The Program in Theater & Music Theater is excited to announce the 2026-27 season, built by and for students pursuing a Minor in Theater & Music Theater. Rising seniors moved through a rigorous examination process toward research that is personally meaningful, skill building, and connected to the community and audiences.
Fall 2026
Quite Contrary: A New Play by Marlie Kass ’27
Written by Marlie Kass ’27
Directed by Nora Glass ‘29
Scenic design by Ethan Gotthold ‘29
Lighting design by Jenna Mullin ‘27
Stage managed by John Heitz ‘28
Featuring: Inci Anali G3, Olivia Romano ’29, Charlotte Sussman ’29, Tanya Zhou ’29
Wallace Theater
October 9 & 10 at 8 PM; October 11 at 2 PM
Bringing new life to an old monster, Quite Contrary is a gothic fantasy re-imagining of the life of Mary Shelley and the ghosts that haunted the creation of her legendary Frankenstein.
Sondheim’s Afterlives Symposium
Organized by Stacy Wolf
Drapkin Theater
November 6 from 1-6 PM
An artistic, scholarly, and personal celebration of composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, one of the most important figures in American musical theater. This event will include interviews with Sondheim’s collaborators, panel conversations with artists and scholars, and musical performances by Princeton students. Curated by Stacy Wolf, Professor of Theater & Music Theater in the Lewis Center for the Arts and the Effron Center for the Study of America and the Director of the Princeton Arts Fellows, the symposium will be moderated and facilitated by students in Professor Wolf’s Fall 2026 seminar, “Sondheim’s Musicals and the Making of America.” Supported by a special grant from the Faber, Stewart, and Cone funds of Princeton’s Humanities Council.
Oratorio for Living Things by Heather Christian
With Latin translations by Greg Taubman
Music directed by Emma Sway
Directed by Nikoo Mamdoohi
Music supervision by Solon Snider Sway
Sound design by Kay Richardson
Costume design by Keating Debelak
Stage managed by Milan Eldridge
Student music direction by Matt Cline ’27, Marvel Jem Roth ’28, Yuri Lee ’27, Amelia Wray 28
Berlind Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center
November 6 & 7 at 8 PM; November 7 & 8 at 2 PM
Relaxed Performance: November 8 at 2 PM
Blending classical oratorio with blues, gospel, jazz, and soul, this musical journey invites a deep consideration of existence, connection, the origins of the universe, and what it means to be human.
A TBA contemporary play
Featuring Pixley Marquardt ’27
Wallace Theater
November 13, 14, 19, 20 & 21 at 8 PM
A to-be-announced contemporary play exploring gender performance, butch identity, and queer stories.
Betrayal by Harold Pinter
Written by Harold Pinter
Directed by Christie Davis ’27
Featuring Joe McLean ’27
Lighting design by Amalia Hartray ’29
Sound design by Ryan Gao ’28
Wallace Theater
December 4, 5 & 6 at 8 PM; December 5 at 2 PM
An affair and its revelation are portrayed in reverse chronological order. In this close-proximity staging, audience sentiment will reveal and shape character.
Spring 2027
The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
Proposed by Lucy Shea ’27
Scenic design by Maddie Smoyer ’27
Lighting design by Mateo Hoyos ’27
Wallace Theater
February 26 & 27 at 8 PM; February 28 at 2 PM
In this tense 1934 drama, a distraught student accuses the two headmistresses of her all-girls boarding school of being in a lesbian relationship, unraveling their lives and testing the limits of the community they’ve built. In an effort to disrupt the hierarchy of traditional rehearsal processes, the cast will employ the Renaissance Process to stage the play without a director, relying on their collaborative skills to tell this story about paranoia and failures of community.
A Collaboration with Princeton’s Black Theatre Collective
Drapkin Theater
Dates TBA
Princeton Playhouse Ensembles 5th Anniversary Reunion Concert
Conceived and created by student ensemble members and Solon Snider Sway
Production direction by Aaron Landsman
Music direction by Solon Snider Sway
Student conductors Matt Cline ’27, Marvel Jem Roth ’28, and Amelia Wray ’28
Lighting design by Angela Cai ’27
Stage management by Milan Eldridge
Berlind Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center
February 20
A concert of music and dance featuring current Playhouse members and alumni, highlighting Playhouse’s “Greatest Hits” from 2021-present.
An Original Electronic Musical Theater Work
Conceived and created by Helen Ding ’27
With music collaborator Vince di Mura
Lighting design by Hellen Ding
Drapkin Theater
February 26, 27 & 28
This experimental musical theater work will investigate how contemporary electronic music practices—sampling, looping, live remixing, and digital sound design—can meaningfully integrate into long-form storytelling, allowing the traditions of concerts and club nights and their emotional intensity, ephemerality, and audience participation to blur the boundaries between music, visual art, and performance.
Tell Me on a Sunday by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black
Featuring Isabella Rivera ’27
Music direction by Vince di Mura
Drapkin Theater
March 19
Tell Me on a Sunday follows a young English girl who has recently landed in New York. Brimming with optimism, she sets out to seek success, companionship and, of course, love. But as she weaves her way through the maze of the city and her own anxieties, frustrations and heartaches, she begins to wonder whether—in fact—she’s been looking for love in all the wrong places. The show contains some of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s most-treasured songs, including “Tell Me on a Sunday,” “Come Back with the Same Look in Your Eyes” and “Nothing Like You’ve Ever Known.”
