour whose unforgettable words, timeless melodies, and extraordinary life-story embodied Resistance Singing long before it became a hashtag.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame calls Woody Guthrie “the original folk hero; a man who, in the Thirties and Forties, transformed the folk ballad into a vehicle for social protest and observation… Fueled by a boundless curiosity about the world, the colorful life he led became as legendary as the songs he wrote.” His influence runs through generations of storytelling songwriters who followed, from Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to Bruce Springsteen, Ani DiFranco, Chuck D, and Tom Morello.
“A haunting, powerful show… transcends its homespun materials to become a work of art.” — The New York Times
“Stirringly captures the rebellious spirit of Guthrie’s times, and of our own… knocks the big West End biopics in a heap of dust!” — The Guardian
“Bracing… Seductive… Antagonistic… be reminded that once upon a time in America, raising one’s voice in dissent could make for some beautiful music.” — The Washington Post
David M. Lutken, winner of the 2013 Helen Hayes Award for his portrayal at Theater J, returns to Washington after runs this summer at Edinburgh Fringe Festival and London’s Underbelly Boulevard Soho Theatre, to lead a new 2026 production originating at VFP and DuPont Underground — featuring Raquel Chavez (Verbatim Salon, Preexisting Condition); Margaret Dudasik (The Million Dollar Quartet, Almost Heaven); Hubby Jenkins (The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Rhiannon Giddens Band), and directed by Georgette Verdin (Ironbound, The Singularity Play, A Mile in the Dark).
This production of WOODY SEZ: THE LIFE & MUSIC OF WOODY GUTHRIE will be VFP’s contribution to a three-month, international celebration of Woody Guthrie’s life, art and music this election year. DC’s Theater Alliance will stage a production of Woody Guthrie’s American Song outdoors on The Wharf in August and at the Reston Community Center’s Theatre in the Park for one week in early September. An extensive traveling exhibition from Woody Guthrie Publications will be on display in the DuPont Underground Gallery (open to the public from 11:00 am until performance time) during the October 8–25 run of WOODY SEZ. Joint outreach programming, including community sing-alongs, hootenannies, DC Resistance Singing, and a Sunday Night Concert Series will all be posted via a shared hashtag and website: #WoodyGinDC and www.woodygindc.com.
Voices From a Changing Nation will continue with THE HALAL BROTHERS (November 6–8, 2026, at Universalist National Memorial Church [UNMC] 1810 16th Street NW DC), a three-night workshop reading by award-winning filmmaker, comedian, and playwright Alaudin Ullah (creator of Dishwasher Dreams). Set in Harlem on February 21, 1965, the play follows two Bengali Muslim immigrant brothers preparing food for a gathering at the Audubon Ballroom — where Malcolm X is scheduled to speak, and where he will be assassinated — as buried grief and conflicting ideas of race, faith, and belonging push them toward reckoning on one of the most pivotal days in American history.
The Changing Nation series closes with TAKES ALL KINDS (November 12–22, 2026, UNMC), written and performed by Dan Hoyle and directed by Aldo Billingslea. Drawing on immersive reporting from the trenches of American democracy, Hoyle’s shape-shifting work of Journalistic Theater channels the funny, complex people caught in the social forces reshaping the country — from a Gen Z socialist in Colorado to a former gang member turned peacebuilder in Missouri. The 10-performance run brings Hoyle back to DC following his 8-week run of The Real Americans at Mosaic Theater and Baltimore Center Stage’s productions of Each and Every Thing and Borders/No Borders.
“Stunning… mind-blowing metamorphoses…No character is a stereotype. Everyone surprises and everyone has wisdom.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Hilarious… All-over-the-map voices making sense of what seems to be the country’s spinning compass.” — The Washington Post (The Real Americans)
VOICES FROM A CHANGING MIDDLE EAST FESTIVAL
Now in its 26th year, the Voices from a Changing Middle East Festival continues VFP’s longest running programming initiative, bringing Israeli, Palestinian, and diaspora artists into the same room to wrestle with trauma, transformation, and what comes after.
