GOD OF CARNAGE and WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF Come to South Coast Repertory

South Coast Repertory will open 2026 with a rotating repertory featuring two of theatre's most riveting examinations of human relationships: Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton.

The Theatrical Event of the Season runs Jan. 23-March 21, 2026 on the Segerstrom Stage. Its eight-week run is the longest in the theatre's 62-year history. Each play will alternate performances over the run. On Saturdays and Sundays, both plays will perform, one in the afternoon, the other in the evening. That means theatregoers can see both plays that speak to each other over the decades over the course of the eight-week run, in the same week or even in the same day.

Marco Barricelli will direct God of Carnage. Lisa Rothe will direct Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Two of the actors, Kim Martin-Cotten and Brian Vaughn, will appear in both plays and the productions share a single set which will be modified for each play.

Written 46 years apart, the two masterpieces captured Tony Awards for Best Play; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1963 and God of Carnage in 2009. Both speak to the intersection of marriage, intimacy and how we present ourselves to the world, and both feature well-written, meaty roles for actors.

And both fulfill Ivers' vision of presenting adventurous programming you can't find anywhere else. A veteran of the repertory model from his more than two decades at Utah Shakespeare Festival and Denver Center for the Arts, Ivers brings substantial experience in programming classical theatre together with contemporary theatre and positioning them in dialogue with each other. This is the second repertory Ivers has programmed at SCR. During the 2022-23 season, he paired The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman with Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. The 2025/26 Rep features the first of three consecutive seasons featuring a rotating repertory.

“The rigor and the discipline The Rep requires by the cast, creative team and the entire organization really makes me proud of SCR and makes me proud to look at the work in this way. I'm really passionate about this,” Ivers said. “I'm excited to return to something that is an important piece of my growing up in the theatre.

“To me, there's so much firepower with these two plays. Both plays are hugely theatrical, both are very funny and both have the ability to hit you in the solar plexus.”

About the Plays

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is considered Albee's most famous work. Winner of the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play, it ran for more than a year and a half on Broadway and shocked audiences with its take-no-prisoners dialogue and brutally honest look at marriage, intimacy, ambition, naked self-interest and broken dreams. The New York Times described this American classic as “wry and electric!”

In Albee's landmark drama, George and Martha invite a young couple to their home for a nightcap. As the clock ticks into the wee hours, Nick and Honey find themselves submerged in a cocktail of clever mind games, deep-seated resentments and broken promises. Hilarious and harrowing, this unflinching portrait of a marriage ceaselessly astonishes audiences with its razor-sharp dialogue and thrilling performances.

God of Carnage captured a Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy after its West End opening and received the 2009 Tony Award for Best Play. In God of Carnage, Reza satirizes parenting, marriage and upper-middle class dynamics in an oft-hilarious manner that is as cutting as it is clever.

In gentrified Brooklyn, a playground fight between 11-year-old boys brings four parents together to resolve their sons' conflict. At first, diplomacy rules. But as each parent reveals their demands, the living room peace summit spirals into a riotous free-for-all of opposing parenting styles, conflicting personalities and marital tensions. A brilliant and biting comedy of manners (without the manners) Variety called “Elegant, acerbic… Reza's sharpest work since Art.”

Managing Director Suzanne Appel said, ”Our hope with this theatrical event is to invite our audiences to experience a rare concentration of great storytelling. At a time when we are all in need of shared experiences with our neighbors more than ever, these great works ask us to consider how we present ourselves to our community versus what we hold in the privacy of our most intimate relationships. This is a deeply human question. And one we look forward to exploring with our audiences over the course of eight glorious weeks of extraordinary performances this winter.”

Considered the most talented playwright of his generation, Albee (1928-2016) won three Pulitzer Prizes for Drama (A Delicate Balance, Seascape and Three Tall Women), two Tony Awards for Best Play (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?) and a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Album (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) during a career that spanned nearly 60 years.

Albee's works were marked by sharp, witty and often cutting and cruel dialogue that forced audiences to confront uncomfortable truths about their lives. He drew heavily on searing psychological drama that probed deeply into piercing the American Dream—largely through vicious, intense verbal confrontations among family members that spotlight communication breakdowns and absurdist situations.

Albee was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts in 1996. In 2005, he received a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.

This is SCR's first play from the French-born Reza. Along with her Best Play Tony for God of Carnage, Reza's Art won the 1998 Tony Award for Best Play. Her plays have been translated into 35 languages and brought worldwide acclaim and multiple awards. Along with her seven plays, Reza has also written six novels and two films and the 2011 screenplay adaption of God of Carnage, Carnage.

Like Albee, Reza's pen probes contemporary middle-class life through sharp witty dialogue. Reza uses repetition and mundane situations that dive deeply into the psychology behind human failings and explores those failings in a funny manner.

