2026/27 Season
This year, Gideon Theatricals is welcoming playwrights, directors, and composers from coast to coast to develop and present new plays and musicals. We’re thrilled to bring these artists and stories to Ann Arbor, and to share these developmental pieces with our community. These shows run the gamut of the cutting edge within the theater industry, presenting a striking vision for the theater of tomorrow.
Fairies
Written by Mark Thomas Johnson & Yoni Weiss
Directed by Jeff Wagner
FAIRIES turns J.M Barrie's Peter Pan on its head in a delightfully deranged presentation of the classic story. This madcap troupe of actors asks the audience: what if Wendy fought against her ending, what if Peter has as many secrets as Hook, and what if the only way to fly is by snorting fairy dust? Featuring the horniest Lost Boys ever seen onstage, this play is a violently coked-out adaptation of Peter Pan where everybody’s gay and half-demented.
September 24–25, 2026
There Is No McDonald’s In Namibia
Written by Megan Ruoro
Directed by Vera Alonzo
While studying abroad one summer in Prague, Maya, a Black college student from Connecticut, meets an elusive Czech documentarian making a film examining the complicated history of the city's small Namibian community. A spiral on how to tell the truth.
November 14-15, 2026
Killing Adolf
Music and Lyrics by Daniel Seligman
Book by Justin Borak
Directed by Mia Ehrlich
Original Concept by Daniel Seligman and Mia Ehrlich
Two brothers with opposing ideologies and a fracturing friendship are asked a time-old question on their first day of college: “Would you kill baby Hitler?”. Four years later, their beloved professor dies, and leaves them a Time Machine with a note reading: FINAL ASSIGNMENT.
December 11, 2026
Grant Carver Is Dead
Score by Jacob Ryan Smith & Daniel Mertzlufft
Book by Tyler Joseph Ellis
Director TBA
Grant Carver Is Dead takes place over the course of a single night in a small coastal town in Maine, where four former friends reunite in the basement of their late friend Grant’s home on the one-year anniversary of his death. Suddenly, Grant reappears, alive, charming, and completely unaware of how he died. With only until sunrise before he’s gone again, the group leaves the basement behind and embarks on a chaotic, heartfelt journey through their town, chasing one last night of joy, mischief, and connection.
January 28–29, 2027
The Virgin Missile Crisis
Written by Hoyt Hilsman
Directed by Bryan Langlitz
It’s October 1962, and the world is changing fast. So fast, in fact, that a U-2 spy plane soaring over Cuba warns us the whole dang thing may end tomorrow. But for fifteen-year-old Duncan Ambrose, the one thing more terrifying than imminent nuclear annihilation…would be dying a virgin. Set during the white-knuckled days leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, this coming-of-age comedy ricochets between the fuzzy hope of adolescent dreams and the harsh reality of what it means to become a man. Quick question: What does it mean to become a man? Duncan Ambrose would really like to know.
February 19–20, 2027
haters gonna hate
Written by Justin Borak
Directed by JuJu Jaworski
The hatred that fuels our youth burns quietly in a high school basement somewhere in middle America.
haters gonna hate follows a high school girl, Cel, as she invites all of her suitors to her finished basement to put them through a set of trials with the prize of her hand (at prom). An exploration of how we as youth expel and deal with our anger, pain, and hurt all wrapped up in a kinda adaption of The Misanthrope by Moliére.
April 2–4, 2026