THE CEREMONY World Premiere and More Set for The Huntington 25-26 Season

The Huntington has unveiled its 2025/26 season, featuring poignant fresh works, a bitingly funny comedy, and a love-affirming contemporary musical.
 
The 2025/26 season will be comprised of three productions at the Huntington Theatre, one production in the intimate Maso Studio space in the Huntington Theatre, one production in the Wimberly Theatre and one in the Roberts Studio Theatre at The Huntington’s Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, and one production presented at Boston University’s Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre.
 
The Huntington’s 2025/26 season includes: Tony Award winner Jez Butterworth’s The Hills of California, the haunting, international hit drama which asks, when home calls us back, how can we face everything we left behind; the poignant and hilarious toast of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Sardines (a comedy about death) written and performed by Chris Grace of TV’s Superstore, which wonders how we keep dancing even when the music stops; the groundbreaking and emotionally rich Tony Award-winning musical Fun Home, with music by Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics by Lisa Kron, based on Alison Bechdel’s beloved graphic novel about how we learn to see our parents with grown-up eyes; Joshua Harmon’s heartfelt and funny We Had a World; an electrifying reimagining of the ancient myth of Oedipus with modern urgency to discover whether any of us can escape our fate in Oedipus El Rey by Luis Alfaro; and Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector, a biting, on-the-pulse, Broadway satire exploring all the ways we disagree with laugh-out-loud results.
 
As part of 7-play season packages, The Huntington will also include access to the world premiere of Mfoniso Udofia’s The Ceremony, which will be produced by Chuang Stage in association with Boston University School of Theatre and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre in fall of 2025. This piece was commissioned by The Huntington and offers a vibrant, heartwarming celebration of love that weds Nigerian and Nepali cultures. The Boston Globe states that “Mfoniso Udofia’s cycle of nine plays about three generations of a Nigerian American family has to be counted as the main event of Boston’s 2024-25 theatre season.” Under The Huntington’s leadership, over 35 community and cultural partners have come together to make this unprecedented and ambitious Ufot Family Cycle possible.
 
 
THE HUNTINGTON’S 25/26 SEASON: 
 

The Hills of California

by Jez Butterworth
Directed by Huntington Artistic Director Loretta Greco
The Huntington Theatre
September 11 – October 12, 2025
In association with Berkeley Repertory Theatre
 
Internationally renowned Olivier and Tony Award-winning playwright Jez Butterworth (The Ferryman, Jerusalem) weaves the compelling, tender, and savagely funny tale of the four adult Webb sisters’ homecoming to the seaside guest house where they grew up. As girls, their fierce and ambitious mother Veronica trained them for a singing career à la The Andrews Sisters. Now adults, the sisters must reconsider the choices their mother made, the nostalgic call of youthful harmonies, and the unbreakable bonds of family. Critically acclaimed on Broadway and the West End, The Hills of California will be seen in a new production at The Huntington, directed by Loretta Greco (The Triumph of Love, Prayer for the French Republic).   
 
From playwright Jez Butterworth: “There is something at the heart of this play about the idea of really, really wanting to be special. And the folly of that. You can live through what we call ‘the 60s’ and completely miss out on being a hippie or a punk, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t live. You don’t have to be special to be worth remembering.”
 

Sardines (a comedy about death)

Written and performed by Chris Grace
Directed by Eric Michaud
Maso Studio, The Huntington Theatre
September 30 – November 16, 2025
 
Fresh from a celebrated run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Sardines explores – with tremendous grace and humanity – the tragic, hilarious, and important questions of our time: Can we enjoy life if we know how it ends? Does making art actually help? And if Rihanna’s song is called ‘Don’t Stop the Music’, why does the music… stop? Find out in this deliciously authentic, insightful, and laugh-out-loud show created and performed by actor-comedian Chris Grace (TV’s Superstore, Dropout’s Chris Grace: As Scarlett Johansson). 
 
From playwright Chris Grace “Sardines is about family, loss, and finding your way to the present moment while accepting both the limitations and gifts of life. The first work-in-progress presentation of the show was performed in Boston, and it's very satisfying to complete the circle by bringing Sardines back to where it started.”
 

