Roundup: World Premieres Featuring Bhangra, True Crime, and Childhood Memories

Shannon Lee Clair and Zack Rocklin-Waltch in a workshop staging of "Saint Megan," opening this month at L.A.'s Rogue Machine Theatre.

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October 1, 2026 American Theatre Editors Leave a comment

What Else Is New: Bhangra, True Crime, Childhood Memories

This month’s roundup of world premieres from coast to coast (and beyond).

By American Theatre Editors

In addition to a certain number of ghost stories, which is only to be expected given the holiday that caps this month, another micro-trend we clocked in this month’s world premiere listing: pastor’s wives. Okay, it’s just two plays ( Great White Throne and Speaking in Tongues ), but still, it’s not a trope you see every day. We also noticed a lot of interesting Theatre for Young Audiences offerings this time around. New work for new audiences—who could ask for anything more?

Northeast

Manuel Oliver’s Guac , a solo show about the loss of his son in the Parkland shooting, had its true world premiere as long ago as 2019, but we’re counting it here in part because its Oct. 1-10 run marks the debut of the show in a new bilingual version, and in party because the performance inaugurates a promising new venture: the People’s Theatre: Centro Cultural Immigrante , in New York City’s Inwood neighborhood.

No, Michelle Kholos Brooks’s Nacho Ate Spiderman is not a new Marvel installment but a comedy about warring beachfront neighbors who tangle over their pets. Directed by Sarah Norris, it’s at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, New Jersey, Oct. 1-25.

Machine Learning by Kate Vozella explores “the very human cost of engineering intimacy” among four volunteers in a secretive experiment. A Little Engine Theatre production at Manhattan Neighborhood Network in New York City, it runs Oct. 6-30 and is directed by Colm Summers.

In Run Ben Run , the newest immersive romp from Philadelphia’s Applied Mechanics company, a panoply of historic American Bens—Franklin, Vereen, Affleck, etc.—struggle to make a film together. The surreal script is by Rebecca Wright. It plays at Philly’s Christ Church Neighborhood House, Oct. 6-18.

A Beat of Our Own is a new musical set in the world competitive bhangra dance, with a book by Rehana Lew Mirza & Mike Lew and music & lyrics by Sam Willmott. Directed by Stafford Arima, it runs at McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey, Oct. 7-25.

Catalan dramatist Josep Maria Miró’s The Nicest Body Ever Seen Around These Parts , a solo play about a body discovered in a small town, with revelatory results, makes its U.S. bow in a brand new English translation by Sharon Feldman. Directed by Mei Ann Teo, the PlayCo production runs at Theatre 122CC in New York City, Oct. 7-Nov. 7.

Eliya Smith’s Two Girls promises to revisit viral shock porn videos of the 2000s in a style billed as “Homeric.” Directed by Chloe Claudel and Mitchell Polonsky, this Goat Exchange production runs in rep with Milo Cramer’s School Pictures at Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City, Oct. 7-Nov. 1.

Yussef El Guindi’s form-bending hostage drama Refugee Rhapsody continues a rolling world premiere that began over the summer at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival with a run at Pittsburgh’s PICT Classic Theatre, Oct. 9-25. Direction is by Elizabeth Elias Huffman.

For just three nights (Oct. 13-15), Charles Mee’s Prelude will be offered as a kind of outdoor 40th anniversary celebration for the path-breaking New York City company En Garde Arts. It will unfold on the plaza outside Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Ashland Avenue venue. Directed is by Anne Bogart.

Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen , a new musical based on Moyoco Anno’s award-winning manga, will be staged immersively in the former home of the New York City production of Sleep No More , rechristened as the Night Egg at the Culture Club. With a book by Leah Nanako Winkler, music & lyrics by the late, lamented Duncan Sheik, and direction and choreography by Rob Ashford, it’s slated to run Oct. 14-Jan. 3, 2027.

