INSTRUCTIONS FOR A SEANCE and More Set for Keen Company 26-27 Season
The season will also feature the company's annual gala, and the 21st Keen Teens Festival of New Work.
Keen Company has revealed the lineup of programming for their 2026-27 season, which will feature the New York Premiere of Instructions for a Séance, written and performed by Katie Bender and directed by Lily Wolff, the continuation of Keen's Mixtape Series, Keen's annual Gala honoring Joy Sunday (a Keen Teen alum and Emmy-nominated actor) and Sonja Berggren (Theater Artist and Advocate), and the 21st annual Keen Teens Festival of New Work, Keen's celebrated program for New York City teens, in partnership with Concord Theatricals.
Instructions for a Séance
February 12th - March 7th, 2027 at artXnyc (409 W 14th St, NYC)
Instructions for a Séance is a site-specific DIY séance that invites an audience to conjure escape artist Harry Houdini to teach us how to escape our lives. Part seance, part cheeky historical re-enactment, Instructions for a Séance explores the gauntlet that is motherhood, artistic ambition, and escapism. Written and performed by Katie Bender.
The first block of tickets for this intimate production will be announced in the Fall. Subscribers to Keen's Mailing List will receive first access tickets.
Keen's Mixtape Series
On the heels of its first season's success, Keen returns with The Mixtape Series. Each Mixtape volume is a singular night of curated performances handpicked by a visionary artist. Last season's series was sold out, and featured curation by artists Mona Mansour, Ato Blankson-Wood, Adam Gwon, and Monica Bill-Barnes & Robbie Saenz de Viteri. Like the now-bygone handcrafted mixtapes, each volume is a night of performance, precisely assembled and arranged by the curating artist to showcase the artists they love, the mediums they admire, and the work they want the world to see. Curating artists and dates to come.
The 21st Anniversary of Keen Teen's Festival of New Plays
Returning for its 21st season, Keen Teens is a free program for NYC-area high school students to experience the unique opportunity to collaborate with professional writers, directors, and designers in mounting and performing in world premiere plays on Off-Broadway stages. Keen partners with Concord Theatricals to commission accomplished playwrights and composers to create original plays and musicals that are as complex and multilayered as the lives of young people today. The new plays are published in The Keen Collection by Concord, and licensed for productions throughout the United States and world. Keen Teens has made possible the Off-Broadway debut of over 600 young actors and has led to the publication of over 55 new one-act plays and musicals for teenagers.
The creative teams behind this year's festival will be announced at a later date.
Gala 2026: Honoring Joy Sunday and Sonja Berggren
Thursday, November 5, 2026 at Conwell Cocktail Hall (6 Hanover Street, New York, NY)
The Keen Gala will return to the fall and kick off the season. The evening will begin as a free-flowing cocktail party in Conwell Cocktail Hall, a former Art Deco bank in the heart of the Financial District, followed by tributes, performances, and dancing. Honoring Emmy-Nominated actor and Keen Teen alum Joy Sunday (DTF: St Louis; Wednesday), as well as stalwart supporter of New York's cultural scene, Sonja Berggren. The event will be equal parts party and cabaret in the deco-decadence of the Conwell Cocktail Hall.
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