Fun Home

Music by Jeanine Tesori
Book & Lyrics by Lisa Kron
Based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel
Directed by Logan Ellis
The Huntington Theatre
November 14 – December 14, 2025
 
Winner! Five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Score, and Best Book
Winner! Two Obie Awards, including Outstanding Musical
 
Winner of five Tony Awards including Best Musical, Fun Home is a beloved, groundbreaking, and emotionally rich story of seeing your parents through grown-up eyes. Based on Alison Bechdel’s best-selling graphic memoir, the musical traces Alison through childhood, college, and adulthood, as she unravels her complex relationship with a brilliant, volatile, and closeted father. How have the mysteries of her father’s life shaped her own understanding of love and self-acceptance? With a soaring score by Jeanine Tesori and a sharp, heartfelt book by Lisa Kron, Fun Home is a beautiful, can’t-miss theatrical experience, directed by Logan Ellis.  
 
From playwright and book writer Lisa Kron: “Fun Home is probably going to be much funnier than you will expect it to be. It picks you up and carries you to a lot of places that are funny, quite moving, and never quite where you expect – but, always a place you are interested in being engaged in that place. At the end, it will take you apart a little, but then it will put you back together.”
 
From composer Jeanine Tesori: “If you know the pull of looking for your parents in any way, shape or form, or the pull of being a parent, those two things, that is the story and it’s to be seen by those who you’re in a deep and primal relationship with as a family unit and it never goes away – I don’t know one person who isn’t pulled in some way by the people who made them.”
 

We Had a World

by Joshua Harmon (Prayer for the French Republic, Bad Jews)
Wimberly Theatre, The Huntington’s Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA
February 12 – March 15, 2026
 
A dying woman calls her grandson and asks him to write a play about their family. “But I want you to promise me something,” she says. “Make it as bitter and vitriolic as possible." In this searing, funny, and deeply personal play, the author of Prayer for the French Republic recreates thirty years of family fights, monstrous behavior, enduring love, and unexpected dishes of home-cooked spaetzle.
 
From Huntington Artistic Director Loretta Greco: “We didn’t want to go another season without a play from our brilliant friend, the playwright Joshua Harmon (Prayer for the French Republic), and it’s our absolute pleasure to produce Josh’s latest, We Had a World – a poignant, hilarious, and complicated 30-year slice of his family’s history. For me, it’s a roller coaster ride seen through the voracious appetite of young Joshua, full of laughter, lokshen, truly awful behavior, and enduring love – in other words, it’s just like family! I laughed while I cried throughout the entire thing. You are going to love it.”
 

Oedipus El Rey

by Luis Alfaro
Directed by Huntington Artistic Director Loretta Greco
Roberts Studio Theatre, The Huntington’s Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA
May 7 – June 7, 2026
 
Luis Alfaro reimagines Sophocles’ classic in his acclaimed and electrifying Oedipus El Rey, set in the heart of Los Angeles. Oedipus dreams of rewriting his own story -- but liberation comes at a price: can he truly escape the destiny laid out before him? What’s fate, and what’s just the system? A searing tale of love, family, and prophecy, Oedipus El Rey blends ancient myth with modern urgency and Chicano swagger with swaths of sly humor. Artistic Director Loretta Greco, who led the acclaimed premiere of Oedipus El Rey at the Magic Theatre, creates a production especially for Boston.
 

Eureka Day

by Jonathan Spector
Directed by Margot Bordelon (John Proctor is the Villain at The Huntington)
The Huntington Theatre
May 29 – June 28, 2026
 
Hot from celebrated productions on Broadway and in London, Eureka Day is a new, wildly funny, on-the-pulse satire which asks if parents at a progressive, welcoming private school can uphold their harmonious shared values when Eureka Day faces an outbreak of the mumps. Jonathan Spector’s sharp comedy explores in surprising turns what happens when facts become subjective, when inclusivity turns performative, and a “community activated conversation” turns into an all-out brawl — with uproarious, fresh, thought-provoking results. Margot Bordelon returns to direct following her hit production of John Proctor is the Villain. 
 
AS PART OF SEVEN-PLAY PACKAGES:
 

The Ceremony