HOW SHAKESPEARE SAVED MY LIFE and More to Lead Red Bull Theater's 2026-27 Season

Red Bull Theater has revealed the line-up for the 2026-27 season that will include two world premiere productions, the OBIE award-winning Revelation Readings series, educational programs, and special events, both in-person and on-line. The season will kick off in September with HOW SHAKESPEARE SAVED MY LIFE, written and performed by Jacob Ming-Trent (September 15-October 18), in a co-production with Berkeley Repertory Theater and Folger Theatre, presented by The Public Theater. The season's winter production will be GOD'S SPIES by Bill Cain and directed by Nathan Winkelstein (January 19-February 14, 2027), presented at 59E59 Theaters.

Red Bull Theater's 23rd season will also include a special holiday benefit concert of Cole Porter's OUT OF THIS WORLD, with music and lyrics by Porter and book by David Ives, directed by Marc Vietor on Monday, December 14. Other season special events to be announced. The season will conclude on June 21 with the 17th Annual Short New Play Festival, a highly-anticipated evening of classically inspired ten-minute plays, featuring world premieres by some of the most exciting established and emerging writers from across the country.

2026-27 PREMIERE PRODUCTIONS

HOW SHAKESPEARE SAVED MY LIFE

Rolling World Premiere
Co-Production with Berkeley Repertory Theater and Folger Theatre
Presented by The Public Theater
Written and Performed by Jacob Ming-Trent
Directed by Tony Taccone
September 15-October 18 (Opening: September 27)
At The Public Theater

In How Shakespeare Saved My Life, Jacob Ming-Trent dares to rescue himself from the 'slings and arrows' of his past. Born with a gift for poetry but rejected as unfit to play the part of the poet, Ming-Trent invites us to take a deep dive into the crevices of his youth. His search for home is relentless, and the results are by turns hilarious and tragic. Calling on the Bard and a host of genius rappers, half-crazed preachers, and soulful poets to throw him a lifeline, he takes us on a propulsive ride that reaffirms the power of language. It all adds up to one man's attempt to reclaim his life, and through that journey we connect to the deeper parts of ourselves, and, ultimately, to each other.

GOD'S SPIES

World Premiere
By Bill Cain
Directed by Nathan Winkelstein
January 19-February 14, 2027 (Opening: January 31, 2027)
At 59E59 Theaters

What do you write after you've written the world's greatest play? Hopefully, not another Timon of Athens. Fortunately for Shakespeare, he's caught in the middle of the pandemic of 1603 and theaters are closed for a year. When he finds himself quarantined with a young Puritan lawyer and a mature streetwise prostitute, the plague has a way of opening his eyes to the mysteries of life and death. But is it possible to thrive creatively in lockdown? Will Shakespeare's follow-up play be as disappointing as his last? Or will the next one be his masterpiece?

FALL 2026 READINGS/EVENTS

THE KING BORN A WOMAN

Monday, October 5 at 7:00 PM
REVELATION READING – In Person & Online
By Luis Vélez de Guevara
Directed by Melissa Crespo
Produced in association with UCLA's Diversifying the Classics Initiative
World Premiere English Language translation

Medieval France is the setting for Spanish playwright Vélez de Guevara's lively critique of the Salic Law, forbidding women from inheriting the throne. The French are desperately in need of a male heir, and the last king made sure they got one: his daughter Carlota, secretly raised as his son, King Charles the Fair, now celebrating their 20th birthday. All would be well in the kingdom, if the people didn't hate the king's favorite companion, Rugero. And if Charles were not secretly in love with Rugero. And if the English prince were not storming the castle, demanding that Charles marry his sister. The fate of the realm hangs in the balance, as ungovernable emotions explode in this political comedy that proves all's fair in love and war!

THE CENCI

Thursday, November 5 at 7:00 PM
REVELATION READING – In Person & Online
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Directed by Eleanor Holdridge
Sponsored by the Keats-Shelley Association of America and the Byron Society of America

The great English Romantic poet Percy Shelley transports us to corrupt and sumptuous Renaissance Rome with a ripped-from-the-headlines verse drama, set within the noble household of Count Cenci, a tyrannical patriarch with a virtuous daughter Beatrice. After two of his sons are brutally killed, Cenci celebrates by throwing a banquet, toasting their spilled blood with wine. Fearful for her own life, when Beatrice pleads protection from their guests and is denied—and when she finds out her lover Orsino has betrayed her for the priesthood—she concocts a desperate plot to take control of her own destiny.

OUT OF THIS WORLD

Monday, December 14 at 7:00 PM
Benefit Holiday Concert
Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter
Book by Dwight Taylor and Reginald Lawrence, based on Amphitryon by Plautus
Concert Adaptation by David Ives
Directed by Marc Vietor

The great god Jupiter descends from Mount Olympus with one thing on his mind, bedding the mortal Helen. To win her over, he disguises himself as her husband…until his own wife Juno finds out. Based on Plautus' classic Roman comedy Amphitryon, Cole Porter's follow-up to Kiss Me Kate is pure musical delight, with comedic twists and mistaken identity, in a frothy blend of bawdy mythology and modern romance.

