America's 250th Birthday: A Nation of Multitudes Celebrates

Artwork for "L'Chaim America." (Art courtesy of The Braid)

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June 8, 2026 Daniella Ignacio Leave a comment

Marking a Big Birthday for a Nation That Contains Multitudes

A roundup of the countless projects celebrating America’s 250th birthday this summer and beyond.

By Daniella Ignacio

As celebrations of the nation’s semiquincentennial get underway this summer, we’re taking a moment to highlight theatrical projects that have piqued our interest, from those announced as official National Endowment for the Arts-sponsored America250 projects to companies celebrating (or counter-programming) in their own unique ways.

Community Engagement

At Atlanta’s Out of Hand Theater , its signature Equitable Dinners program this year is titled We Hold These Truths , and this time its question is: “What does America mean to you?” Using its model of a 10-minute play, a shared meal, and a facilitated conversation , community members are invited to share stories, hopes, and dreams for the future of America, which four playwrights will turn into original short plays. The playwrights are all writing from specific perspectives: Marcie Rendon, who is Native American; Melissa Simmons, a descendant of European immigrants; Dana Stringer, a descendant of enslaved people; and Jeilianne Vazquez, a recent immigrant from Latin America.

Community listening sessions shape and ground the work in local stories and perspectives. The theatre encourages participants to bridge divides and connect with neighbors. More than 30 Metro Atlanta elected officials, nonprofits, theatres, and houses of worship have already signed up to host We Hold These Truths. “We are so excited to gather our community to hear each other’s perspectives on the American experience, launched by theatre,” Out of Hand artistic director Ariel Fristoe said.

The company has also begun to license its model to other theatres. Pittsburgh’s RealTime Arts and Minneapolis’s Mixed Blood Theatre , for instance, held community listening sessions in April, and performances in private homes will be presented in July, including larger shows in community hubs. At RealTime Arts, their theme is American Potluck , exploring “food, health, and American identity,” and they’ve partnered with local health organizations Allegheny Health Network , Age Friendly Pittsburgh , and Pennsylvania Community Health Workers Association . According to RealTime Arts artistic director and lead playwright Molly Rice, invitees will bring dishes that speak to their American identity.

“We feel that the tension around politics and current events has caused neighbors to stop talking to each other as much as they used to,” Rice said in a statement. “We wanted to create events where neighbors could gather, eat together, and express what it means to be an American through food and conversation.”

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In Washington, D.C., Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company ’s Connectivity department has invited audiences to celebrate America’s 250th birthday all month long in July. At Woolly’s home in downtown D.C., equidistant from the Capitol and the White House, a dynamic series of free events, We the Woolly: Remixing 250 , will honor and celebrate the diversity of the nation’s capital and its people while inviting attendees to collectively envision the D.C. of the future. During this celebration, Woolly aims to serve as a cultural hub for the city, strengthening and connecting communities while fostering a more equitable, participatory, and creative society.

These events will feature live music, dance, spoken word, circus acts, family-friendly programming, and more as the company aims to push the boundaries of theatrical storytelling. According to artistic director Reggie D. White, members of the Playwrights Group will also present some work they’ve been writing during the monthlong celebration. While not all the works will necessarily be about America, White said, “As we are all authors of our own American story,” the pieces will explore “what the American story is now, and how do we write the next chapter together?”

“It’s definitely counter-programming—it’s definitely less ‘yay America,’” White continued. “It felt really exciting for Woolly to be a convening space for art and artists to not necessarily celebrate, but to grapple with the solemnity of this moment, and to ask ourselves, where are we now? Where do we hope to go, and how can art lead the way to us finding and building a society that we want to live with, to live in? So, if you come to 640 1D Street Northwest, you will see no wrestling matches, there will be no shirtless MMA fighters, but you will get to experience art from a variety of our connectivity partners, from our civic partners, from our arts partners.”

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This year marks a milestone for Karamu House Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio: It’s the 110th anniversary for the nation’s oldest African American theatre company. For America250, the theatre is one stop along Ohio’s Creativity Trail , a “drive your own adventure” celebration all year long. It will also present a new production of Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting (Sept. 24-Oct. 18), which highlights the moment that Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball, along with talkback sessions, an education guide conforming to Ohio state curriculum standards, and engagement activities in partnership with the Baseball Heritage Museum and the Cleveland Baseball Federation.

(Along those lines, look for our summer 2026 print edition, out in early July, to read our feature on theatres who faced and overcame NEA funding challenges this year, including Karamu House.)

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In Greater Greenville, South Carolina, Chautauqua ’s interactive History Comes Alive  “Revolutionary Americans” series celebrates famous Carolinians who fought and often died for freedom during the Revolution, and those who continued to upset the status quo to reshape their world and make America a more perfect union. These history shows consist of one character, a minimal set, and the audience as the supporting cast. A nationally acclaimed historical interpreter transports audiences back in time to tell a famous person’s stories performing in character and in costume. Then, the audience gets to join in to quiz the historical figure. Finally, the performer steps out of character and answers audience questions the subject couldn’t answer—or wouldn’t answer truthfully.