A familiar face to SCR audiences, Barricelli last appeared at SCR as Ben in The Little Foxes. Previously, he played Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew and Salieri in Amadeus. As an actor, Barricelli appeared on Broadway in Tamara and Off-Broadway in Agamemnon. He served as Artistic Director at Shakespeare Santa Cruz for six years. Barricelli's theatre credits include numerous seasons at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Guthrie Theater, Mark Taper Forum, The Old Globe, La Jolla Playhouse, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Portland Center Stage, Williamstown Theatre Festival and many others.

Barricelli's screen credits include “L.A. Law,” “The Book of Daniel,” Pixar's Luca and Ciao Alberto, Holy Silence, 11th Hour, Romeo and Juliet, Manhunt 2, and Clandestiny.

A nationally acclaimed director, Rothe has helmed plays Off-Broadway and at some of the most prestigious regional theatres in the country, including The Guthrie Theater, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Barrington Stage Company, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Virginia Repertory Theatre/Cadence Theatre Company and Irish Repertory Theatre, among others. She has collaborated with numerous award-winning writers, including Lucy Thurber, Migdalia Cruz, Ellen McLaughlin and Jeanne Sakata. Rothe directed more than 20 productions of Sakata's award-winning Hold These Truths.

Previously, Rothe served as Director of New Works at Kansas City Repertory Theatre and Co-President of the League of Professional Theatre Women. She is a member of the faculties of Columbia University's MFA program and Binghamton University.

The Casts

God of Carnage features Martin-Cotten (Annette), Vaughn (Alan), Dan Donohue (Michael) and Melinda Page Hamilton (Veronica). Understudies are Derek Manson (Michael and Alan) and Paige Lindsey White (Annette/Veronica).

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? features Martin-Cotten (Martha), Vaughn (George), Gabriel Gaston (Nick) and Elysia Roorbach (Honey). Understudies are Manson (George), Sharon Sharth (Martha), Jake Stiel (Nick) and Esther Pielstick (Honey). Stiel and Pielstick are graduate students at UC Irvine's Claire Trevor School of the Arts participating as apprentices through the just-announced partnership between SCR and UCI—“The Next Stage.”

An actor, producer, director and educator, Martin-Cotten served as SCR's Associate Artistic Director and Co-director of the Pacific Playwrights Festival for nearly four years. Her acting credits include covering both Cynthia Nixon and Laura Linney for the Broadway production of The Little Foxes. Martin-Cotten also played Portia opposite Al Pacino in the Broadway production of The Merchant of Venice.

Vaughn (IG: @brianvaughn11) returns to SCR after playing George in She Loves Me. He recently finished two national tours: the Tony Award-winning Best Musical Revival of Parade and the first national tour of Broadway's production of Beetlejuice. Vaughn appeared in more than 60 productions over 25 years at Utah Shakespeare Festival and 13 years as a resident company member at Milwaukee Repertory Theater.

SCR audiences last saw Donohue as Francis Henshall in One Man, Two Guvnors. He played Scar in The Lion King on both Broadway and on its national tour. Donohue appeared in more than 30 productions at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, playing such roles as Richard III, Prince Hal, Hamlet and Iago. His TV credits include recurring roles in “Wonder Man,” “For All Mankind,” “Longmire,” “Damnation,” “Strange Angel,” and “The Last Tycoon.”

Page Hamilton (@hamiltonmelindapage) makes her SCR debut 33 years after her father, Frank, appeared in SCR's original 1988 production of Prelude to a Kiss. Her television credits include regular roles on “The Peripheral,” “Messiah,” and “Damnation,” and recurring roles on “Desperate Housewives,” “Mad Men,” and “How To Get Away With Murder,” among others. Page Hamilton's theatre career includes stops at Hartford Stage, The Old Globe, Arena Stage, Ahmanson Theatre, The Guthrie Theater and Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York.

Gaston (@itsgabrielgaston) makes his SCR debut after appearing at the Williamston Theatre Festival and Cherry Lane Theatre. His TV credits include “Unforgettable” and “Gone Hollywood.” He is a 2025 graduate of The Julliard School.

Roorbach (@eeeelysia) can be seen in the upcoming second season of HBO Max's Emmy Award-winning series “The Pitt.” Her theatre credits include Las Aventuras de Juan Planchard, a co-production between Tectonic Theater Project and Miami New Drama directed by Presidential Medal of Arts recipient and Tony Award nominee Moises Kaufman. She is a recent graduate of NYU's Tisch School of Drama.

The Creative Team

The design and creative team includes Jerry Patch, dramaturg; Regina Garcia, scenic design; Josh Epstein, lighting design; Melanie Chen Cole, sound design; Alex Jaeger, costume design; Michael Polak, intimacy/fight choreographer and Ames O' Connor is the assistant director on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Maisie Chan is the production manager, Caleb Thomas Cook is the production stage manager, Lauren Buangan is God of Carnage's assistant stage manager and Kathryn Davies is Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf's? assistant stage manager.