Geffen Playhouse has announced seven productions that will make up its 2025/2026 season lineup, marking the second season from Geffen Playhouse Artistic Director Tarell Alvin McCraney. The 2025/2026 season will launch September 3, 2025, and continue through July 12, 2026. The lineup will feature a mix of Los Angeles, West Coast and world premieres.
“Producing live theater is a beautiful challenge,” said Geffen Playhouse Artistic Director Tarell Alvin McCraney. “With every show we strive to make compelling connections with audiences and living art. We dedicated more than half of the past year to workshops, readings, and deep conversations to push ourselves to meet that challenge with new audiences and emerging artists. It has helped us heighten our collaborative efforts and has brought us a lot of joy along the way. None of this would be possible without the mighty team here at the Geffen. It’s an honor for us to share these worlds and relationships with our community.”
Added Geffen Playhouse Executive Director/CEO Gil Cates, Jr., “Building on the remarkable success of his groundbreaking inaugural season, Tarell has curated a dynamic lineup of bold new works from emerging artists, alongside an eclectic array of compelling voices, for the Geffen’s 2025/2026 season. As both an artist and playwright, he possesses a profound ability to recognize transformative stories—ones that will deeply resonate with audiences and ignite meaningful conversations.”
The 2025/2026 Geffen Playhouse season will launch in its Gil Cates Theater with the world premiere of the fiercely funny one-woman tour-de-force Am I Roxie? written and performed by Roxana Ortega (The Casagrandes, The Groundlings). Ortega navigates the chaos of her mother’s mental decline with outrageous humor and unbreakable spirit. The season will continue in the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater with the world premiere of littleboy/littleman, an electrifying tale of brotherhood and belonging that pulses with rhythm and emotion, pulling us into a world where family is everything, but dreams come at a cost, from playwright Rudi Goblen. Next up in the Gil Cates Theater is the West Coast premiere of Table 17 from the creative minds of Douglas Lyons (Chicken & Biscuits) and Zhailon Levingston (Cats: The Jellicle Ball), fresh off its hit Off-Broadway debut. This witty new play serves up romance, regrets, and the unexpected possibility of second chances.
The season will then pick up in the new year with the world premiere of SYLVIA SYLVIA SYLVIA in the Gil Cates Theater. Darkly funny and haunting, from rising playwright Beth Hyland, this tragicomic thriller explores creativity, obsession, and our ghosts that refuse to be ignored. Next up in the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater will be the Los Angeles premiere of Dragon Mama (Part II of The Dragon Cycle) written and performed by Sara Porkalob, marking Porkalob’s return to the Geffen after the wildly successful run of Dragon Lady (Part I of The Dragon Cycle) in the Geffen’s 2024/2025 season. Packed with ghosts, Filipino gangsters, and a killer ‘90s R&B soundtrack, this award-winning, high-octane solo show is a raw, hilarious, and deeply moving story of resilience, queer love, and what it takes to break free and find home. The season will continue in the Gil Cates Theater with Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold”…and the Boys, a gripping, deeply personal drama that unflinchingly confronts the realities of race, power and betrayal, set in the charged atmosphere of a 1950s South African tea shop.
Completing the 2025/2026 season will be the West Coast premiere of Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous in the Gil Cates Theater, a sharp-witted and soulful new comedy about art, activism, and aging on your own terms from award-winning playwright Pearl Cleage (Blues for an Alabama Sky).
The S. Mark Taper Foundation is the Geffen Playhouse 2025/2026 season sponsor. The S. Mark Taper Foundation, founded in 1989, is a private family foundation dedicated to enhancing the quality of people’s lives by supporting nonprofit organizations and their work in our communities.
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