Folger Theatre Unveils Plays And Playwrights For The Fourth Annual READING ROOM FESTIVAL

Folger Theatre at the Folger Shakespeare Library will present the fourth annual Reading Room Festival from January 22–25, 2026, featuring four staged readings alongside panel discussions, workshops, and community events.

This year’s festival will include new works by Alexa Babakhanian, Alberto Bonilla, Barbara Fuchs, and Marcus Gardley, with one project directed by Hana S. Sharif, Artistic Director of Arena Stage. All-Access Passes for festival programming will go on sale today.

Karen Ann Daniels, Director of Programming and Artistic Director of Folger Theatre, said, “From myth to music, this year's festival explores the vibrant musicality of Shakespeare's verse, adapts bilingual texts for young audiences, addresses the age-old authorship question: Did he write it or didn't he? (He did!), and asks that vital question: When is a new play finished? We’re going to have a lot of fun in January. We are looking at four new plays selected especially for Washington, DC audiences. It's our fourth year and I feel like we're just getting started.”

The Reading Room Festival invites artists, critics, and scholars to reinterpret Shakespeare and other early modern writers through contemporary perspectives. Playwrights participate in a week-long development process culminating in staged readings, followed by conversations with the artists. Workshops, open rehearsals, and discussions with critics and scholars round out the four-day event.

The 2026 festival will feature staged readings of four new works: Cymbeline: A Telenovela Melodramatic Western, conceived by Alberto Bonilla with music by Anthony De Angelis and direction by Nadia Guevara; Dark Lady: A Musical Theater Work, written by Alexa Babakhanian and directed by Rebecca Martínez; the world premiere of Fuente Ovejuna, adapted for young audiences by Barbara Fuchs and directed by Kelsey Mesa; and LEAR, Marcus Gardley’s modern-verse translation of King Lear, directed by Hana S. Sharif and originally commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s “Play On!” program. Each reading will include a post-show conversation.

Over its first three years, the Reading Room Festival has introduced new plays that went on to full productions at Folger Theatre. These works include Lauren M. Gunderson’s A Room in the Castle, co-produced with Cincinnati Shakespeare Company; Al Letson’s Julius X: A Re-envisioning of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare; and Jacob Ming-Trent’s How Shakespeare Saved My Life, which will be presented in June at the Folger as part of a rolling world premiere. Sarah Mantell’s Everything That Never Happened was produced at Baltimore Center Stage last season.

Reading Room Festival All-Access Passes are now available at folger.edu/readingroom or through the Folger box office at (202) 544-7077. Early bird passes are $100 through December 31, increasing to $125 beginning January 1. Tickets to individual events will go on sale in early January.

THE PLAYS

CYMBELINE: A TELENOVELA MELODRAMATIC WESTERN

Original concept and idea by Alberto Bonilla
Music composed by Anthony De Angelis
Adaptation of Shakespeare's text by Alec H. Wild
Spanish adaptation of text by Alberto Bonilla
Original Spanish translation by D. Eudaldo Viver (1884)
Directed by Nadia Guevara

Set in the American Southwest in 1893, this bilingual adaptation of Cymbeline relocates the play’s core conflicts to a frontier landscape shaped by the aftermath of the Civil War and shifting cultural boundaries. The work incorporates elements of melodrama, Western storytelling, and Shakespearean tragicomedy.

DARK LADY: A MUSICAL THEATER WORK

Book, lyrics, and music by Alexa Babakhanian
Directed by Rebecca Martínez

The piece imagines the consequences of a discovery that Amelia Bassano authored Shakespeare’s plays, told through Elizabethan characters placed in a contemporary alternate reality. Babakhanian’s score blends beatboxing, hip hop, classical, and pop influences.

FUENTE OVEJUNA

By Lope De Vega
Adapted by Barbara Fuchs
Directed by Kelsey Mesa
World Premiere

This family-oriented adaptation of de Vega’s Spanish Golden Age classic introduces young audiences to themes of justice and solidarity through story, song, and interactive elements including audience participation and crafts.

LEAR

Translation/adaptation/remix by Marcus Gardley
Directed by Hana S. Sharif
Original text by William Shakespeare
Commissioned by OSF’s “Play On!”