HANDLE WITH CARE and NEW PAGES, NEW STAGES to Highlight Studio Theatre's Upcoming Season

Studio Theatre has announced two major events that will be part of its 2026-2027 season: the play reading festival New Pages, New Stages will return in 2027, and Handle with Care, a unique interactive production from Belgian theatrical performance collective Ontroerend Goed, will have a limited run this fall. 

First, Studio's Stage 4 black box theatre will be the site of a limited run of the Ontroerend Goed production Handle with Care. The show, described by the creators as “a theatre production in a box,” features no performers, sets, or script in the traditional sense. Instead, audiences will find a single box placed in the theatre. They must open the box, creating the performance from there, led by instructions and using the objects found in the box; each box, and thus each performance, is completely unique. Handle With Care offers its participants a chance to reflect on time, transience, and togetherness. Boxes are assembled by the Ontroerend Goed team and shipped from Belgium to theatres all over the world. BroadwayWorld, reviewing the London run of the production, described the show as a “playful circus of audience invention.” Tickets to Handle with Care are on sale now at studiotheatre.org; audiences are limited to 45 people per performance, so patrons will be encouraged to get tickets early. It will run October 14-25, 2026. 

From February 5 to February 7 of 2027, Studio will host the second annual New Pages, New Stages festival, in cooperation with Olney Theatre Center, Spooky Action Theater, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. The inaugural festival in January 2026 involved six readings of plays-in-progress by innovative writers from DC, Ireland, and across the U.S. This year there will be five new plays presented, one of which will be workshopped over two weeks with its creative team and cast before three staged performances. The performances will serve as a laboratory for the artists to experiment and learn from audience response, and will give patrons an exciting opportunity to play a key role in the development of a new play. The names of the selected playwrights and titles of the pieces will be announced later in 2026.  

About Studio Theatre

Studio Theatre is a national leader in the production of contemporary plays. Over 46 years and more than 425 productions, Studio has grown from a company that produced in a single rented theatre to one that owns a multi-venue complex stretching half a city block, but has remained committed to core distinguishing characteristics: deliberately intimate spaces, excellence in acting and design, and seasons that feature many of the most significant playwrights of our time. Studio's seasons are intentionally diverse and eclectic, featuring buzzworthy plays from today's hot writers, groundbreaking world premieres, and reinvigorated contemporary classics, produced and performed by leading local, national, and International Artists. Studio also incubates and develops new work, nurtures the next generation of arts leaders, and proactively engages with its community through a wide array of initiatives. Studio is committed to inclusion and access, and makes a concentrated effort to proactively dismantle barriers that have excluded people from joyful participation in our art form. Studio's location, rich history, unique venues, and commitment to artistry have made it a regional landmark, where audiences find the best that contemporary theatre has to offer. 

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