Ma-Yi Theater Company Unveils 2027 Season Featuring MAGNO RUBIO: THE MUSICAL and YOU SEEM SAD

The award-winning Ma-Yi Theater Company has announced its 2027 season, which brings sweeping musical storytelling and adventurous new drama to New York audiences. From the dreams of Filipino farmworkers in Depression-era California to the lives of women navigating postwar Japan and early-2000s America, these works place Asian and Asian American experiences at the heart of stories about love, survival, and the refusal to be diminished.

The season begins on February 20, 2027, with the world premiere of Magno Rubio: The Musical featuring book, lyrics, and direction by Ralph B. Peña, the Obie Award-winning director of The Chinese Lady and SUMO, along with music by Fabian Obispo, composer of Felix Starro and recipient of the 2025 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Sound Design for SUMO. With an official opening set for February 28 at Theatre Three at Theatre Row (410 West 42nd St), tickets for this limited engagement through March 30 are currently available at www.ma-yitheatre.org.

Bringing together Broadway favorites and celebrated Ma-Yi artists, the eight-member cast, in alphabetical order, features Eymard Cabling (Miss Saigon, national tour; Soft Power, Signature Theatre); Red Concepción (Broadway's Chicago; Miss Saigon, national tour); Jon Viktor Corpuz (Broadway's The King and I; Hamilton, national tour); and Marc dela Cruz (Broadway's Hamilton and If/Then).

Completing the company are Ron Domingo (The Romance of Magno Rubio, Obie Award; Good Enemy); Jojo Gonzalez (The Romance of Magno Rubio, Obie Award; Small Mouth Sounds); Alyse Alan Louis (Broadway's Mamma Mia!, Amélie, and Disaster!; Off-Broadway's Teeth); and Chris Bona (SUMO, Bat Out of Hell). 

The design team features Riw Rakkulchon (scenic design), Mika Eubanks (costume design), Paul Whitaker (lighting design), Daniel Baker (sound design), and Thomas Jenkeleit (properties). Orlando Pabotoy provides choreography, with Gabbie Ballesteros as associate choreographer. The music team includes Tom Myron (orchestrations), Ian Miller (music direction), and John Miller (music coordination). Hope Ding serves as production stage manager, with production management by Kyle Daniels.

Loosely based on the short story “The Romance of Magno Rubio” by celebrated Filipino American author, poet, and activist Carlos Bulosan, Magno Rubio: The Musical follows a Filipino farmworker who falls in love with a woman he knows only through letters and stakes his hard-earned savings on the life he imagines they could share. His bunkmates supply the English, the teasing, and the warnings. But as the courtship grows more expensive, an impossible romance becomes a test of friendship, dignity, and how much a man will risk to feel worthy of love.

With a score drawing on swing, jazz, and the yearning of Filipino love songs, Magno Rubio: The Musical moves between the grit of the fields, the swagger of the dance hall, and the longing of one man's imagination. The Manongs (Filipino migrant farm workers) came to America to work. They refuse to surrender the right to dream.

The production builds on one of Ma-Yi's defining theatrical achievements: Lonnie Carter's The Romance of Magno Rubio, which earned eight Obie Awards in 2003. Directed by Loy Arcenas, with original Filipino text by Peña and original music by Obispo, that production brought Bulosan's world to vivid theatrical life. Now Peña and Obispo return to the original short story with a brand new book and score, joined by Gonzalez, Mendoza, and Domingo, all veterans of the acclaimed play.

Complementing this new musical is the world premiere of You Seem Sad by Leah Nanako Winkler, directed by May Adrales. Presented by Ma-Yi Theater Company and WP Theater, in association with Lucille Lortel Theatre, performances run April 3–May 2, 2027, with an official opening on April 18, at WP Theater, 2162 Broadway, between West 76th and West 77th Streets. This fearless new play is about the lives we inherit—and the lives we insist on making.

In 1950s Nagasaki, atomic-bomb survivor Keiko is determined to rebuild her life without apology. In early-2000s New York, a half-Japanese twenty-something known as Student 1 wrestles with ambition, love, and the question of who she is allowed to become. Winkler brings their stories together in a memory play that is irreverent, intimate, and unafraid of emotional risk. Across generations and continents, these women refuse to let survival be the whole story.

A Yale Drama Series Prize and Peabody Award winner, Winkler is the writer of Kentucky and God Said This, with television credits including Ramy and The Summer I Turned Pretty. An alumna of both the Ma-Yi Writers Lab and WP Lab, she returns to two artistic homes with this ambitious new work. Adrales, whose acclaimed productions include Vietgone and Letters of Suresh, directs.

Ma-Yi's Producing Artistic Director Ralph B. Peña said, “Building on decades of boundary-pushing work, Ma-Yi's 2027 season reflects the heart of our mission – bringing sweeping, artist-driven stories that place Asian and Asian American experiences front and center. From returning to Carlos Bulosan's seminal world with the premiere of Magno Rubio: The Musical to partnering with our dear friends at WP Theater and Lucille Lortel Theatre on Leah Nanako Winkler's fearless memory play You Seem Sad, this season celebrates love, dignity, and survival in all their complexities. We are thrilled and deeply proud to collaborate with such extraordinary creative teams to present works that challenge, move, and inspire our audiences.”