\ud83c\udfad NEW! San Francisco Theatre Newsletter<\/p>\n
Oakland Theater Project has announced its 2026 Season: The Land of The Free, featuring seven new productions that examine a foundational tenet of America.<\/p>\n
\ud83c\udfad NEW! San Francisco Theatre Newsletter<\/p>\n
What does it mean to live in “the land of the free” at a time when democratic rights are shrinking and authoritarian power is rising? As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, Oakland Theater Project’s 2026 Season explores the tension between celebration and crisis.<\/p>\n
Freedom, once imagined as a birthright, now feels like a responsibility\u2014and sometimes a loss. Inspired by Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom, this season’s productions examine who holds freedom in America, who is denied it, and what it takes to protect it.<\/p>\n
In a year built for commemoration, we choose interrogation. Freedom is not fixed. It must be practiced, challenged, and defended. The company invites audiences to look honestly at where we stand\u2014and to imagine what freedom could still become.<\/p>\n
OTP has also announced acclaimed playwright and actor Lisa Ramirez as the company’s new Co-Artistic Director, alongside William Hodgson. Previously Associate Artistic Director, Ramirez’s new role continues nearly a decade of creative collaboration with the company, which has produced a number of her plays, including TO THE BONE, DOWN HERE BELOW, Book of Sand (a fairytale), and sAiNt jOaN (burn\/burn\/burn). As an actor, Ramirez has appeared regularly in OTP productions, including TO THE BONE, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Wasteland, The Crucible, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Angels in America Part I and Part II, and Ironbound. In the upcoming 2026 Season, she will appear in The House of Bernarda Alba and Orpheus Descending, and her forthcoming play She Se Puede (A Chorus of Huertas) will be produced in November and December.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am honored to take on the position of Co-Artistic Director at Oakland Theater Project, a place that has become my artistic home,\u201d said Ramirez. \u201cThe first time I saw OTP’s profoundly radical production of Waiting for Lefty in an antique car warehouse in Oakland, I knew that I had to work here. Three years ago, I moved back to the Bay Area, returning to my theatrical roots, where I started acting and making plays a few decades back\u2014a full circle. I am thrilled to begin a new chapter and to be part of keeping theatre alive in Oakland.\u201d<\/p>\n
2026 Season Shows<\/p>\n
Oakland Theater Project’s 2026 Season began with the sold-out\u00a0run of\u00a0The Mountaintop by Katori Hall, which performed in February 2026. OTP’s season continues with six upcoming productions:<\/p>\n
Assassins<\/p>\n
music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
\nbook by John Weidman
\nbased on an idea by Charles Gilbert, Jr.
\ndirected by Weston Scott<\/p>\n
March 20\u2013April 5<\/p>\n
In a country built on the promise of liberty, what drives someone to try to kill the person who represents that promise?<\/p>\n
Stephen Sondheim’s dark, razor-sharp musical presents a lineup of figures from American history, who assassinated \u2014 or tried to assassinate \u2014 American presidents.<\/p>\n
This daring one-person staging, directed by Weston Scott, features Adam KuveNiemann (Ironbound, Exodus to Eden) as the solo performer, placing every gunman, dreamer, outcast, and would-be revolutionary inside a single body. As KuveNiemann moves through history’s most infamous attempts on presidential power, freedom becomes a paradox \u2014 a rallying cry, a lie, a weapon.<\/p>\n
Assassins explores how the promise of freedom, when distorted, can sanctify isolation \u2014 and how a nation that confuses freedom with independence can unravel itself through violence.<\/p>\n
The House of Bernarda Alba<\/p>\n
by Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca
\nadapted by Chay Yew
\ndirected by Michael Socrates Moran<\/p>\n
May 22\u2013June 7<\/p>\n
Following the death of her second husband, Bernarda Alba imposes an eight-year mourning period on her household\u2014and all five of her daughters.<\/p>\n
Under the matriarch’s iron grip, freedom is a hunger: a pulse beneath floorboards, a body straining against lace and grief.<\/p>\n
Featuring OTP Co-Artistic Director Lisa Ramirez as Bernarda Alba, this new dance-theater production of Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca’s drama, adapted by Chay Yew, makes visible what repression tries to crush: desire, rebellion, and the human right to self-determination. In a house sealed against the world, freedom claws at the walls \u2014 until something breaks.<\/p>\n
Venue Location: To Be Announced<\/p>\n
The Fre<\/p>\n
by Taylor Mac
\ndirected by Mylo Cardona<\/p>\n
June 18\u201328<\/p>\n
Following OTP’s 2023 production of Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, OTP returns to the category-defying work of Taylor Mac with The Fre, in which a lone Hero searches for order in a society that worships impulse.<\/p>\n
Part mud-riot, part rave, The Fre is a queer, all-ages play that stages polarization inside a literal ball pit, pulling the audience into a world where freedom looks like chaos, conformity hides inside collective joy, and language dissolves into play.<\/p>\n
The result is both liberation and collapse \u2014 a muddy reminder that freedom can unite us, but it can just as easily devour us.<\/p>\n
Raucous, raunchy, and unexpectedly tender, The Fre explores freedom across class and tribal lines, reminding us that connection, play, and solidarity may be the only way out.<\/p>\n
Don’t miss this wild and generous work from a contemporary genius of the American theater.<\/p>\n
Orpheus Descending<\/p>\n
by Tennessee Williams
\ndirected by Will Detlefsen<\/p>\n
August 7\u201323<\/p>\n
A charismatic drifter arrives in a small southern town. Amid a community shaped by prejudice and moral control, his arrival awakens desires for love, justice, and self-determination \u2014 and sparks devastating consequences.<\/p>\n
Born of the Southern Gothic but urgently national, Tennessee Williams reimagines the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a fever dream of America \u2014 one where the promise of freedom is received not as a refuge, but as a threat.<\/p>\n
King Lear<\/p>\n
by William Shakespeare
\ndirected by Michael Socrates Moran<\/p>\n
October 9\u201318<\/p>\n
In the twilight of his rule, a king sets out to divide the kingdom among his three daughters. But in mistaking flattery for love, Lear’s choices usher in a new reign of domination, cruelty, and collapse.<\/p>\n
Stripped of title, authority, and comfort, Lear is left with nothing but his humanity.<\/p>\n
Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy examines a man who mistakes his position for his identity, and finds himself in a new world \u2014 one in which kings are fools, fools are wise, and the exiled become one another’s unlikely saviors.<\/p>\n
Written centuries ago, Shakespeare’s devastating examination of power asks whether freedom is possible in a world where control reigns \u2014 and why truth, care for the powerless, and dignity demand such risk.<\/p>\n
Venue Location: To Be Announced<\/p>\n
She Se Puede (A Chorus of Huertas)<\/p>\n
World Premiere
\nby Lisa Ramirez
\ndirected by Karina Guti\u00e9rrez<\/p>\n
Nov 20\u2013Dec 6<\/p>\n
In Lisa Ramirez’s newest play, \u201cS\u00ed, se puede\u201d becomes She Se Puede (A Chorus of Huertas) \u2014 a world premiere about Dolores Huerta and her lifelong fight for labor rights and true freedom.<\/p>\n
This vibrant theatrical portrait explores how Huerta’s perseverance, collective vision, and radical hope remain urgently necessary today \u2014 and examines freedom not as a gift, but as something organized, demanded, and won.<\/p>\n
Here, the fight for dignity is the fight for freedom, carried forward by those who refuse silence.<\/p>\n
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