With Tom Stoppard and Sara Bareilles, Berkeley Rep announces epic 2026-27 season
Tony Award-winning playwright Tom Stoppard poses for a portrait at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco on Oct. 9, 2016. (Santiago Mejia/For the S.F. Chronicle)
Epic, multigenerational, identity-specific plays are coming to Berkeley Repertory Theatre next year, with a lineup that travels from 1958 Cuba to Ohio in the 1970s, from 19th-century Vienna to an Armenian American family in Portland in the 1920s.
"It's become pretty standard for we in this industry to talk about empathy and all of the ways in which theater can be a quote-unquote empathy generator," Artistic Director Johanna Pfaelzer told the Chronicle in advance of unveiling of the company's 2026-27 season on Wednesday, April 15.
"It occurred to me that before we get to empathy, we have to ignite curiosity," she continued. With her 2026-27 schedule, she wondered, "Can we ignite some curiosity about what these people who may feel or appear to be so different from us, share with us?"
The seven-show slate opens with "The Cook" (Sept. 4-Oct. 11). Eduardo Machado's play, which premiered in 2003, is set in the kitchen of a Havana mansion in two pivotal moments: on the eve of Fidel Castro's revolution, when its aristocratic family flees to Miami, and four decades later, when the cook who's been faithfully maintaining it this whole time meets the family's daughter. Associate Artistic Director David Mendizábal, fresh off the company's first-rate "All My Sons," returns to the director's chair.
Director David Mendizábal, center, rehearses Berkeley Repertory Theatre's "All My Sons" with actors MaYaa Boateng, left, and Wanda De Jesús at Berkeley Rep's rehearsal studios in Berkeley on Jan. 29. (Don Feria/For the S.F. Chronicle)
"It plays on class, devotion, memory, what it is to sustain relationships," Pfaelzer said. "It also indicates both the damage and, to some extent, the opportunity that revolution can bring."
That last dynamic also figures into the company's next title, "Liberation" (Oct. 23-Nov. 29) by Bess Wohl ("Small Mouth Sounds"). It's set partly in a ‘70s feminist consciousness-raising circle, partly decades later as a daughter examines her mother's legacy. Whitney White ("Jaja's African Hair Braiding"), who directed the show on Broadway, reprises her role here.
Pfaelzer said that she and Wohl both "have the privilege of coming of age and coming into our own as women whose mothers did fight these battles." Now, she added, "The question remains, certainly for my mom and some of her friends, of what are you going to do now?"
Up next is York Walker's "The Covenant" (Nov. 6-Dec. 13), what Pfaelzer describes as a Southern Gothic thriller. The ghost story follows two sisters in a small Georgia town and a returning prodigal-son-turned-blues star who's possibly made a secret Faustian bargain.
"For people who loved films like ‘Sinners,' there will feel like there is some resonance genre-wise," said Pfaelzer, referring to the Oscar-winning horror film by Oakland writer-director Ryan Coogler.
This title follows the recent record-breaking success of "Paranormal Activity," another horror play, at American Conservatory Theater. Pfaelzer pointed out that while the genre is hard to pull off onstage, not least because film has conditioned audiences to expect certain tricks and effects, "We forget how spellbinding a person telling you a story alone in the dark really can be."
Ryan J. Haddad in "Hold Me in the Water," which is part of Berkeley Repertory Theatre's next season. (Valerie Terranova/Berkeley Repertory Theatre)
After the previously announced "The Interestings" (Jan. 31-March 21) - a world-premiere musical with Sara Bareilles, Sarah Ruhl, Meg Wolitzer and Michael Arden attached - the new year brings the solo play "Hold Me in the Water" (March 12-April 18). The romantic comedy by Ryan J. Haddad ("Dark Disabled Stories") was developed at Berkeley Rep's prestigious Ground Floor program. Danny Sharron directs.
"It's sexy, it's funny, it is raw, and it's surprising," Pfaelzer said.
If the company's next show, "Meet the Cartozians" (May 21-June 27), sounds a lot like a certain reality TV show, that's no accident. Talene Monahon's play, which morphs from a drama into a satire, tells the story of two generations of an Armenian American family a century apart.
"The inciting incident of Act One is based on a historical case of an Armenian American and an attempt to rescind his American citizenship based on the idea that Armenians weren't white," Pfaelzer explained.
In Act Two, his descendant in Glendale (Los Angeles County) is on a reality TV show - and once again the family's relationship to whiteness is under the microscope.
Carey Perloff, left, and Tom Stoppard in rehearsal for "The Hard Problem" at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco on Oct. 9, 2016. Perloff directs Stoppard's "Leopoldstadt" at Berkeley Repertory Theatre next year. (Santiago Mejia/Special to The Chronicle)
The season concludes with the Tony Award-winning "Leopoldstadt" (June 4-July 11), the last major script written by playwriting titan Tom Stoppard, who died in November.
In his 50s, Stoppard, who was born in Czechoslovakia and raised in India and England, discovered that all four of his grandparents had been Jewish and were killed in the Holocaust. A nine-scene play with 15 adult actors and eight children, "Leopoldstadt" follows multiple generations of a Viennese Jewish family from 1899 to 1955.
Former American Conservatory Theater Artistic Director Carey Perloff - a frequent Stoppard collaborator - directs.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the scope of "Leopoldstadt." It has nine scenes, 15 adult actors and eight children.
