Asolo Rep Sets 2026-27 Season Lineup, SINGIN' IN THE RAIN to Open

Asolo Repertory Theatre has announced that single tickets for its 2026–27 season, “The Greatest Season on Earth,” go on sale Tuesday, September 8, 2026.

The lineup includes five Mainstage productions and the inaugural Second Stage season, spanning musicals, American classics, comedies, and world premieres.

“The Greatest Season on Earth” takes its inspiration from 1927, the year John Ringling moved his circus to Sarasota. One hundred years later, Asolo Rep looks back at a year that changed everything — a revolution in American music, theatre and culture.

“A century later, the seeds of wonder John and Mabel Ringling planted here continue to grow,” says Producing Artistic Director Peter Rothstein, “and we're still asking the same question that electric year posed: What new dreams might we dare to dream?”

Mainstage

The Mainstage season opens with Singin' in the Rain, directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes (Cabaret, Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar). Set in Hollywood as silent films give way to talking pictures, the musical is filled with romance, comedy, hit songs and, of course, pouring rain.

August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, directed by Chuck Smith, one of the leading interpreters of August Wilson, takes audiences to a Chicago recording studio in 1927, where Ma Rainey and her band gather for a recording session as tensions between the musicians and their management come to a head.

George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's The Royal Family, helmed by longtime Asolo Rep director Peter Amster (Good Night, Oscar; Murder on the Orient Express), follows a celebrated family of actors caught between their devotion to the theatre and the lives waiting for them outside the stage door. The 1927 comedy was inspired by the legendary Barrymore acting dynasty.

At the heart of “The Greatest Season on Earth” is the world premiere docu-musical The Day the Circus Came to Town, book by Peter Rothstein (Fiddler on the Roof, The Unfriend, All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914) and Carla Noack (The Unfriend), music and lyrics by David Darrow (Fiddler on the Roof, Sweeney Todd, Ragtime), conceived and directed by Rothstein. The production draws upon dozens of interviews with local circus legends to tell the remarkable stories of the people who made Sarasota the Circus Capital of the World. Actors, acrobats, musicians, and aerialists come together with a live circus band for a musical rooted in Sarasota's unique history.

The Mainstage season concludes with Ken Ludwig's Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, directed by Chari Arespacochaga (Primary Trust). Five actors take on more than 40 roles in this fast-paced mystery-comedy, racing through characters, clues and suspects as Holmes and Watson take on the case of the Hound of the Baskervilles.

This year also marks the launch of Asolo Rep's Second Stage, a new three-show season in the adjacent Cook Theatre, focused on new work, cabaret, and more intimate theatrical experiences.

The season begins with It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, directed by Scott Keys (A Year with Frog and Toad). The beloved story of George Bailey is reimagined as a 1940s radio broadcast, performed by five actors with live sound effects and music, where spectators become part of the studio audience.

The world premiere of Jennifer Maisel's Provenance, directed by Casey Stangl and produced in partnership with Palm Beach Dramaworks, follows one painting from its creation in early 20th-century Germany through its theft by the Nazis and into the lives of the people closely connected to it more than a century later.

Closing the inaugural Second Stage season is Bootleg: America Sings 1927, an Asolo Rep original cabaret, curated by Cat Brindisi, Terrance Jackson, James Monaghan and Peter Rothstein, directed by Rothstein and choreographed by Brindisi. Audiences will step into the Four Fives Club, an immersive speakeasy experience built around the music and poetry of 1927, featuring the words and songs of American writers and composers Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, Edna Ferber, George and Ira Gershwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jelly Roll Morton.

Tickets

Single tickets for all 2026–27 Mainstage and Second Stage productions go on sale Tuesday, September 8, 2026.

Tickets may be purchased online at asolorep.org, by phone at 941.351.8000 or in person at the Asolo Rep Box Office.

Need more Sarasota Theatre News in your life?
Sign up for all the news on the Summer season, discounts & more...