Geffen Playhouse Announces Five Productions for 2026/2027 Season Lineup, Featuring World, West Coast and Los Angeles Premieres

GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE ANNOUNCES FIVE PRODUCTIONS FOR 2026/2027 SEASON LINEUP, FEATURING WORLD, WEST COAST AND LOS ANGELES PREMIERES

TONY AWARD–WINNING BROADWAY PRODUCTION OF BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS’ “PURPOSE,” DIRECTED BY PHYLICIA RASHAD AND FEATURING THE ORIGINAL BROADWAY CAST, WILL LAUNCH THE SEASON WITH ITS LOS ANGELES PREMIERE

FOLLOWING WILL BE THE WEST COAST PREMIERE OF BESS WOHL’S “LIBERATION,” AND THE LOS ANGELES PREMIERE OF NGOZI ANYANWU’S “THE MONSTERS”

SEASON WILL CONTINUE WITH THE WORLD PREMIERE OF GRACE MCLEOD’S NEW FARCE “CLOSING COSTS,” AND CONCLUDE WITH ALICE CHILDRESS’ “WINE IN THE WILDERNESS,” DIRECTED BY LACHANZE

LOS ANGELES (March 17, 2026) – Geffen Playhouse today announced five productions that will make up its 2026/2027 season lineup from Geffen Playhouse Artistic Director Tarell Alvin McCraney. The 2026/2027 season will launch November 11, 2026, and continue through July 4, 2027. The lineup will feature a mix of world, West Coast and Los Angeles premieres.

“In times of deep chaos, it may feel logical to pull back, to shrink, to stave off efforts toward the future. But we must reach out, we must expand, and call in. We must continue to provide a beautiful, unique place to dream in the dark,” said Geffen Playhouse Artistic Director Tarell Alvin McCraney. “‘Lord, we know what we are, but not what we may be.’ – Ophelia, from Hamlet. This season reflects our deep need to see what we may be. We know, and will continue, to show up, do great work, and reach toward our goal of making and presenting mind‑dazzling, heart‑engaging, formidable art for our community, with our city, and before the world.”

“Tarell is a visionary, and his artistic prowess has sparked a profound creative evolution at the Geffen, bringing forward new voices and bold stories with every season, and the 2026/2027 lineup continues that momentum,” said Geffen Playhouse Executive Director/CEO Gil Cates, Jr. “We’re thrilled for our loyal audience to experience what’s ahead, and equally excited to welcome new community members from across Los Angeles and Southern California. Looking forward, we’re developing plans to embrace a more global audience as LA prepares to host the LA28 Olympics, and being located directly across from the Olympic Village at UCLA is a once‑in‑a‑theater’s‑lifetime opportunity. What we’re building today will resonate in the years leading up and beyond, and we can’t wait to share it with the world.”

The 2026/2027 Geffen Playhouse season will launch in its Gil Cates Theater with the Los Angeles premiere of the Tony Award–winning (Best Play, 2025) Broadway production of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Purpose, directed by Phylicia Rashad and featuring the original Broadway cast. Both intimate and epic, Purpose is provocative, often hilarious and ultimately a devastating exploration of legacy and the cost of believing in something bigger than yourself.

The season will continue with the West Coast premiere of Bess Wohl’s Liberation, following its smash Broadway run. Liberation is a daring and sharply funny new play that explores what it truly means to claim power, both on your own and together and reminds us that revolution is never simple, but always worth the fight. Liberation is a multi-theater co-production with additional venues to be announced.

The next production in the season lineup will take place in the intimate Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater with the Los Angeles premiere of Ngozi Anyanwu’s The Monsters. Told with raw honesty and lyrical intensity, The Monsters explores the complicated intimacy of sibling relationships when family can be both a sanctuary and a battlefield. This sibling love story examines the ways we protect one another, even when bruises stay hidden just under the surface.

Since first joining Geffen Playhouse as its artistic director in 2023, McCraney has spearheaded a bold new vision for the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, establishing it as a lab for artistic ingenuity—a dedicated space for creative experimentation and the development of new works, including workshops, readings and cross‑disciplinary collaborations. This work has been ongoing, bringing spirited commissions, diverse voices and dynamic artists into the Geffen Playhouse fold. The initiative has been reflected on our stages in seasons past, resonates in the 2026/2027 season and will continue to drive ambitious, innovative artistic risk‑taking in the years ahead. Several initiatives are on the immediate horizon, from public-facing workshops for plays in active development to projects under consideration for special limited engagements.

Following The Monstersin the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, the season will pick up in the Gil Cates Theater with the world premiere of Grace McLeod’s new farce Closing Costs. Housing prices in LA are already criminal, but in this home, they may actually be fatal. Closing Costs is a whip-smart send-up of the absurdity of trying to buy a home in Los Angeles, where the market is cutthroat, the wiring is questionable and everyone is just one inspection away from disaster.

The Geffen Playhouse 2026/2027 season will conclude with Alice Childress’ Wine in the Wilderness, directed by LaChanze. With incisive humor and unflinching honesty, Wine in the Wilderness interrogates class, colorism, gender and the politics of representation, asking who gets to define beauty, respectability and worth. It is a story that feels as urgent today as when it was first written.

GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE 2026/2027 SEASON LINEUP

The Broadway/Steppenwolf Theatre Company Production of
Purpose (Gil Cates Theater)
LOS ANGELES PREMIERE
November 11 – December 13, 2026
Written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Directed by Phylicia Rashad
Featuring Alana Arenas, Glenn Davis, Jon Michael Hill, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennix & Kara Young

Meet the Jaspers: generations of a powerful Black political family under one roof where nothing stays buried for long. When their youngest son returns home, instincts kick in to protect their public image of leadership and moral authority, and fractures soon appear as private grievances, betrayals, and long-simmering questions of identity rise to the surface.

Direct from Broadway, this 2025 Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize–winning play makes its LA debut with the original Broadway cast, directed by the incomparable Phylicia Rashad. Both intimate and epic, Purpose is provocative, often hilarious, and ultimately a devastating exploration of legacy and the cost of believing in something bigger than yourself.

Originally Produced on Broadway by David Stone, Debra Martin Chase, Marc Platt, LaChanze, Rashad V. Chambers, Aaron Glick, Universal Theatrical Group, Eastern Standard Time, Trate Productions, Nancy Nagel Gibbs, James L. Nederlander, John Gore, ATG Entertainment, The Shubert Organization and Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

Production Sponsor: City National Bank

Liberation (Gil Cates Theater)
WEST COAST PREMIERE
January 27 – February 28, 2027
Written by Bess Wohl
Directed by Whitney White

Following its smash Broadway run, Liberation makes its West Coast debut with sharp wit, emotional insight, and fearless ambition to challenge the status quo. It’s 1970, somewhere in Ohio: six women gather in a basement gymnasium for a consciousness raising group, determined to shake up their lives and change the world. These meetings quickly become complicated—friendships are tested, alliances shift, the personal becomes political and vice versa, ultimately calling into question the very meaning of freedom itself.

Directed by Tony Award nominee Whitney White, this daring and sharply funny new play explores what it truly means to claim power, both on your own and together, and reminds us that revolution is never simple, but always worth the fight.

The Monsters (Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater)
LOS ANGELES PREMIERE
March 3 – April 4, 2027
Written by Ngozi Anyanwu
Directed by Awoye Timpo
Featuring Ngozi Anyanwu
Additional casting to be announced

As a seasoned MMA fighter at the end of his career, Big reluctantly agrees to coach his younger sister, Lil, a fierce and hungry newcomer with something to prove. But years of distance, resentment, and unresolved pain simmer beneath every training session. Does Big have what it takes to make Lil a champion… or will their past knock them both out?

Told with raw honesty and lyrical intensity, The Monsters explores the complicated intimacy of sibling relationships when family can be both a sanctuary and a battlefield. With sharp dialogue and moments of surprising tenderness, this sibling love story examines the ways we protect one another, even when bruises stay hidden just under the surface.

Closing Costs (Gil Cates Theater)
WORLD PREMIERE
March 31 – May 2, 2027
Written by Grace McLeod
Directed by Hannah Wolf
Produced in Association with IAMA Theatre Company

Housing prices in LA are already criminal, but in this home, they may actually be fatal. A scrappy real estate agent and her Uber-driving boyfriend are secretly living in the “luxury” property she’s desperate to sell: a disastrously flipped fever dream where corners are cut and nothing works the way it should. When the home’s bro developer shows up, things go from unethical to unhinged.

A newly successful gay couple and a pregnant lesbian couple spiral into a bidding war over the supposedly hot property as the agent and her boyfriend scramble to keep the sale alive—and the skeletons in the closet—in a perfectly escalating farce. Closing Costs is a whip-smart send-up of the absurdity of trying to buy a home in Los Angeles, where the market is cutthroat, the wiring is questionable, and everyone is just one inspection away from disaster.

Production Sponsor: UCLA Health

Wine in the Wilderness (Gil Cates Theater)
June 2 – July 4, 2027
Written by Alice Childress
Directed by LaChanze
Produced in Association with LaChanze Productions

Set during the height of the 1964 Harlem riot, Wine in the Wilderness unfolds in the apartment of Bill Jameson, a painter determined to capture “the essence” of Black womanhood in his latest triptych. As friends take shelter from the rising tensions outside, the arrival of a young woman disrupts Bill’s carefully constructed vision and exposes the assumptions, judgments, and hierarchies shaping both his art and his community

With incisive humor and unflinching honesty, Alice Childress’s play interrogates class, colorism, gender, and the politics of representation, asking who gets to define beauty, respectability, and worth. Under the direction of Broadway legend LaChanze, this production foregrounds the play’s emotional immediacy and radical compassion, revealing a story that feels as urgent today as when it was first written.

ABOUT GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE

Geffen Playhouse has been a hub of the Los Angeles theater scene since opening its doors in 1995. Noted for its intimacy and celebrated for its world-renowned mix of classic and contemporary plays, provocative new works and second productions, the not-for-profit organization continues to present a body of work that has garnered national recognition. Named in honor of entertainment mogul and philanthropist David Geffen, who made the initial donation to the theater, the company was founded by Gilbert Cates and is currently helmed by Executive Director/CEO Gil Cates, Jr., Artistic Director Tarell Alvin McCraney and Board Chair Mary Ann Cloyd. Proudly associated with UCLA, the Geffen welcomes an audience of more than 130,000 each year, and maintains extensive education and community engagement programs, designed to involve underserved young people and the community at large in the arts. www.geffenplayhouse.org