Adams Theater Will Reveals 2026 Season Featuring Omar Román de Jesús and More

The Adams Theater is kicking off its 2026 season with an earlier opening, bringing a wide array of talented artists and thought-provoking work from April to October, featuring acclaimed choreographer Omar Román de Jesús, a celebration for MA250 with Massachusetts Poet Laureate Regie Gibson and Pulitzer-winning essayist and Adams native Stacy Schiff, and a Selected Shorts storytelling event produced by Symphony Space, featuring acclaimed actor David Strathairn and two additional actors to be announced soon.

There will be plenty to see and engage with this season, including lots of local talent, the return of the annual Majesty of the Berkshires Pride Pageant, comedy shows, music, and community partnerships. 

The season opens with Bluegrass legends Michael Daves and Jacob Jolliff on April 17. Locals may recognize them from their 2025 performance at FreshGrass Festival; the wider bluegrass world is celebrating their upcoming duo album "We Like Jim & Jesse!," out in March on Wild Geranium Records.

New residencies

The Adams Theater Presents will also start its artist residency calendar earlier in 2026 with Omar Román de Jesús and his dance company Boca Tuya from April 20-May 2, with a performance on May 2. De Jesús, currently presenting work at the Guggenheim in New York, will come to Adams via a Works & Process residency, a program that brings NYC artists to 25+ different residency locations to develop work and give audiences an intimate look into the artistic process.

De Jesús is the inaugural Baryshnikov Arts Center Fellow at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, a 2025 Works & Process recipient, and a former Artist-in-Residence with 92NY. De Jesús is a 2023 Dance Magazine Harkness Promise Awardee and was awarded the Alan M. Kriegsman Residency at Dance Place and the Kennedy Center for 2024-25. His accolades include the 2022 Princess Grace Award in Choreography, the 2022 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Choreography, the 2022 Palm Desert Choreography Festival Grand Prize, and the 2020 Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellowship at Jacob's Pillow.

Selected Shorts: Outsiders

The Adams Theater is bringing Symphony Space's legendary show "Selected Shorts" to the Berkshires on May 23, featuring acclaimed actor David Strathairn and additional actors to be announced soon.

The popular radio show and podcast Selected Shorts presents an evening of funny, moving, and surprising stories about people on the margins. Join us for an unforgettable night as acclaimed actors perform short fiction about rebels, newcomers, and lone wolves-celebrating how life on the outside can spark fresh perspective and the unexpected moments that turn strangers into insiders.

Our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. Sometimes funny, always moving, Selected Shorts connects you to the world with a rich diversity of voices from literature, film, theater, and comedy.

Actors are subject to change.

Begun in NYC in 1985, "Selected Shorts" brings a revolving cast of screen and stage actors reading classic and new short fiction for a live audience. A special pre-show cocktail event will take place at the nearby Revival House.

Celebrating MA250

The Adams Theater is proud to host a series of MA250 events in June, joining other cultural institutions as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.

On June 13, MA Poet Laureate & former Poetry Slam Champion Regie Gibson and composer/storycatcher Guy Mendilow will present Different Ships, Same Boat, an interactive, multidisciplinary performance combining powerful spoken word, music and song to explore the myriad ways Americans risk, live, love and laugh. With stories from small towns, cities and ports of entry, along with music spanning lyrical American blues and songs from older homes from which today's Americans came (e.g. Ottoman Jews from present-day Greece and Hungary), Different Ships, Same Boat offers a stirring exploration of the joys, tensions and complexities of who we are and who we wish to be.

Celebrate tradition and explore new ideas at a high tea on June 14 with the Friends of the Adams Free Library and the Adams Historical Society.

On June 20, Pulitzer Prize-winner and Berkshire native Stacy Schiff will be in conversation with award-winning author and current MCLA professor Sara Houghteling.

Schiff's works about history and historical figures have thrilled and enlightened for years.

She is the author, most recently, of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, hailed as "enthralling" by The New York Times, a "tour de force" by The Wall Street Journal, "superb" by NPR, and as "wildly entertaining" by The New Yorker. Schiff's other titles include Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize, the Ambassador Award in American Studies, and the Gilbert Chinard Prize of the Institut Français d'Amérique.

Sara Houghteling's debut novel, Pictures at an Exhibition (Knopf), was a New York Times Editors' Choice, a San Francisco Chronicle Best of 2009 Book, and winner of the Ribalow Prize and the Wallant Award. She has received fellowships from the Fulbright and Camargo Foundations, and is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan's MFA Program. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. She regularly moderates conversations at the Clark Art Institute.

Returning Favorites

There's plenty of local talent on display this season! The theater will return to its tradition of kicking off Pride Month early, with the annual Majesty of the Berkshires Pride Pageant May 29. Local favorites Misty Blues and Harvest and Rust will return in the summer, and Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter School will present its annual musical May 14-17.

See more information about Season 2026 and get early season passes at www.adamstheater.org/events.

The Adams Theater is proud to participate in Mass Cultural Council's Card to Culture program, in collaboration with the Department of Transitional Assistance; the Women, Infants & Children Nutrition Program; and the Mass Health Connector.