Yale Rep's 2026-27 Season Will Include Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and a New Adaptation of The Seagull

Yale Repertory Theatre’s 2026-27 season will feature five productions, including two world premieres. This will be the first season for incoming artistic director Evan Yionoulis, who begins her tenure on July 1.

The season kicks off with August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (October 2-24), the play’s return to Yale Rep for the first time since its world premiere in 1984. Timothy Douglas directs this portrait of the pressures of racism and exploitation on Black artists.

Next up is Soho Rep’s production of Watch Me Walk (November 14-December 5) by two-time OBIE Award winner Anne Gridley and directed by Eric Ting. The show is about Gridley’s diagnosis of Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), a rare degenerative neurological disease which her mother and grandmother also had.

Kate Attwell’s Electra America (January 14, 2027-February 6, 2027) will have its world premiere. Directed by Sivan Battat, the play reconsiders Greek tragedy in the maelstrom of religious zealotry.

Yura Kordonsky’s new version of The Seagull (March 5-27, 2027) will be the first production of Chekhov’s play at Yale Rep since 1978. Kordonsky also directs the production.

The season will conclude with the world premiere of Quisqueya on the Hudson (April 23, 2027-May 15, 2027) by Guadalís Del Carmen, in a production directed by Knud Adams. The play takes place in 1961 in the apartment of a family in San Juan Hill—the community demolished to build Lincoln Center.