The festival’s December offerings put “Zionism in the Crosshairs,” asking fundamental questions about both American-Jewish and Israeli personal and collective connections to the Jewish Homeland’s national underpinnings, interrogated as never before.
PRISONER OF ZION (December 4–6, 2026, UNMC), written and performed by Lee Perlman and Nadav Bossem and directed by Bossem, arrives courtesy of the Tmuna Fringe Theatre of Tel Aviv presented by New Jewish Narrative and hosted by Voices Festival Productions following international engagements over the past three years, including its 2023 premiere at the Akko International Fringe Theatre Festival and the DAH Theatre’s Arts and Human Rights Festival in Belgrade, Serbia. Created in parallel with large-scale protests across Israel against the government’s push for judicial overhaul, the piece has continued to evolve through the seismic changes in Israeli society since October 7, 2023 and the destruction of Gaza, and comes to DC with substantial new material. At stake in this interactive, autobiographical performance piece: whether Lee divorces himself from the ideology he fell in love with as a teenager and recruited new generations to live by? What is to be done when a person falls out of love with an idea? More information at www.prisonerofzionshow.com
ZIONISTA RISING (December 11–13, 2026, UNMC), a workshop weekend reading by Alexa Derman (winner of the 2023 Jewish Plays Project and radically updated) and directed by Will Steinberger, follows. Two Gen Z interns at a Jewish American media organization are tasked with rebranding Zionism for the Instagram generation, while a Jewish American playwright wrestles with a question she can’t escape: who are we, if not a nation?
Voices From a Changing Middle East’s anchor production, APEIROGON: RAMI AND BASSAM (January 27–February 21, 2027, UNMC), a play by Avner Ben-Amos adapted from the 2020 novel by National Book Award–winner Colum McCann, with dramaturgy and direction by Sinai Peter for the original Jaffa Theatre production, and original music by Palestinian composer Habib Hanna Shehadeh. The work tells the true story of two fathers — Rami Elhanan (played by Joey Collins; Othello, An Enemy of The People) an Israeli whose daughter Smadar was killed by suicide bombers, and Bassam Aramin (Jonathan Shaboo; The Band’s Visit, Rome Sweet Rome), a Palestinian whose daughter Abir was killed by a rubber bullet shot by the IDF — and the unlikely friendship they forge through shared grief.
“It’s precisely from this stubborn minimalism of mirrors and identities that a true alchemy occurs, perhaps like an intense psychodrama session. And thus, the conflict, such a familiar thing to us, begins to ache intensely… Here, in the humble Jaffa Theater, with minimalist yet detailed direction… the most authentic struggle for humanism and peace unfolds.” — Haaretz
“A profound, empathy-engine of a novel that seamlessly merges historical fact and literary imagination. — The New York Times
Several different off-night workshop readings round out February programming for the festival during the run of Apeirogon. IN THE CROSSING (20.0) (February 9–10, 2027, UNMC), by Leila Buck, returns to the stage twenty years after Buck and her Jewish husband find themselves caught in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah while visiting her family in Lebanon — blurring the line between truth and fiction, theater and town hall, to probe the intersections of family and politics. Twenty years later, the bombing of Lebanon is more intense than ever.
SHARIF شريف (February 16–17, 2027, UNMC), by Tomer Aldubi and presented by Dirty Laundry Theatre Company, follows a young queer Palestinian man forced to flee the West Bank after his sexuality is exposed, navigating an unforgiving system in Israel while holding onto his identity and dignity.
The Middle East festival closes with a capstone reading, IN THE SPACE BETWEEN (February 21–22, 2027, UNMC), by Mona Kasra and Adam M. Kassim. In the aftermath of a shattering crash, a child carrying a handful of seeds sets out on a journey across the Middle East in search of a grandparent’s lost garden. Created by Iranian-American new media artist and projection designer Mona Kasra and Palestinian-American theater maker and director Adam M. Kassim, the work explores migration, wars, displacement, resilience, and the friendships that help us carry what cannot be repaired.
