Nonprofit 59E59 Theaters has announced the lineup of its Winter 2025/26 season, plus Resident Off Broadway Theater Company Primary Stages’ full program for the year including Alex Lin’s Laowang: A Chinatown King Lear, an imaginative new spin on King Lear. More information about the full season, including tickets and performance schedules, is available at 59E59.org.
About the Shows
November 1 – December 14: Primary Stages presents Laowang: A Chinatown King Lear by Alex Lin
Don’t mess with a Chinese grandma: when a high-rise developer threatens to buy out A-Poh’s successful Chinatown restaurant, the martyr-complex matriarch gathers her three precious grandchildren from all corners of the country to plan their next mode of attack. There’s just one problem – A-Poh’s memory is rapidly fading. What follows is a chaotic journey through reality, myth, and magic.
October 18 – November 23: PinProductions and María Teresa Uzal Rodríguez Producciones present The Importance of Doing Art by Susannah Dalton
Faking art is easy — until it gets real. When two average schlubs pretend to be artists to get laid, their scheme spirals into a hilarious tangle of pretend philosophies, real feelings, and an accidental quest for authenticity in the absurd world of modern art.
November 6 – 23: One Year Lease Theater presents Wake by Leon Ingulsrud and Brooke Shilling
In a magical kitchen where memory, grief, and absurdity collide, a woman mourning her mother’s death navigates the messy, beautiful, and often hilarious process of letting go. Even if closure proves elusive, there is breakfast. There is warmth. There is someone sitting beside you. Can grief be metabolized like a meal?
December 2 – 21: The Tank presents Everything Is Here by Peggy Stafford
In a retirement community, three women reflect on their pasts, reenact scenes from A Streetcar Named Desire, and confront the absurdities of aging. Quirky and unsentimental, Everything is Here examines how strange and perilous life can be in this lighthearted reflection on impermanence, language, and the fragile stories that shape us.
January 10 – February 15: New Jersey Repertory Company presents The Bookstore by Michael Walek
“When God closes a door, she opens a bookstore.” Indie bookstore owner Carey has a special gift for recommending the perfect book. While trying to survive in New York City, she has created a found family of coworkers who unite over their passion for literature – and a glass of wine. This band of misfits turn the pages of their lives and learn to navigate the plot twists that are thrown their way.
January 7 – 25: Happenstance Theater presents JUXTAPOSE | A Theatrical Shadow Box
JUXTAPOSE is inspired by the shadow boxes of Joseph Cornell, the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amélie), and Mon Oncle by Jacques Tati. Eccentric characters trying to coexist in a magical-realist tenement building during the sixth mass extinction have their lives interrupted and illuminated by a human shooting star who crash-lands through their roof.
February 5 – March 1: Twilight Theatre Co. presents Not Nobody by Brian Dykstra
If you’re not guilty, what are you afraid of? McAlester Daily is a professor of ethics who finds himself accidentally entangled with the police. After saving an officer’s life, McAlester is hailed as a hero—but as questions mount and his refusal to conform raises red flags, the system begins to see him as something else.
February 28 – April 12: Primary Stages presents CALF SCRAMBLE by Libby Carr
Deep in a dusty East Texas barn, five teenage girls raise calves and wrestle with what it means to be good – at school, at God, at girlhood. CALF SCRAMBLE is a fiercely original, darkly funny coming-of-age tale soaked in sweat, scripture, and competition, where faith is tangled with survival, and tenderness bucks like a wild animal.
