MAYBE YOU COULD LOVE ME And More Set for Theater Mu's 2025/26 Season
In the winter, Theater Mu's new works play-reading festival, New Eyes, will return.
By: A.A. Cristi May. 07, 2025
Theater Mu's 2025/26 season, “Hand in Hand, Step by Step,” will highlight stories that acknowledge the past, dream of the future, and hold community close.
The season is comprised of the world premiere of Samah Meghjee's Maybe You Could Love Me, directed by Katie Bradley; the world premiere of Katie Ka Vang's Hmong Futures, directed by former artistic director Lily Tung Crystal; and our annual New Eyes play-reading festival.
Mu's season is a reflection of the time and the start of the next chapter: Mu is heading into its 34th season and has a new artistic director on the horizon. The Southeast Asian community, who makes up the majority of Minnesota's Asian Americans, is celebrating 50 years of being in the United States. And our communities are fighting against executive orders and actions threatening human rights and freedom.
The theater company hopes that these shows help illustrate that as long as we are hand in hand, step by step, we can create a more equitable, thriving world.
Mu managing director Anh Thu T. Pham says, “My family and I left Viet Nam in April of 1975, and as I reflect on our season theme, the conversations I've had over the years with my mother come to mind—how she relied upon my aunts and grandmothers in order to survive the hard boat journey with me only months old, how the support of our new neighbors and sponsors helped us to resettle into our new home, and then later, how other refugees created with us our own version of what it meant to be a Vietnamese American community.”
Pham adds, “Today, at Mu, I am able to share that community in its fullness. Even better, I get to be in community with other Asian Americans who make our Minnesota, our United States.”
Kicking off the season is Maybe You Could Love Me, which will be at Mixed Blood Theatre from Sept 11-28. The play was one of two plays selected from more than 75 submissions (the maximum accepted) during the 2024 New Eyes Festival. Meghjee's story follows two women from childhood to adulthood as they grapple with romantic feelings toward each other despite their Islamic sect's prohibition on homosexuality. With moments of heart-wrenching innocence, devastation, and hope, the play looks at what it means to decide to be yourself in a world that says not to be.
In the winter, Theater Mu's new works play-reading festival, New Eyes, will return. The 2024 New Eyes saw Mu launch a nationwide submission call for the first time in over a decade, and this season, Mu will keep the open call format. This time, however, the call will have a specific prompt: 10-minute plays or excerpts that ask, “What does freedom mean to you?”
To end the mainstage season is Vang's Hmong Futures at the Gremlin Theatre from Apr 9-May 3. The theater project was commissioned by Mu in 2024, received a 2024 Joyce Award, and was developed in the community during the 50th anniversary of Southeast Asian resettlement in the United States. It will draw from the hardships the Hmong American community has faced in Minnesota, the home they have built for themselves, and their hopes for the future.
“This season is very special to me,” says Katie Bradley, who programmed the season during her tenure as interim artistic director. “Not only does it include a world premiere piece, Hmong Futures, written by a longtime friend and colleague of mine, Katie Ka Vang, but it also introduces the Twin Cities community to the beautiful work of Samah Meghjee, whose play I had the honor of programming into the season. Both pieces highlight the importance of celebrating our differences while standing together in community. This season's theme reminds us that ‘hand in hand, step by step,' as long as we continue to unite and uplift our stories, the stronger we will be moving forward.”
Theater Mu's 2025/26 season
MAYBE YOU COULD LOVE ME
a world premiere by Samah Meghjee
directed by Katie Bradley
Sept 11-28, 2025, at Mixed Blood Theatre
New Eyes Festival
a free play reading festival
script coordination by Jane Peña
Winter 2026
HMONG FUTURES
a world premiere by Katie Ka Vang
directed by Lily Tung Crystal
Apr 9-May 3, 2026, at Gremlin Theatre
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