McNeal by Ayad Akhtar at PURE Theatre

SOUTHEAST REGIONAL PREMIERE

January 15 - February 7, 2026 Directed by Sharon Graci

Featuring David Whalen, Camille Lowman, Joy Vandervort-Cobb, Sylvia Jefferies, and Journey Townsend

From the pen of Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar comes a “brilliant and transfixing new play” about Artificial Intelligence, American ambition, and moral ambiguity.

At its center is Jacob McNeal: literary lion, Nobel Prize perennial, and a man whose brilliance is matched only by the size of his blind spots. A new novel looms. An estranged son resurfaces. Old enemies circle. And McNeal - equal parts provocateur, perfectionist, and self-mythologizer - finds himself captivated, even seduced, by the generative power of artificial intelligence. As the lines between creation and replication blur, McNeal faces a crisis both artistic and existential: What happens when the storytelling machine becomes capable of telling your story better than you can?