Performer/interactive electronics innovator Andrew Schneider’s PLAZA is billed as a “multidisciplinary, multi-week event” that “harnesses the coincidences and synchronicities that come with exiting in a shared space”—in this case, the iconic outdoor plaza of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Co-commissioned by the Center and PS21, it runs Oct. 14-25.

Alexander Thomas’s self-penned solo show Something About Money , running at Ithaca, New York’s Kitchen Theatre Company Oct. 14-25, examines the way money shapes our emotional lives as much as our pocketbooks.

Bitcoin Bad Boy —written by Ben Schiller, former editor of the crypto news site CoinDesk—is billed as “a comedy about a presidential pardon, a family with debts, and a guy who just wants to build.” Directed by Meg Gomez-Campbell, it runs Oct. 15-25 at the Chain Theatre in New York City.

Based on the true story of pioneering sports manager Effa Manley, the first woman inducted into National Baseball Hall of Fame, Effa Loves Baseball is written by Pia Wilson and directed by marcus d. harvey, and runs at Premiere Stages at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, Oct. 15-25.

A Kafka-esque comedy of horrors, based on actual court transcripts from a notorious sham tribunal of the Soviet era, Laura Zlatos’s Show Trial runs at the Tank in New York City, Oct. 15-Nov. 8. The director is Tom Costello.

The Broadway season’s first new musical, Wanted , follows two Black women who pass as white in the Old West, with music by Ross Baum and a book & lyrics by Angelica Chéri. Direction is by Stevie Walker-Webb and opening night is Oct. 15.

Bathers , the newest play by writer/director Charlie Rinehart-Jones, depicts a group of young friends trying to console one of their cohort over the loss of a parent. This Theatre 154 production runs at ChaShaMa in New York City, Oct. 16-24.

In Mona Pirnot’s I Became We , a 16-person chorus voices a woman’s monologue about “one of the life’s most important decisions” (we think we can guess which one). The music is by Jack D. Coen, the director is by Sarah Benson, and the venue is Atlantic Theater Company in New York City, Oct. 16-Nov. 15.

The bilingual Leave a Message After…THE BEEP , billed as a “musical love letter to the Puerto Rican voice, in all its verve,” anthologizes some of the great Nuyorican poets and their island counterparts. Adaptation and direction is by Rosalba Rolón, artistic director of Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre in New York City, where the show runs Oct. 15-Nov. 22.

The title of Billy Crystal’s new solo show 860 , running for a limited Broadway engagement Oct. 21-Jan. 2, 2027, refers to the address of the family he lost in the Palisades fires of 2025. Direction is by Scott Ellis.

13 playwrights contributed to the “exquisite corpse” construction of The Kick Inside , resulting in the story of a woman “grows awfully tired of the way that people talk to one another and begins experimenting with language.” A production by the Million Underscores, it is directed by Nicolás Noreña at HERE Arts Center in New York City, Oct. 21-Nov. 7.

Bryna Turner’s new comedy-drama The Visitors follows a young woman who shocks her adult siblings with a modest proposal. It runs at Second Stage Theater in New York City, Oct. 21-Dec. 6. Direction is by Jenna Worsham.

It’s always a judgment call, but we’re going to count Roundabout Theatre Company’s Broadway staging of Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid as new for the purposes of this list, thanks to its adaptation by Bill Irwin, who also stars in the title role. Direction is by Brandon J. Dirden, and the New York City run is Oct. 22-Nov. 22.

Lisa Berkenmeier’s radio island , a gothic thriller about an international hostage negotiator, will be staged in Pittsburgh’s scenic Rockwell Park, as is the wont of the city’s site-specific Quantum Theatre. Directed by Katie Brook, it runs Oct. 23-Nov. 15.

The Haunting of Hooverton Hotel , a satire of ghostly murder mystery tropes, is written by Jacob Albarella and Jason Kaiser. It runs at the Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo, New York, Oct. 24-Nov. 14.

