South Coast Repertory Reveals 2025/26 Season

South Coast Repertory has announced its 2025-26 season, featuring the return of Million Dollar Quartet, the milestone 45th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and two Tony Award-winners running in rotating repertory—Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage.

The season also includes the regional theatre hit, The Heart Sellers by Lloyd Suh, two world premieres, including the previously announced Fremont Ave. by Reggie D. White, and another to be announced, SCR’s Theatre for Young Audiences and Families production, Cinderella: A Salsa Fairy Tale, a bilingual take on the classic children’s story, and the return of the country’s preeminent pianist and storyteller in Hershey Felder, BEETHOVEN. SCR’s 62nd season is the first with Ivers and Appel sharing a collaborative vision, programming one of the West Coast’s largest regional theatres with a powerful, electrifying lineup of productions.

“By design, each offering in the season converses with the others, providing performance after performance of impactful, moving, transformative theatre. The slate embraces wildly entertaining offers woven together with contemporary plays, world premieres newly sprung directly from the past two Pacific Playwrights Festivals, and at the center, a rotating repertory of two Tony Award-winning plays—the hilarious and theatrical God of Carnage and the powerful American classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” Ivers said.  “Add the wondrous work of Hershey Felder portraying Beethoven, and you’ll discover a season about family, intimacy, longing and joy.”

With six productions, the 2025/26 Season features more plays in the subscription series than the past four seasons. Additionally, the rotating repertory will perform continuously for eight weeks—one of the longest performance runs in SCR’s history. The Rep will also feature opportunities for theatregoers to see both plays in the same weekend, or even back-to-back on the same day.

And SCR will offer some earlier performance times. The Segerstrom Stage schedule features Sunday performances at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. On the Julianne Argyros Stage, all evening performances will start at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, with 2 p.m. matinees on Saturdays and Sundays.

SCR is also introducing a $40 annual Family Fun Membership, which provides access to a special slate of discounts and early access to single tickets for theatre-loving families with children ages 4 to 18. Along with providing quality time at the theatre, members also save on acting classes in the SCR Youth Theatre Conservatory—along with other exclusive benefits and opportunities.

“Next season is designed to fulfill South Coast Repertory’s promise of excellence. Every play and musical on our stage, whether a true classic of American drama or a world premiere, is a work of great literature and theatrical craft,” Appel said. “Our season was also designed with feedback from our audiences in mind. We’ve pushed weekday curtain times earlier to make a night out at the theatre easier for working folks, and created a new Family Fun Membership to make theatre more accessible for families. There’s also more to see this season with six productions in our subscription series. It will be a truly unparalleled shared experience with family, friends and our Orange County community. I encourage theatregoers to make a point of putting theatre on the calendar by purchasing a full season subscription, or signing up for our Family Fun Membership.”

The latest production in the American Icons, which celebrates the artists, personalities and opinion leaders who boldly changed our world, opens the season with the return of Million Dollar Quartet, book by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux, original concept and direction by Mutrux and inspired by Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. The Outside SCR hit during the summer of 2022 is back by popular demand with several members of the original cast—which had audiences dancing in the aisles—returning. The story of one impromptu night of music that became one of the greatest recording sessions in music history runs Sept. 13-Oct. 11, 2025 on the Segerstrom Stage. Directed by James Moye (Broadway cast, Million Dollar Quartet), who directed the Outside SCR production, Million Dollar Quartet features more than 20 chart-topping hits, like “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “I Walk the Line” and “Who Do You Love.”

The Heart Sellers, Lloyd Suh’s touching comedy, follows Oct. 26-Nov. 16, 2025 on the Julianne Argyros Stage. Winner of the Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association Award for Best New Play in 2023, The Heart Sellers tells the story of two immigrant women, one Filipino and one Korean, who meet by chance at a supermarket and begin a friendship made possible by the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act, which overturned U.S. immigration quotas for non-European countries and gave the play its name. Jennifer Chang (Vietgone at East/West Players) will direct The Heart Sellers, which has recently played to critical acclaim in Berkeley, Minneapolis and Milwaukee, where Broadway World described the world-premiere production—also directed by Chang—as “hilarious, heartwarming, and a little heartbreaking—a funny play with loads of depth.”

An Orange County holiday tradition, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, adapted by Jerry Patch, celebrates its 45th anniversary Nov. 29-Dec. 28, 2025. The milestone also marks the fifth time SCR Founding Member Richard Doyle has donned the top hat and red scarf as Ebenezer Scrooge and the fifth season Hisa Takakuwa has directed.

SCR welcomes the new year with The Theatrical Event of the Season—two Tony Award-winning plays performed in rotating repertory, alternating nightly, spotlighting overlapping casts and a single set. It begins with God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza’s brilliant, biting comedy that casts a searing light on parenting, marital tensions and the dynamics of power—all resulting from a schoolyard brawl. Marco Barricelli (Glengarry Glen Ross at Denver Center), who played Ben Hubbard in SCR’s 2023 Voices of America production of The Little Foxes and Antonio Salieri in the 2016 production of Amadeus, makes his SCR directorial debut. God of Carnage, winner of the 2009 Tony Award for Best Play, runs Jan. 23-March 21, 2026 on the Segerstrom Stage.

God of Carnage rotates with Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The American classic provides an unflinching portrait of a marriage, taking audiences on an electric ride of razor-sharp wit, incandescent performances and memorable dialogue that will stay with them for a long time. Lisa Rothe (Steel Magnolias at The Guthrie Theater) directs the work, which won the 1963 Tony for Best Play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? runs Jan. 24-March 21-2026 on the Segerstrom Stage.

SCR’s popular Theatre for Young Audiences and Families series takes the Julianne Argyros Stage Feb. 20-March 8, 2026 with Cinderella: A Salsa Fairy Tale, book and lyrics by Karen Zacarias and music by Deborah Wicks La Puma. Directed by Sara Guerrero (the artistic director of Breath of Fire Latina Theatre Ensemble), this classic family story gets a modern makeover as a bouncy, bilingual musical as it asks the question: What happens to Cinderella at the ball… game?

The first of two world premiere plays runs April 5-26, 2026 on the Julianne Argyros Stage. It will once again be a product of The Lab@SCR, the theatre’s respected new-play development program. It will be announced at a later date.

The second world premiere is Fremont Ave. by Reggie D. White. A co-production with the prestigious Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., Fremont Ave. runs April 25-May 23, 2026 on the Segerstrom Stage. Fremont Ave. serves as an anchor for the 2026 Pacific Playwrights Festival two years after it was a featured Festival reading. Directed by Lili-Anne Brown (The Nacirema Society at Goodman Theatre), Fremont Ave.’s vibrant humanity and richly layered characters captivated audiences with its multigenerational story of three Black men, their journeys to choose love and the woman who holds them all together.

The season concludes with audience favorite Hershey Felder returning in Hershey Felder, BEETHOVEN. Directed by Joel Zwick (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), the play featuring the music of Ludwig van Beethoven is told through the eyes of Austrian Dr. Gerhard von Breuning, who spent his boyhood at the maestro’s side. As only he can, Felder takes audiences on an illuminating journey through time that features many of Beethoven’s signature compositions, including the Moonlight Sonata and Pathétique Sonatas and selections from his 5th and 9th Symphonies. Hershey Felder, BEETHOVEN runs June 10-21, 2026 on the Segerstrom Stage.

On June 14, Felder will once again give a one-night only, special presentation of his Great American Songbook Sing-Along, which takes audiences through 100 years of American music—beginning with Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Rogers and Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and more. The performance features Felder’s signature engaging style along with lots of audience participation.