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| INTRODUCING SEASON 28 MADE & REMADE Stories of Creation, Transformation & Reinvention The guessing is over. The season is here. Season 28 is MADE & REMADE: Stories of Creation, Transformation & Reinvention—six productions exploring the things we create, the worlds we inherit, and what happens when we dare to transform them. And this season is about transformation for Richmond Shakespeare, too. We’re establishing a residency at Virginia Rep’s intimate Theatre Gym. We’re bringing Shakespeare Fest home to Agecroft Hall, with two Shakespeare classics playing in rotating repertory. And, for the first time since the COVID shutdown abruptly ended our 2020 production of The Great Gatsby after opening weekend, Richmond Shakespeare is returning to the Leslie Cheek Theater at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It is a season of new beginnings, long-awaited homecomings, extraordinary partnerships—and some incredible theatre. Welcome to Season 28. |
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| MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN By David Catlin October 8 – November 1, 2026 Virginia Rep’s Theatre Gym “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” We begin where all creation begins—with an idea. On a stormy night, Mary Shelley gathers with Percy Shelley and Lord Byron and accepts a challenge: tell us a ghost story. What emerges will change literature forever. David Catlin’s wildly theatrical adaptation places Mary Shelley inside her own legendary creation, conjuring Victor Frankenstein, his Creature, and the terrifying consequences of one man’s determination to conquer death. But Frankenstein is more than a horror story. It is a story about creation and responsibility. About loneliness and belonging. About what happens when we bring something into the world—and then refuse to love what we have made. Some monsters are created. Others are made. |
 THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JANE AUSTEN (ABRIDGED) By Jessica Bedford, Kathryn MacMillan, Charlotte Northeast, Meghan Winch Winter 2027 Virginia Rep’s Theatre Gym “It is a truth universally acknowledged…” Six novels. Three actors. One completely sensible plan to perform ALL OF JANE AUSTEN. What could possibly go wrong? This winter, we gleefully take apart—and put back together—the world of Jane Austen in a fast, funny celebration of romance, matchmaking, misunderstandings, social conventions and some of literature’s most unforgettable characters. From the Bennets to the Dashwoods, from Emma Woodhouse to Anne Elliot, Austen’s world gets made, remade and hilariously compressed before your eyes. Whether you know every word of Pride and Prejudice or have never met Mr. Darcy, you’re invited to the party. Six novels. Three actors. Absolutely no sense or sensibility required. PURCHASE  HARLEM DUET By Djanet Sears Spring 2027 Virginia Rep’s Theatre Gym What happens when we take a story we think we know—and change whose voice is at its center? Djanet Sears’ acclaimed Harlem Duet enters into a powerfulconversation with Shakespeare’s Othello, shifting the perspective and asking audiences to reconsider a story inherited across centuries. At its center are Billie and Othello, whose fractured relationship becomes the foundation for an exploration of love, betrayal, race, gender, identity and history. Moving through different moments in Black history, Sears creates a work that is simultaneously in conversation with Shakespeare and entirely its own. It is precisely what MADE & REMADE is about: artists inheriting stories, challenging them, transforming them and creating something new. Before Desdemona, there was Billie. PURCHASE  THE TEMPEST By William Shakespeare Summer 2027 Shakespeare Fest at Agecroft Hall Presented in Rotating Repertory with Romeo and Juliet “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” A storm. An island. A magician with one final chance to decide what kind of man he will become. Years after being betrayed and cast away, Prospero summons a tempest that brings his enemies crashing onto the shores of the island he now controls. With spirits at his command and those who wronged him finally within his grasp, revenge has never been closer. But perhaps the greatest act of power is knowing when to let it go.Magic, betrayal, wonder, forgiveness and transformation collide in one of Shakespeare’s most extraordinary plays. What’s past is prologue. The storm is only the beginning. PURCHASE  ROMEO AND JULIET By William Shakespeare Summer 2027 Shakespeare Fest at Agecroft Hall Presented in Rotating Repertory with The Tempest “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep.” Two families have inherited a hatred so old that no one remembers why it began. Then two young people meet. And for one extraordinary moment, they imagine another way to live.Shakespeare’s most famous love story returns to Shakespeare Fest in a production about love, identity, inherited conflict and the devastating consequences of a world unwilling to change. Romeo and Juliet did not create the feud that defines their lives. They simply dare to imagine that it doesn’t have to define their future. They inherited hatred. They chose love. PURCHASE  SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim Book by James Lapine Summer 2027 Leslie Cheek Theater at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts “White. A blank page or canvas. The challenge: bring order to the whole.” What does it cost to create something new? Inspired by Georges Seurat’s masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical explores art, love, obsession, sacrifice and the seemingly impossible challenge of creating something that has never existed before. George is consumed by his painting. Dot wants the man behind the artist. And more than a century later, another artist named George struggles with the same question: How do you make something new when it feels like everything has already been done? Bringing Sunday in the Park with George to one of Richmond’s great homes for the visual arts makes this production particularly special.But returning to the Leslie Cheek Theater also completes a journey that began when our work there was unexpectedly interrupted in 2020. Seven years later, we return to make something new. Art isn’t easy. Creating something that matters never is. PURCHASE YOUR SEASON. YOUR WAY. Season 28 Membership Passes include SIX tickets that can be used throughout the 2026–2027 season. See all six productions once. Bring someone you love. Use several tickets for the show you simply have to see again. You decide. SIX PRODUCTIONS Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein The Complete Works of Jane Austen (abridged) Harlem Duet The Tempest Romeo and Juliet Sunday in the Park with George ONE EXTRAORDINARY SEASON. MADE & REMADE: Stories of Creation, Transformation & Reinvention GET YOUR SEASON 28 MEMBERSHIP PASS NOW PURCHASE |