The newest installment of Richard Nelson’s ongoing series about an extended family in Rhinebeck, New York, We’ll See , has as its helpful subtitle “Conversations Among the Apple Family on the Night of the Midterm Elections.” Those, for the record, are Nov. 3, but the run at New York City’s Public Theater is Oct. 25-Nov. 22.

The title of Chadwick Stokes and Jessie Nelson’s new rock opera, 1972 , is a pointed reference to the pre- Roe v. Wade era, as a young woman who barely survives an illegal abortion joins an underground feminist network for reproductive rights and health. Nelson also directs, and it runs at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Oct. 27-Nov. 22.

Paul David Young’s Livia: A Roman Tragedy uses the story of the 1st-century leader to interrogate tyranny and rebellion. Directed by Danilo Gambini, it runs at the Flea in New York City, Oct. 26-Nov. 15.

A fraught brother-sister relationship is at the heart of Dan Giles’s The Charioteer , directed by Matt Dickson at running at the cell theatre in New York City, Oct. 28-Nov. 22.

Inspired by the stories of Sholem Aleichem, The Blue Violinist Over West End Avenue follows the uneasy reunion of an Upper West Side Jewish family. Written by Debbie Goodstein and directed by Jonathan Silverstein, it runs at Theatre Row in New York City, Oct. 28-Dec. 5.

The Getaway Driver follows two women linked by a fateful bank robbery, one a revolutionary accomplice, the other the wife of an officer killed in the heist. Written by Deborah Salem & Charlie Thurston, it continues the rolling world premiere that began last month at Trinity Rep at Cambridge, Massachusetts’s Central Square Theater, Oct. 29-Nov. 22. The director is Curt Columbus.

In Julie Kramer’s Legerdemain , a jaded waitress and her most devoted customer share a wild, possibly scary night. Directed by Lynn Rosen, it’s at the Tank in New York City, Oct. 29-Nov. 22.

The Glorious Death of Comrade What’s-His-Name is a new musical adaptation of Nikolai Erdman’s dark Soviet-era comedy The Suicide , with a book by David Bridel and music & lyrics by Simon Gray & Raymond Bokhour. Directed by John Christian Plummer, it runs at Philipstown Depot Theater in Garrison, New York, Oct. 30-Nov. 22.

South

The Pansy Hour is a new immersive piece from Submersive Productions, to be held at “a secret club” in the Baltimore neighborhood of Hampden, that celebrates queer joy and resilience by revisiting and recreating the short-lived “pansy craze” of the 1920 and ’30s. Run dates Oct. 1-Nov. 15.

Ever wonder what happened after Dorothy and co. defeated the Wicked Witch? In Will Storrs’s The Hope of Oz , at Montford Park Players in Asheville, North Carolina, Oct. 2-24, the oppressive Wizard has consolidated his power, but revolution is in the air. Gabby Bailey is the director.

America’s true-crime obsession gets the musical treatment in Like Father , running at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, Oct. 8-Nov. 15. With a folk-pop score and book by Jacob Ryan Smith & Caroline Pernick, the show follows a family whose lives are overturned by an intrusive podcast. Direction is by Tinashe Kajese-Bolden.

Playwright Kelundra Smith (also the publications director of TCG, which publishes this magazine) debuts her latest comedy, Other Paths to God , at Atlanta’s Horizon Theatre Co., Oct. 9-Nov. 8. Following the shenanigans in a hospital ICU, it’s inspired by Smith’s interviews with real-life nurses.

If the premise and title of Alba sound familiar—it follows a strong-willed Cuban matriarch struggling to maintain control of her house—that’s because playwright Alejandro Rodriguez was openly inspired by Lorca’s classic La Casa de Bernarda Alba . It runs at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Florida, Oct. 9-25. KJ Sanchez is the director.

In Gloria Majule’s satire Uhuru , a group on a “Tanzanian-only” c

_Originally reported by [American Theatre](https://www.americantheatre.org/2026/10/01/what-else-is-new-bhangra-true-crime-childhood-memories-and-more/)._