Three-Play THE HUNGER CYCLE Will Come to Soho Rep

With support from Civis, a foundation which accentuates the importance of human interdependence, Soho Rep has announced  The Hunger Cycle, a group of three world premiere productions from Soho Rep over the next three seasons.

The Hunger Cycle is a series of three theatrical works—The Potluck, Feast for the Dead, and Hunger—that asks the question “What are we hungry for?” and explores material, emotional, and moral forms of sustenance in contemporary life. While each of these works is distinctive aesthetically, topically, and formally, they all wrestle with critical ideas of hunger and sustenance. Far too many people have limited access to food, shelter, and space. All suffer from limited imagination when seeking common ground. Each of these artists challenges us to ask profound questions of ourselves and of each other: “What drives us to such extremes? What is so insatiable that we risk so much? What are we all really hungry for?"

The Hunger Cycle will begin with the world premiere of The Potluck by César Alvarez, directed by Sarah Benson, co-produced with INTAR Theatre. In 1979, five labor organizers were murdered at a protest in the streets of Greensboro, NC, by members of the KKK and the American Nazi Party. A year later, César James Alvarez was born into the survivor community and named for two of the victims. 37 years after that, César got a commission to write a musical about the Greensboro Massacre, but it turned into a show about ghosts... and capitalism...and how to recuperate from trauma that happened to you before you were even born. The Potluck is a new musical featuring a 12-person intergenerational cast that conjures the soft side of the revolution, and tells a story about what to do when the government is actually trying to kill you.

Next, Soho Rep will produce the world premiere of Madeline Easley’s Feast for the Dead—the playwright’s Off-Broadway debut—as part of its 2026/27 season. Feast for the Dead features a 9-person cast and weaves a speculative future about our responsibility to the deceased, resilience in the living, and cycles of destruction and rebirth into the unexpected vessel of a zombie apocalypse. With a keen sense of pop culture, a vibrant flair for the theatrical, and a full beating heart, Easley dives into the violence upon which this nation was born, and the illusions we build to hide the fact that we are being eaten.

Closing the cycle of three plays, Soho Rep-commissioned devised theater collective Radical Evolution’s Hunger will invite audiences into a fable that challenges us to interrogate physical, spiritual, and communal hunger and how these feelings remind us to (re)connect with each other and the natural world as a means of healing ourselves and the planet. Through the piece, we follow Red as they seek satisfaction, belonging, and connection with the world around them. Red leads us into a kaleidoscopic exploration of many selves and asks audiences to find (one of) themselves, while sharing food, stories, and songs with one another.

The world premiere productions comprising The Hunger Cycle—The Potluck, Feast for the Dead, and Hunger—are the most ambitious shows Soho Rep aims to produce over the next three seasons, in terms of artistic scope, cast size, design challenges, special effects, and more. In fact, they are among the most large-scale works in the company’s 50-year history. While Soho Rep is widely known for "producing big plays in a small room,” they are also celebrated for their commitment to affordable tickets. Thus, Soho Rep needs visionary partners like the Civis Foundation to ensure that these timely, urgent productions can be brought to life fully and to enable the company to responsibly commit to these world premieres on a timeline that provides for holistic artistic and audience development.

Soho Rep Director Eric Ting says, “Soho Rep has long been driven by the ambitions of its artists. Those ambitions have frequently led our artists into direct confrontation with the complex systems that govern our society. The artists represented by the Hunger Cycle—César, Maddie, Radical Evolution—are quintessential models of this, each unwilling to compromise their interrogation of our times. The scale, scope, and subjects of their visions thrill us.”

“It is equally thrilling when such work leads us into orbit with extraordinary supporters like the Civis Foundation,” continues Soho Rep Director Caleb Hammons. “From our earliest conversations onward, it was clear that our two organizations shared the fundamental belief that pioneering works of art need pioneering support, and that is what the Civis Foundation is providing these artists. In a moment when our industry is constricting, their visionary, signaling partnership is enabling us to think more expansively.”   

César Alvarez says, “It’s extremely complex to produce a new musical, and even harder to produce one about healing from state sanctioned murder. We are extremely grateful that the Civis Foundation is lifting up this story in a moment when there is such an urgent need to fight for our rights to organize and assemble.  The story of the Greensboro Massacre has been with me for my entire life, and over the last seven years I’ve been trying to transform it through the ritual togetherness of musical theater. This production is the culmination of years of creative labor, and I couldn’t be more appreciative of Soho Rep, INTAR and the Civis Foundation for amplifying this story.”

Easley, a New York-based Wyandotte writer from Kansas City, said of Feast for the Dead, “In my career as a playwright, I continually return to the circular connection between living beyond death and my Tribal history as all my plays interrogate speculative manifestations of our joy and grief that spill over centuries. In my Tribe, a Feast of the Dead was our way of joining two worlds, the physical world and the spirit world, and experiencing the worst of one’s grief in community with every family in the village who had also lost someone. In its world premiere production at Soho Rep, I hope that Feast for the Dead invites audiences to examine the cycle we currently find ourselves in: the cycle of violence, which touches every part of our life in this country. My play responds to the fact that this cycle feeds upon itself. I dream that this production will provide a way of organizing ourselves to meet an uncertain future.”

Hunger creators Anooj Bhandari, Jei Lawrence, Meropi Peponides, and Joya Powell, said, “With this project, we dive deep into the meaning of hunger in all its forms, how it informs and is informed by the myths and fables we tell ourselves, and what it can look like for the many different versions of ourselves to seek satisfaction. With a combination of experiments in sound and movement, and a deep appreciation for the stories nature tells us, we’re excited to bring this piece to life. Soho Rep has met our idiosyncratic, collective creation process with visionary support and care. This piece will have the chance to take its full, unique shape thanks to their belief in the work and to this transformative grant from the Civis Foundation.”

As Signal Producing Partners, the Civis Foundation is providing foundational support that “signals” to other like-minded partners that there is an opportunity to become involved in the realization of these innovative civic and creative projects that recognize and uphold responsibility for our shared future. The Miranda Family Fund has also stepped in to support the production of The Potluck, among others. Feast for the Dead received a Venturous Playwright Fellowship at the Playwrights' Center in St. Paul, MN, supported by Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation.

Through its focus on hunger, sustenance, belonging, and mutual care, The Hunger Cycle explores the creative survival practices that sustain communities in times of transformation. This inquiry reflects Civis’s commitment to engaging ourselves, connecting to others, and building our interdependent future.