SPRING 2027 READINGS

THE JANEIAD

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8 at 7:00 PM
REVELATION READING – In Person & Online
New York Premiere
By Anna Ziegler

The story of Penelope, awaiting her husband Odysseus' long return from the Trojan War, is the subject of one of our oldest surviving literary works. Now meet Jane, in modern-day Brooklyn, longing for her husband, 20 years after he went to work one fateful September 11th morning and never returned. Homer's epic gives inspiration to Anna Ziegler's lyrical drama, intensely connecting two women across time and place, contemplating the power of storytelling and the great myths we tell ourselves, as we travel through our days.

LE CID

MONDAY, MARCH 1 at 7:00 PM
REVELATION READING – In Person & Online
By Corneille
Translated and Adapted by Ranjit Bolt
Directed by Nadia Guevara
Produced in association with L'Alliance

Based on the Spanish legend of the medieval knight El Cid, Corneille's tragicomedy was the runaway hit of 1636 and sparked La querelle du Cid, an epic literary debate over its shocking disregard for the classical unities of drama. When our hero Rodrigue must duel the father of his beloved Chimène, no outcome can be a good one. And when Chimène's father is killed, she is torn between her love for Rodrigue and her duty to avenge her family's honor. And yet, the great playwright Corneille, against all odds, pulls off a happy ending, in this too-seldom produced masterpiece of French literature.

HIPPOLYTUS/PHEDRA

MONDAY, MARCH 29 at 7:00 PM
REVELATION READING – In Person & Online
World Premiere Red Bull Theater Commission
By Luis Quintero
Adapted from literal translations by Simone Oppen and Mirabelle Ordinaire, sponsored by Calder Classics
Directed and developed by Nathan Winkelstein

Phedra is Queen of Athens, and wife to the legendary King Theseus. Her stepson Hippolytus has sworn himself to chastity, serving the goddess Artemis—and maddening Aphrodite, who curses Phaedra to fall in love with him. Luis Quintero, playwright of the award-winning Medea: Re-Versed, pens a new rap version of the classical myth, set in a world where rhythm fuels reckoning and desire can destroy. Phedra and Hippolytus clash in a charged lyrical duel, drawn together by a forbidden desire as dangerous as it is inevitable. As they fight to resist repeating Theseus' legacy, the line between passion and harm blurs, turning every verse to one question: Where does love end, and violence begin?

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

MONDAY, APRIL 19 at 7:00 PM
REVELATION READING – In Person & Online
New York Premiere
By Gordon Greenberg & Steve Rosen
Directed by Gordon Greenberg

Dostoyevsky's turn-of-the-century masterpiece is reimagined as a 90-minute romp of a morality tale, with five actors playing over 50 zany characters. Riffing on the famous novel—and all of Russian literature—brilliant comic collaborators Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen bring the same whacked-out sensibilities of their Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors to melancholic 1860s Russia. This classic story follows Raskolnikov, an impoverished student who becomes a murderer to save his family. (Spoiler alert: It does not end well for him.) Based on the book you didn't actually read in high school…this is literature retold as you've never seen it before.

THE ROMAN ACTOR

MONDAY, MAY 17 at 7:00 PM
REVELATION READING – In Person & Online
By Philip Massinger
Adapted and Directed by Ben Prusiner
Produced in association with The Acting Company

How far should a role be taken? This entertaining tragedy puts an actor at the center of a dramatic and dangerous love triangle. Domitian, the tyrannical and jealous Roman Emperor, wreaks havoc and bloody vengeance as he accuses his wife of infidelity with the actor, Paris, whose only possibility of survival relies on pleasing an audience of one: the self-absorbed, lunatic Emperor. Regarded as the finest work of Jacobean dramatist Philip Massinger, The Roman Actor explores the balance between private and public moralities, as it nobly condemns tyranny, and examines the theater of power…and the power of theater, in this timely drama.

17TH ANNUAL SHORT NEW PLAY FESTIVAL

MONDAY, JUNE 21 at 7:00 PM
In Person & Online
Eight World Premieres

What happens when you put out the call for short new plays, riffing on a classical theme? The playwrights of the American theater answer, with an exceptional group of submissions, from across the country. From this open submission process, six plays are chosen to be presented alongside two works by commissioned playwrights, who over the years have included: Larissa FastHorse, Marcus Gardley, John Guare, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Jeremy O. Harris, David Ives, Craig Lucas, Ken Ludwig, Dael Orlandersmith, Heather Raffo, Theresa Rebeck, José Rivera, Betty Shamieh, Anne Washburn, and Doug Wright. Don't miss this celebratory conclusion of Red Bull Theater's season of Revelation Readings.

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