Summer and Fall Productions

The Braid Theatre Company ’s L’Chaim America! spotlights diverse, rarely heard American Jewish experiences, directed by producing director Susan Morgenstern. Having started May 12, its tour encompasses Los Angeles, Orange County, and the San Francisco Bay Area, with a culminating performance at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City on July 12, alongside global livestreams. Actors will play multiple roles and transport audiences from an Iranian American family’s Thanksgiving table to the Great Plains, from a naturalization ceremony to a quiet American suburb, and more. The Braid will partner with Jewish organizations for a performance on June 7 at L.A.’s Skirball Cultural Center .

“In divisive times, this show is a respite from the rhetoric and a reminder of who we are as Jews and as Americans,” said Braid founder and artistic director Ronda Spinak in a statement. “The Jewish people are a vibrant part of the American story. But I didn’t want to depict only the narrow version people think they know.”

Stories include those of L.A. Black Jewish writer/performer Joshua Silverstein, whose activist Ashkenazi grandparents allied with the Black community to help elect their city’s first Black mayor; screenwriter Robert Uriel Russin in Wyoming; Native American and Jewish author Emily Bowen Cohen; and Solomon Dueñas, an immigrant escaping civil war in El Salvador who opened one of the first Jewish bakeries in Orange County.

Writing and music is by Iranian Jewish author Esther Amini, Latin Jewish L.A. Times and New York Times journalist Sonia Nazario, composer Mike Himelstein, essayist Susan Baskin, Vanessa Bloom and David Chiu, Soviet Jewish immigrant child psychology writer Natalya Bogopolskaya, Braid executive director and Israeli American Sharon Landau, Iraqi-Israeli American Aharon Zagayer, and actor-songwriter Rhiannon Lewis.

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At Boston’s Company One Theatre , A New Era by Miranda Austen ADEkoje, directed by Summer L. Williams (Jul 18-Aug 8) journeys across a divided America as seven formidable women gather in Boston in 1895 for an unprecedented national conference. With liberation and Black lives at stake, can they get in formation, navigate their political differences, and organize together to criminalize lynching? A real-life story of politics, passion, and perseverance, A New Era both celebrates Boston’s Black suffragist movement and calls to build upon that legacy today.

“Just in time for America’s 250th birthday, A New Era centers on the critical role Black women have played in the fight for civil rights, abolition, and Black liberty,” the theatre states on its website. “Black women continually push movements forward, yet remain largely obscured in American history books due to both racism and sexism. A New Era celebrates a transformative part of Black history hosted right in Boston, and demonstrates the importance of organizing and strategizing toward collective liberation.”

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In San Diego, Write Out Loud will honor writers who feature in the National Garden of Heroes by staging one-person plays honoring their lives and works. They include Henry David Thoreau: Ripples from Walden Pond , written by Richard Platt and performed by Steve Smith; Mark Twain: Of Sound Heart and Deformed Conscience , written by Rachael VanWorme and performed by Paul Maley; Emily Dickinson: A Still Volcanic Life, written and performed by Rhianna Basore; and Walt Whitman: Direct From The Afterlife , written and performed by Todd Blakesley.

“We are honored to have this opportunity to bring people’s voices to life from America’s past,” artistic director Veronica Murphy said in a statement. “Whether they be Founding Fathers, favorite authors, or ordinary citizens who’ve made extraordinary sacrifices to uphold our nation through 250 years, we are reminded that we all play a role in this ‘great experiment’ called democracy. Our nation deserves to be celebrated.”

The performances will be at schools, libraries, and other community venues and will be accompanied by artist talkbacks, study guides for distribution by school teachers and library staff, and a public culminating event featuring original audience creations inspired by the featured literary heroes. Additionally, Write Out Loud will host a “We the People – Life and Liberty” story concert of stories, letters, poetry, and music on June 8 at Dottie Studio Theatre, and “Dear Doc – WWII Letters Home,” a reading of San Diego State University military members’ letters home during World War II, on June 14, Flag Day, at San Diego’s Scripps Ranch Theatre.

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In case you missed it, Philadelphia has already been celebrating the momentous year with productions about the Founding Fathers. At Lantern Theater Company , the Philadelphia premiere of Franklinland by Lloyd Suh tackles the relationship between Benjamin Franklin and his son William, who rebels and becomes the Royal Governor of New Jersey. The Wilma Theater earlier presented The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington by James Ijames , directed by Wilma HotHouse Company member and Brett Ashley Robinson, as part of the James Ijames Pass , and presented Suzan-Lori Parks ’ The America Play through May 25. In April, Philadelphia Arts Collective presented The Contrast, widely considered America’s first comedy, written in 1787 just after the Revolution, a sharp comedy of manners about a young nation figuring out what “American” identity looks like.

And we would be remiss to not include the numerous 1776 productions that have graced the nation’s

_Originally reported by [American Theatre](https://www.americantheatre.org/2026/06/08/marking-a-big-birthday-for-a-nation-that-contains-multitudes/)._