big announcement early in April<\/a>, but the first show of 2026-27 hadn\u2019t yet been finalized. Now it can be told: It\u2019s A Night With Janis Joplin, one of those rock \u2018n\u2019 roll jukebox biopic musicals, with Joplin\u2019s musical heroes Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Odetta, Nina Simone and Bessie Smith all represented. Starring (well, we don\u2019t know yet), it will run Sept. 16-Oct. 11.<\/p>\nAt freeFall Theatre, the current season\u2019s final production, Bash of the Titans, will wind down Aug. 2. It\u2019s a musical parody from the theater\u2019s Eric Davis and Michael Raabe (Oz).<\/p>\n
Davis, who is freeFall\u2019s co-founder and artistic director, has \u201cdevised\u201d The Nancy Drew Files, named as part of the new season but without specific production dates. FreeFall calls it an \u201cinteractive alternate reality game and theatrical experience\u201d based on the childhood Nancy Drew Mysteries books.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not Davis\u2019 first venture into cutting-edge stage territory: In June 2025, the company debuted his The House of Future Memory, which combined AI, audience interaction, improv and Shakespeare.<\/p>\n
Jay Berkow\u2019s What a Glorious Feeling! officially starts the 2026-27 rollout Sept. 18. It\u2019s a backstage play about the classic movie musical Singin\u2019 in the Rain, with Gene Kelley navigating studio politics and other annoyances, including the fact that his newly hired co-star Debbie Reynolds doesn\u2019t seem to know how to dance. It features all the iconic music, songs and dance of golden-age Hollywood.<\/p>\n
The title of November\u2019s show, a drama, is being held close to the vest for now (and no, it\u2019s not Nancy Drew).<\/p>\n
December brings a reprise of the Ferguson\/Greer musical A Christmas Carol: in Concert, while the new year introduces a production of Lark Eden, the first play by former bay area writer Natalie Symons (Nightsweat, The People Downstairs). The epistolary play, tracing the lifelong friendships of three southern women, opens Feb. 19.<\/p>\n
Opening April 2, is Great Expectations, an adaptation of the classic 19th century novel by Charles Dickens. A Commercial Jingle for Regina Comet (book, music and lyrics by Alex Wyse and Ben Fankhauser) will debut June 11, 2027; in this Off Broadway hit, a pop star named Regina Comet hires two inept and hitherto unsuccessful songwriters to create an anthem for her new fragrance.<\/p>\n
The Off-Central, St. Petersburg\u2019s intimate (43 seats) black box theater, has lined up its next season, after winding the last one down in early April:<\/p>\n
Sept. 10 brings Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike, Christopher Durang\u2019s dryly comedic Broadway hit about squabbling siblings.<\/p>\n
Nick Payne\u2019s Constellations debuts Oct. 16. The British playwright\u2019s play for two-people is a love story that blurs, stops and repeats time.<\/p>\n
Nov. 12: \u00a0Destroying David by Jason Odell Williams. On an art tour of Florence, Italy, a couple find themselves wrapped up in the history (and future) of Michelangelo\u2019s David, \u201cthe most beautiful thing in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hate Mail by Bill Corbett & Kira Obolensky (opening Jan. 14) is an epistolary two-person comedy, in which a man attempting to return a defective snow globe gets more than he bargained for.<\/p>\n
The show set to open Feb. 18 is To Be Announced.<\/p>\n
Pamela Morgan\u2019s Load Bearing Walls begins its run March 25. A legal battle unfolds over the estate distribution of a lesbian woman is challenged by her own mother.<\/p>\n
Coming soon: Tampa theaters announce 2026-27 seasons.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As bay area theater companies wind down their 2025-26 seasons, getting ready for that sweltering summer (and\/or fall)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-251124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}