CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE ANNOUNCES 2025-26 SEASON, FEATURING OUR TOWN, PRIMARY TRUST, TARTUFFE, AND MORE
Posted May 6, 2025 in Press Releases
(Cleveland, OH) Cleveland Play House (CPH) announces the 2025-26 season that will take and transport audiences beyond pure entertainment with gripping stories, powerful performances, and unforgettable moments. From contemporary dramas to reimagined classics, from intimate moments to grand spectacles, Cleveland Play House promises to enrich audiences with inspiring ideas, transfixing images, and stories that move audiences and artists together.
Cleveland Play House Artistic Director Michael Barakiva says, “Cleveland Play House's 2025-26 season promises to deliver much of the joyous, unique theatrical experiences that are becoming synonymous with CPH. From reimagined classics, including Tony Award-winning Mary Zimmerman's take on Our Town, and a fresh new translation of the quintessential comedy Tartuffe, to feel-good new plays such as Pulitzer Prize-winning Primary Trust, we promised the full gamut of artistic experiences, showcasing the best of Cleveland and national talent.”
The mainstage season includes Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, directed by Tony and Obie Award-winning Mary Zimmerman, Donald Steven Olson’s The Christine Jorgensen Show, brought to Cleveland by CPH Artistic Director Michael Barakiva who helmed the Off-Broadway premiere, Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust, and Molière’s Tartuffe (translation by Ranjit Bolt). Cleveland Play House also announces two add-on performances, producing Cleveland holiday favorite, A Christmas Story, and presenting Rachmaninoff and the Tsar, starring Hershey Felder as Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Jonathan Silvestri as Tsar Nicholas II. A fresh and mighty production that closes the 2025-26 season will be announced this summer.
Cleveland Play House Managing Director Rachel L. Fink says, “Cleveland Play House has been making history for more than 110 years — and we’re just getting started. This season, Cleveland’s finest artists and artisans, alongside brilliant collaborators from beyond our city, are creating theatre that’s urgent, fearless, and deeply rooted in the spirit of our community — reminding us why live performance matters more than ever."
Chair of the Cleveland Play House Board of Directors Michael Meehan states, “Our Tony-winning theatre brings a Tony-winning director, Tony-winning production collaborators, and a Pulitzer Prize winner to our stages. We are thrilled to announce another exciting season bursting with extraordinary art.”
TICKETING, SUBSCRIPTIONS, AND PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:
Anyone can become a Cleveland Play House Subscriber to unlock fantastic benefits, savings, and perks! Cleveland Play House subscription packages come in three price levels, including Anytime, Classic, and Value, and includes the five mainstage productions: Our Town, The Christine Jorgensen Show, Primary Trust, Tartuffe, and the highly anticipated fifth title. A Christmas Story and Rachmaninoff and the Tsar are add-ons, and can be purchased at a discounted rate when you subscribe. Subscriptions are available for purchase beginning Tuesday, May 6, 2025. Single tickets for the 2025-26 season will go on sale in mid-July. For more information, visit clevelandplayhouse.com.
Cleveland Play House’s 2025-26 season performance schedule has changed. Performances will take place Wednesdays through Sundays at 7:30 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. There are select Tuesday performances at 7:00 p.m.. The Walter & Jean Kalberer Student Matinee performances are scheduled on select Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. for school groups. Please visitclevelandplayhouse.comto view the full performance calendar.
The 2025-26 season was selected by the Cleveland Play House Season Advisory Committee that includes CPH Artistic Director Michael Barakiva and CPH Managing Director Rachel L. Fink, along with CPH staff members Dianna Angell, Kate Beckley, Donald Carrier, Pamela DiPasquale, Derek Green, Brittany Kent, Nathan Lilly, and Erin Ocampo.
Cleveland Play House offers accessibility services for guests throughout the season. Please visit Cleveland playhouse.com/accessibility to learn more.
Cleveland Play House recognizes its season supporters: Cuyahoga Arts & Culture and the Ohio Arts Council.
To learn more about the invigorating 2025-26 season, please visitclevelandplayhouse.com.
