Piper Theatre Productions Reveals Summer 2026 Lineup

This June and July, Piper Theatre Productions will open one of its most ambitious summer seasons to date: a lineup of world premieres, new voices, and an internationally bound musical headed from Brooklyn to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

The company’s Summer 2026 Season spotlights three major initiatives that embody Piper’s long-standing mission to champion emerging artists, adventurous storytelling, and theatrical risk-taking:

PIPER PLAYS, a festival of bold new work by Brooklyn playwrights. MUSICALS NEXT, a brand-new initiative producing original musicals by young creators. And THE BLOODY BALLAD OF Bette Davis, Piper’s gloriously camp horror musical heading overseas after exclusive Brooklyn preview performances.

From intimate staged readings to a full-scale dystopian musical written by a sixteen-year-old prodigy to a witchy musical fantasia about one of Hollywood’s fiercest legends, Piper’s summer promises a season crackling with invention.

“New theater does not happen by accident,” says John P. McEneny, Piper’s Artistic Director. “It happens because artists are given space to fail, experiment, surprise themselves, and sometimes make something extraordinary. This summer is about exactly that.”

PIPER PLAYS: Brooklyn’s New Play Festival 

June 22–26, 2026

All performances at Gallery Players
199 14th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215
$10 Requested Donation

Piper’s beloved new play development festival returns for five electrifying nights of staged readings featuring daring new full-length plays by Brooklyn artists developed through the company’s Plays in Process lab.

Over the past year, playwrights have gathered monthly to share pages, interrogate ideas, and shape ambitious original work in front of a trusted artistic community. Now, audiences are invited into that process.

The 2026 lineup includes psychological suspense, historical drama, emotional excavation, and dark comedy:

CONTROLLED FORTUNES  at 7:30 PM

By Sylvia Wehrle 

A nor’easter, tarot cards, a behaviorist psychologist, and a mysterious treatment box collide in a psychologically charged family drama.

BLEED THROUGH  at 7:30 PM

By Libby Yowell
A funny, unsettling excavation of girlhood, memory, and the strange emotional residue of growing up.

21 SHILLINGS  at 7:30 PM

By Patti Veconi
A haunting historical drama based on a true story of witchcraft hysteria in 1663 Connecticut.

TELL ME I’M GOOD  at 7:30 PM

By Allison Snyder
Directed by Jessie Kleuter
A wounded young dancer’s Christmas visit becomes an emotional reckoning.

Xayno

Friday, June 26, 2026 at 8:00 PM

by Jeff Sproul

Directed by Lindsey Sproul

King Xayno of Argor, once a fearsome galactic villain, now runs a crumbling bureaucratic empire while clinging to memories of his glory days battling swashbuckling space heroes...meanwhile, his resentful Tribunal members are plotting a coup with a younger and cooler maniacal despot. Enter Blaze Beckett, a former cargo pilot desperate to make a name for herself. Maybe a budding new hatred could turn into a real archenemy, and a fresh start for them both?

For theater lovers who want to discover writers before everyone else does, PIPER PLAYS is where that begins.

MUSICALS NEXT

Friday, July 10, 2026, 7:30 pm
The Old Stone House, Washington Park, Brooklyn
Between 4th and 5th Avenues

FREE

This summer, Piper launches MUSICALS NEXT, a bold new initiative dedicated to nurturing the next generation of musical theater creators.

Its inaugural production is Imperium, a thrilling original dystopian musical written by an artist most theaters would still be casting in student productions.

IMPERIUM

Book, Music & Lyrics by Jack Vitale
Directed by Olivia Wohlgemuth
Music Direction by James Steinman Gordon
Dramaturgy by Delia Cunningham
Sound Design by Pigeon Pack

Created by 16-year-old LaGuardia High School student and longtime Piper company member Jack Vitale, Imperium is a dark, emotionally charged original musical set in a glittering authoritarian future where artificial intelligence governs society, dissenters disappear underground, and emotional connection itself becomes an act of rebellion.

After a devastating world war, survivors inhabit a sleek surveillance city where obedience is mandatory, and humanity is increasingly obsolete. When outsider Carlos forms a dangerous connection with Violet, the daughter of the regime’s elusive architect, the cracks in this perfect system begin to spread.

With a soaring contemporary score, cinematic world-building, romance, rebellion, and startling ambition, Imperium introduces a thrilling new theatrical voice.

BROOKLYN PREVIEW EVENT

July 25 & 26, 2026 at 8:00 PM
Gallery Players
199 14th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Tickets: $25

Before heading to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Piper presents exclusive Brooklyn preview performances of its acclaimed new musical:

THE BLOODY BALLAD OF Bette Davis

A Witchy New Musical

Book & Direction by John P. McEneny
Music & Lyrics by Rob Parker

Set during the chaotic filming of the cult 1975 horror classic Burnt Offerings, The Bloody Ballad of Bette Davis imagines Hollywood icon Bette Davis at war with everyone around her: a furious evangelical daughter accusing her of witchcraft, a dangerously drunken Oliver Reed, the luminous Karen Black, and the brutal machinery of an industry eager to discard aging women.

What follows is a delirious collision of old Hollywood glamour, supernatural revenge, camp horror, and emotional reckoning.

Part musical fantasia, part fever dream, The Bloody Ballad of Bette Davis is Piper’s latest international project, heading to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe following its Brooklyn previews.

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