The Public Theater has announced the full lineup for its 2025�2026 season, which will include nine productions. The highlights include a musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, which will be called The Seat of Our Pants, featuring songs by Ethan Lipton.
The absurdist play, which was just seen on Broadway in 2022, follows one family through 5,000 years—from the dinosaurs to the end of the world. It will star Tony winner Ruthie Ann Miles as Mrs. Antrobus, Damon Daunno as Henry Antrobus, Amina Faye as Glady Antrobus, Andy Grotelueschen as Announcer/Ensemble, Ally Bonino as Fortune Teller, Bill Buell as Turkey/Ensemble, and Geena Quintos as Mammoth/Ensemble. Allison Ann Kelly, Nat Lopez, and David Ryan Smith will make up the ensemble. The world premiere musical will be directed by Leigh Silverman and feature choreography by Sunny Min-Sook Hitt. It will run October 23–November 30.
The Seat of Our Pants is the rare adaptation of a Wilder play (the Thornton Wilder estate pulled a Kander and Ebb adaptation from public performance). As he previously told °ëµºÌåÓý, Lipton was given permission by Wilder's nephew, saying: "When I started working on the show, I felt very respectful and very reverent, and then I pretty quickly realized I had to be respectful but irreverent in the way that I treated it.â€�
The other highlights of the Public's season include a new play written by and starring John Leguizamo, a new play from Tony-nominated playwright Jordan E. Cooper, an adaptation of Ulysses from Elevator Repair Service, and two new plays from up-and-coming Asian-American playwrights.
The season will open with Leguizamo's The Other American (running September 11–October 12). The Emmy winner will star as Nelson Castro, a Colombian-American laundromat owner in Queens grappling with a failing business and buried secrets. Directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, the work previously premiered at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Additional casting will be revealed at a later date.
Cooper's Oh Happy Day! will play October 2�26. It is a reimagining of the Noah's Ark story but set in Mississippi at a birthday barbecue. Grammy Award-winning gospel artist Donald Lawrence will write original songs for the play. Lawrence will also direct, and additional casting will be revealed at a later date. Oh Happy Day! previously had a world premiere at Baltimore Center Stage.
Elevator Repair Service's newest literary adaptation, Ulysses, will run in January 2026. Unlike the group's previous hit Gatz, this show will only be two-and-a-half hours but will feature seven performers performing, verbatim, the text of James Joyce's novel. The show will be directed by John Collins, and will feature co-direction and dramaturgy by Scott Shepherd.
Other shows that will be part of the Public's 2025�26 season include: a play by newcomer Else Went, Initiative, which follows the lives of seven teens from 2000 to 2004 (November 4�30); a reimagining of Antigone through a female perspective, by Anna Ziegler, to play in winter/spring 2026; and a play from former United States Ambassador Julissa Reynoso and playwright Michael J. Chepiga, Public Charge, about Americans on a humanitarian mission in Haiti.
Plus, the Public will premiere two plays from Asian American playwrights as part of its long-term partnership with Ma-Yi Theater Company: Zoë Kim's Did You Eat and Jeena Yi's JESA. Did You Eat (October 14–November 9) previously had a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and is about Kim's fraught relationship with her mother. JESA follows four Korean-American sisters who gather after many years apart for their father's Jesa—a traditional ritual honoring the dead.
The Public is currently presenting the new musical Goddess starring Amber Iman. It will next present Twelfth Night in its newly reopened Delacorte Theatee in Central Park, starring Lupita Nyong'o, Peter Dinklage, Sandra Oh, and many other stars.
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