Slouching by Ava Adaleja ’27
Scenic design by Didi Vekri ’27
Lighting design by Jenna Mullin ’27
Sound design by Ryan Gonzales ’26
Berlind Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center
April 2 & 3 at 8 PM; April 4 at 2 PM
Soso, a twenty-something, wannabe, London-based journalist/Nigerian immigrant living paycheck to paycheck, spins out of control when her mother, Remi Joy, arrives in London fighting a dark battle with late-stage breast cancer. Soso must reckon with conversations she never had, the people she left behind, and whether her dreams are really worth shirking familial responsibility. Toggling between London, Lagos, and a liminal world, this new play tells the story of a Nigerian family in upheaval by migration.
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 by Dave Malloy
Proposed by and featuring Kavya Bhat ’27
Music direction by Vince Di Mura
Costume design by Miriam Patterson
Scenic design by Alex Wilson ’27
Lighting design by Al Potter ’27
Sound design by Minjae Kim ’21
Wallace Theater
April 9 & 10 at 8 PM; April 11 at 2 PM
Blending Russian folk, classical, indie rock and electropop, this contemporary musical follows young Natasha Rostova’s affair with the married Anatolea from Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.”
Production of a new play translation from Spanish or Portuguese into English
Proposed and translated by Louise Sanches Barbosa ’27
Directed by Elena Araoz
Lighting design by Louise Sanches Barbosa ’27
Wallace Theater
April 23 & 24
Princeton Playhouse New Works Festival
Music direction by Solon Snider Sway
Wallace Theater
April 30 & May 1
Semi-staged performances of new musical theater and play selections written, composed and orchestrated by students.
Senior Independent Projects
Amira Adarkwah
This creative research project considers the challenges Black women face and overcome in the rehearsal and production of mainstream American theatre, and investigates how collaborative theatre can remedy such hurdles. Through documentation and newly created archive, the project celebrates Black women’s ingenuity in disrupting predominantly white spaces; facilitates discussion around themes, archetypes, and stereotypes pervasive in works authored by Black vs. non-Black writers; reflects these experiences making Black theatre at Princeton and connects them to the broader landscape of Black American theatre.
Isabella Bustos
This scholarship will examine adaptations that reframe William Shakespeare’s plays into Latinx-focused stories that often take place in the Borderlands between the U.S. and Mexico. The research will center on how the political messages in Shakespeare’s plays are examined, challenged, or transformed by their Latinx adaptations; how the community and an interest formed around Latinx Shakespeare adaptations; and what Latinx Shakepseare adaptations as a practice means for the future of American Latinx theater. In collaboration with Princeton’s Department of Politics.
Twyla Colburn
This new play will follow the stories of women’s and queer people’s creative resistance to the traditional structures of domestic life, seeking to uncover how they build loving homes and communities in spite of the architecture of domesticity and urbanity that is built against them, to control and limit their ways of life. The project will grapple with the question we all eventually find ourselves needing to answer: How do we build our houses and communal spaces into something we can truly call “home”?
Tanay Dalmia
An independent project with Associate Professor Brian E. Herrera.
Miel Escamila
This playwriting process questions if denser concepts of gender, gender theory, and gender performance can become more digestible to larger audiences through speculative fiction or a fictitious setting. How can topics of complacency and fear directly speak to an audience, and how does a playwright balance discomfort and enjoyability?
Lucy Grunden
Through the creative endeavor of writing a large ensemble play, the project will wrestle between comedy and issues of human rights and fears of growing up in our current political climate, and discerning how theater can shed light upon the potential that teenagers have to create change. In collaboration with Princeton’s Department of English.
Marisa Hirschfield
This new play will imagine a Holocaust museum in New York as it prepares to open an exhibit. The protagonists, all employees of the museum, embody different philosophies of remembering. These different visions for the exhibit will cause the characters to clash, and in turn raise the questions: What is the “popular” lesson of the Holocaust? How should our politics influence our study of history? And how do the stories we tell ourselves about history influence our politics?
Seryn Kim
This project dives deep into the inter-theatrical adaptation process of translating plays into television series. Through writing a pilot or spec script for a television adaptation of an existing play and subsequently presenting the series pitch (as though the audience were the “network”), this immersive study of the stage-to-screen development and adaptation process will explore choices related to intellectual property matters and creative license.
Madelyn Smoyer
Following an interest in the mechanisms that make modern theater possible, this research, along with guidance from a scenic automation expert, will culminate in a design and possible build of a scenic turntable that can be easily installed and removed from performance spaces on campus on an as-needed basis, with a focus on making it compatible with Theater Intime’s adjustable stage apron. Automation cues to turn the turntable will also be designed. In collaboration with Princeton’s Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of the School of Engineering.
Morgan Taylor
Project details coming.
Sophia Vernon
This project will pilot an application of devised theater for institutional engagement, commitment, and storytelling, providing a scaffold to investigate “what’s important for your people to explore?” and then devise impactful performance art from those responses. This combination of organizational behavior and artmaking intertwine to help organizations make active, creative choices in building and supporting team members. What can leaders do to foster motivation, investment, and satisfaction in their teams and, in an artistic context, their ensembles?
Digital Programs
Digital programs are available for most theater & music theater productions. Browse an archival list of digital programs to find information on cast, crew, and production teams.