2026–27 SEASON AT A GLANCE
Four Limited-Run Full Productions:
• WOODY SEZ: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF WOODY GUTHRIE — October 8–25, 2026 – Dupont Underground
• TAKES ALL KINDS — November 12–22, 2026 — UNMC
• PRISONER OF ZION — December 4–6, 2026 — UNMC
• APEIROGON: RAMI AND BASSAM — January 27–February 21, 2027 — UNMC
Five Workshop Weekend Readings:
• THE HALAL BROTHERS — November 6–8, 2026 — UNMC
• ZIONISTA RISING — December 11–13, 2026 — UNMC
• IN THE CROSSING (20.0) — February 9–10, 2027 — UNMC
• SHARIF شريف — February 16–17, 2027 — UNMC
• IN THE SPACE BETWEEN — February 21–22, 2027 — UNMC
2026–27 FESTIVAL PASS & TICKETS
VFP is introducing a Festival Pass for the 2026/27 season, offering premium seating across all nine projects for $180 — a 60 percent discount off regular pricing. Pass holders receive priority seating, invitations to opening night receptions and special events, and a 20 percent discount code for guest tickets.
Ticket prices for VFP’s four productions run from $25 previews (with select Pay What You Can early previews) to $35 to $45 to $65. Workshop reading tickets are $20.
Tickets can be purchased online at www.voicesfestivalproductions.com.
ABOUT VOICES FESTIVAL PRODUCTIONS
Voices Festival Productions (VFP) is an independent, DC-based production company developing and producing new works for the stage that stimulate debate and discourse, introspection and awareness, informed by revelation of our underlying humanity in all its color and complexity. VFP’s work finds resonance between those living with conflict in the Middle East and closer to home, along the seams of our nation, and its very real, and perceived, divides.
Two signature programs embody the heart of VFP’s mission: Voices From a Changing Nation and Voices From a Changing Middle East. Together, they bring some of the most compelling contemporary stories of identity, democracy, belonging, and coexistence to audiences throughout Washington. Past Changing Nation world premieres include Priyanka Shetty’s #Charlottesville (produced at Capital Fringe and again in partnership with Keegan Theatre), Rachel Lynett’s Letters To Kamala/Dandelion Peace, following the workshopping of her Yale Prize winning Apologies To Lorraine Hansberry (You Too August Wilson), and Who Cares: The Caregiver Interview Project, co-written by Ari Roth, A. Lorraine Robinson and Vanessa Gilbert.
VFP’s most distinctive programming is its long-running Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival which has been humanizing headlines while bringing the souls and struggles of those living in the Middle East – especially Israel and Palestine – to life for the past 26 years. Created in 2000 at Theater J by Ari Roth, and later moving across town to inaugurate Mosaic Theater Company in 2014, the festival has brought forth over three dozen full productions and many more workshop presentations. In 2022, VFP presented Middle East Festival productions under the umbrella theme, “Losing/Finding Home,” including The Gate (Robbie Gringras), My Calamitous Affair With The Minister Of Culture & Censorship (Ari Roth), Home? Or A Palestinian Woman’s Pursuit Of Life, Liberty & Happiness (Hend Ayoub) and I, Dareen T (Einat Weizman & Dareen Tatour). In 2023-24, VFP presented workshop presentations under the banner “At War, Before & After,” including Balfour, Almond Blossom at Deir Yassin, Stay Safe, How To Remain a Humanist After a Massacre in 17 Steps, and Live From Jenin: Lessons From War. In 2025, the Middle East Festival’s “How We Got Here/Where We Go Next” presented the world premiere musical, November 4 (by Danny Paller & Myra Noveck) which received a 2026 Charles MacArthur Award Nomination for Outstanding New Play or Musical from the Helen Hayes Awards, followed by workshop presentations of Imperfect Allies: Children of Opposite Sides and an earlier version of Apeirogon: Rami and Bassam, which makes its American premiere in 2027.