ABOUT THE 2025-26 SEASON
Mainstage Productions
Our Town
written by Thornton Wilder
directed by Mary Zimmerman
September 7 – 28, 2025
Allen Theatre
Join Cleveland Play House for a new staging of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece. In its depiction of the small town of Grover’s Corners and the lives of the Webb and Gibbs families, whose children fall in love, marry, and eventually die, Our Town explores universal themes of life, love, and death, and celebrates the value of appreciating the magic of life’s mundane moments. As staged by Tony Award-winning MacArthur “Genius” Mary Zimmerman, whose aesthetic aligns beautifully with that of the author, the Cleveland Play House production of Our Town will reassert itself, again, as one of the greatest plays ever written, one that fills hearts with purpose and meaning.
The Christine Jorgensen Show
book and lyrics by Donald Steven Olson
music by Donald Steven Olson and Mark Nadler
directed by Michael Barakiva
October 26 – November 16, 2025
Outcalt Theatre
Original songs propel this hilarious and heartfelt play about living life on your own terms. In the buttoned-up 1950s, an ex-GI became the first transgender celebrity in America. Based on the actual life of Christine Jorgensen, The Christine Jorgensen Show is a feel-good re-telling of Jorgensen’s remarkable second act and the cabaret act she developed that transformed her from headline into headliner. Cleveland Play House Artistic Director Michael Barakiva, who helmed the show’s Off-Broadway premiere, brings this wholesome hit to Cleveland for its Midwest premiere.
Primary Trust
written by Eboni Booth
February 8 – March 1, 2026
Outcalt Theatre
“This is the story of a friendship. Of how I got a new job. A story of love and balance and time.” So begins Kenneth’s tale of being laid off, of discovering new beginnings, new friends, and new hopes. Absorbing, funny, and moving—it is no wonder that Primary Trust is now one of the most produced plays in the country. Hailed from coast to coast, the 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winner is, reports the LA Times, “as tenderhearted as it is spryly comic and as poignant as it is ultimately uplifting.” As The Observer said, “it will restore your faith in theatre’s elemental storytelling powers.” It will also restore your hope.
Primary Trust is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc. www.concordtheatricals.com
Tartuffe
by Molière
translated by Ranjit Bolt
directed by Michael Barakiva
Outcalt Theatre
April 5 – 26, 2026
Préparez-vous, you, for one hilarious night of theatre. The man of the house has lost his marbles! He’s been blinded by the counterfeit zeal of a sanctimonious scoundrel who fully intends to make off with his livelihood and probably his wife. Tartuffe is on the loose, making for one of classical theatre’s most celebrated roles. Our production of the funniest French play ever conceived promises to be as relatable today as when it premiered in 1664, as bitingly incisive, and equally entertaining.
The highly anticipated final production in Cleveland Play House’s 2025-26 season will be announced this summer.
SEASON ADD-ONS
A Christmas Story
written by Philip Grecian
based on the motion picture A Christmas Story, (c) 1983 Turner Entertainment Co., distributed by Warner Bros., written by Jean Shepherd, Leigh Brown and Bob Clark; and on the book In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd
directed by Jackson Gay
November 30 – December 21, 2025
Allen Theatre
One boy. One holiday wish. One triple-dog-daring good time! Cleveland’s favorite holiday tradition returns to the Allen Theatre in all its pink-bunny-suit, glowing-leg-lamp, frozen-flagpole-licking glory. Be a holiday hero and bring your brood downtown to bask in the warm glow of holiday lights and experience the joy of a gift that keeps on giving all season long. It’s “one of the more enchanting ways to be transported to a world beyond our own,” raves The Plain Dealer.
Produced by special arrangement with DRAMATIC PUBLISHING, Woodstock, Illinois
A special presentation:
Rachmaninoff and the Tsar: A New Musical Play
The Music of Sergei V. Rachmaninoff
book by Hershey Felder
Starring Hershey Felder as Sergei Rachmaninoff and Jonathan Silvestri as Tsar Nicholas II
directed by Trevor Hay
March 5 – 15, 2026
Allen Theatre
Hershey Felder returns to Cleveland in his newest hit, starring as the virtuoso pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. Having safely left Russia during the 1917 revolution, Rachmaninoff now ensconced in Beverly Hills, shares his memory of a long-ago encounter with Russia’s last Tsar, portrayed by British-Italian actor Jonathan Silvestri. Rachmaninoff and the Tsar features the most beloved compositions by this last great representative of Russian romanticism, including Prelude in C# minor and the 2nd Piano Concerto. It promises to be another dramatic musical journey in the Hershey Felder style that audiences all over the world have come to adore.
EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP
MICHAEL BARAKIVA (Artistic Director) is an Armenian-Israeli American director and writer who proudly serves as the 11th Artistic Director of CPH. His work has been seen at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Primary Stages, Syracuse Stage, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, and the Hangar Theatre, where he served as Artistic Director. He founded The Upstart Creatures, a theatre company that creates community through performance and food, as well as the Leadership Initiative Project, which equips historically excluded artists with the tools to succeed in leadership positions. Barakiva has received three Drama League directing fellowships, the Phil Killian Directing Fellowship (OSF), the David Merrick Prize in Drama, and was a Granada Artist-in-Residence at UC Davis. He led workshops on musical theatre at the International Puppet Theater in Sofia, Bulgaria, and was a presenter at the International University Theatre Festival at UNAM in Mexico City. He served as producer of Summer Camp 6 (Soho Rep) and as the Readings and Workshops Coordinator at New York Stage and Film, as well as a Primary Coach on Season 2 of MTV’s Made. As a writer, Michael is the recipient of a Red Bull Commission for his adaptation of John Milton's Paradise Lost, an EST/Sloan Project Commission, and a co-author of String Theory (Connotation Press). His YA novels (One Many Guy, Hold My Hand, Keepers of the Stones and Stars, all published by Macmillan) novels have been named to the Rainbow List, Equality Family Council Reading List, The Barnes and Noble’s Perfect Valentine’s Day YA Novels list, spending over a year as Goodreads #1 LGBTQ YA Novel. Education: Vassar College, The Juilliard School. www.michaelbarakiva.com.
RACHEL L. FINK (Managing Director) is thrilled to return home to Northeast Ohio. Her childhood was filled with rich and foundational Cleveland arts experiences, and it was at Heights High that Rachel’s passion for transformative theatre-making, social justice, and inclusive arts participation was ignited. A graduate of Case Western Reserve University, Rachel was introduced to the field of arts administration by a professor who changed the course of her career. That introduction led to an internship at Cleveland Play House and ultimately to an MFA in Theater Management from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. Following graduate school, Rachel embarked on a 16-year chapter at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where she founded the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, building it into a nationally recognized center for arts learning and engagement. She later served as Managing Director of Theatre Bay Area, supporting over 300 theatres and 2,000 artists, and most recently as Executive Director of the Tony Award-winning Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago. Producing highlights include Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Steadfast Tin Soldier, Her Honor Jane Byrne (locally broadcast on Chicago NPR affiliate WBEZ), and Lookingglass Alice, which aired nationally on PBS in 2023. Rachel has been recognized through fellowships with the Aspen Institute, artEquity, the British Council’s Cultural Leadership International Programme, and the University of Chicago’s Civic Leadership Academy. Having previously served as co-chair of the Professional Association of Chicago Theatres and on the boards of the League of Chicago Theatres and Theatre Bay Area, she currently serves on the boards of the League of Resident Theatres and CreativeOhio, and remains deeply committed to advancing the role of theatre in building more connected, equitable, and human-centered communities.
ABOUT CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE
CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE, founded in 1915 and recipient of the 2015 Regional Theatre Tony Award, is America's first professional regional theatre. Throughout its rich history, CPH has remained dedicated to its mission to inspire, stimulate, and entertain diverse audiences across Northeast Ohio by producing plays and theatre education programs of the highest professional standards. CPH has produced more than 100 world and/or American premieres, and over its long history more than 12 million people have attended over 1,600 productions. Today, Cleveland Play House celebrates the beginning of its second century of service while performing in three state-of-the art venues at Playhouse Square in downtown Cleveland. Cleveland Play House is made possible in part by state tax dollars allocated by the Ohio Legislature to the Ohio Arts Council (OAC). The OAC is a state agency that funds and supports quality arts experiences to strengthen Ohio communities culturally, educationally, and economically. Cleveland Play House is supported in part by the residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. To learn more, visit:www.clevelandplayhouse.com.
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