South Florida’s theater companies are ready to put on a show. Here are highlights
South Florida’s regional theater companies continue to raise the bar with original plays, commissioned works and a growing sector that is gaining momentum — Spanish-language theater featuring some of the most respected Hispanic playwrights and their works. Touring Broadway musicals still find a place on local stages, but professional regional companies continue to produce their own versions of Broadway’s best from the ground up. The result is a 2025-26 theater landscape that has an abundance of world premieres, regional debuts and established titles across a range of stages in three counties.
Here are some highlights.
THE YEAR OF THE PLAYWRIGHT
Miami New Drama (MiND) staged a world premiere of playwright Jonathan Spector’s “Birthright” last April. Two months later, he’d win a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play for his “Eureka Day.” Two local theater companies, GableStage in Coral Gables (May 14-June 14 in its regional premiere), and Island City Stage in Wilton Manors (Aug. 20-Sept. 13), already had the comedy on their schedules before he took home a Tony. The play is about a private school that is forced to reconsider its liberal vaccine policy following an outbreak of the mumps.
Meanwhile MiND opens its season with the 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist, “Here There Are Blueberries” (Nov. 13-Dec. 7) about a discovery of historical photographers that reveals truths about the Holocaust. The play had its first public workshop as “The Album” in Miami during MiND’s 2017-2018 season. Conceived by Moisés Kaufman, one of the founders of Miami New Drama, and co-written by Amanda Gronich, Kaufman directs the show.
In Miami Lakes, the opener and the closer in Main Street Players’ season are by local playwrights — a new work by Armando Santana, “Here, Chew Chew” (Oct. 17-Nov. 2) and “¡TECHO!” (July 17-Aug. 2) by Ricky J. Martinez, where the action takes place on a Miami rooftop. Inside the same Miami Lakes playhouse, resident theater company LakehouseRanchPNG continues to be a voice for emerging playwrights with two of its shows, Daniel Prillaman’s “Art Duty” (Sept. 25-Oct.5) and Rachel Greene’s “John Deserves to Die”( March 27-April 5), both getting full productions after development in the company’s reading series.
Hometown Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz is always a highlight of any season. South Florida Hispanic theater company Arca Images presents “Whistling to Death: The Poetry of Nilo Cruz in Song” (Feb. 27-28), and Cruz directs his play “Sotto Voce” (Jan. 23-Feb. 15) for GableStage. The work was produced by Arca Images back in 2014.
THAT’S BROADWAY
The musical “Man of La Mancha” will turn 60 this year, and South Florida theatergoers will have at least two chances to see the imaginative retelling of the Don Quixote story. Maltz Jupiter Theater presents its original production of the Broadway favorite on its mainstage in Palm Beach (March 17 -April 5). The musical holds a special place for Actors’ Playhouse — it was the first show the company staged in its Kendall location in 1988 and then again as the opener when it moved to the Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables in 1996. It's celebrating 30 years on Miracle Mile with “Man of La Mancha” (Dec. 10-Jan.11).
Slow Burn Theatre has a slate of five Broadway musicals produced locally as the resident theater company at the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts’ from its opener “Catch Me If You Can” (Oct. 11-26) to the Alanis Morisette jukebox musical “Jagged Little Pill” (June 13-28) to close its season.
Direct from Broadway, “The Wiz” eases down the road in its first national tour of the 2024 Broadway revival. It’s the 50th anniversary of the musical retelling of “The Wizard of Oz,” and it opens the Arsht Center’s Broadway in Miami season (Oct. 7-12) and then moves on up to Palm Beach’s Kravis Center. (Oct.21-26).
GO NORTH
In Broward and Palm Beach counties, there’s an abundance of reasons to head north to catch theater this season. Formerly Fort Lauderdale-based Thinking Cap Theatre (TCT) is now in residence at The Hollywood Central Performing Arts Center. Its “Lizzie, The Musical” (Oct. 18-Nov. 1) is the story of Lizzie Borden set to a rock music score.
Ronnie Larsen’s Plays of Wilton continues its free theater series in Richardson Park in Wilton Manors. This time, the show goes indoors at POW! In the Park for “The Boys in the Band” (Aug. 29-Oct. 6).
A cast of four plays more than 150 characters in Fort Lauderdale’s New City Players’ “The 39 Steps” (Oct. 4-19) and at Theatre Lab at FAU in Boca Raton, two performers bring to life more than 30 characters in the world premiere of “The City in the City in the City” (Nov. 8-23).
Palm Beach Dramaworks gets star power for its “Driving Miss Daisy” (Feb. 6-March 1) with Debra Jo Rupp, known for her television roles in “That ‘70s Show” and “Friends,” in the role of Daisy.