Theatre & Dance Season 2025-26
Muhlenberg's nationally ranked Theatre & Dance Department announces its production season for 2025-26Friday, May 9, 2025 03:13 PM
The critically acclaimed Department of Theatre and Dance at Muhlenberg College announces its production season for the 2025-26 academic year. Highlights include a critically acclaimed Shakespeare musical adaptation; a raucous physical comedy; a cult-fave blackbox musical; and the return of the FUSE interdisciplinary dance concert.
Tickets will be available in August. Updates and ticket links at muhlenberg.edu/seeashow
Ride the Cyclone
book, music and lyrics by Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell
September 25-28, 2025
In this outlandish and moving chamber musical, the lives of six teenagers from a Canadian chamber choir are cut short in a freak roller coaster accident. When they awake in limbo, a mechanical fortune teller invites each to tell a story to win a prize like no other — the chance to return to life. A cult hit with fans of smaller, offbeat musicals, “Ride the Cyclone” will be staged in Muhlenberg's intimate black box theatre. Theatre professor Troy Dwyer will direct, with choreography by Sophia Wentz ’26 and musical direction by Brian Chu. The New York Times calls “Ride the Cyclone” “delightfully weird.”
The Play That Goes Wrong
by Henry Shields, Henry Lewis and Jonathan Sayer
October 30 – November 2, 2025
Welcome to opening night of the Cornley University Drama Society’s newest production, “The Murder at Haversham Manor,” where things are quickly going from bad to utterly disastrous. This 1920s whodunit has everything you never wanted in a show — an unconscious leading lady, a corpse that can't play dead, and actors who trip over everything (including their lines). Nevertheless, the accident-prone thespians battle against all odds to make it through to their final curtain call, with hilarious consequences. Part Monty Python, part Sherlock Holmes, this Olivier Award-winning farce is a global comic phenomenom. Theatre professor Jim VanValen will direct. Performances take place during Muhlenberg's Family Weekend, including a special Saturday matinee.
Reset: New Dances
November 20-22, 2025
This showcase for Muhlenberg's advanced choreography students offers exhilarating world premiere works that explore a wide range of subjects, moods, and dance styles. Here, choreographers tell their stories through the transfigurative medium of dance. Dance Program chair Heidi Cruz-Austin will serve as artistic director.
In Motion
February 5-7, 2026
Muhlenberg's annual choreographic tour-de-force is the highlight of the dance season on campus, featuring world premiere works by Muhlenberg's acclaimed dance faculty and nationally recognized guest artists. Dance professors Elizabeth Bergman and Noel Price-Bracey will serve as artistic directors for this year's edition.
Everybody
by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
February 26 – March 1, 2026
This modern riff on the fifteenth-century morality play “Everyman” follows the character of Everybody — chosen from amongst the cast by lottery at each performance — as they journey through life's greatest mystery — the meaning of living. A finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, “Everybody” tells a story of philosophical heft that is also provocative and surprisingly, wildly funny. The New Yorker says the play “fills the heart in a new and unexpected way.” Theatre professor Leslie Hill will direct the production.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins will be on campus this fall as part of Muhlenberg's Living Writers Series, a triennial showcase for some of the great literary minds of the day.
FUSE
March 26-29, 2026
FUSE debuted in spring 2025 as a showcase for collaborations between choreographers and other artists, researchers, and scholars across campus. It was a tremendous success, featuring dance works that spanned the gamut from neuroscience to memory, environmental activism to the apocalypse. The show's eleven pieces represented the work of 23 principal creators and included four original musical scores, two works of poetry, a series of paintings, a set of original papier mâché masks, an invented lighting apparatus, a dance video, a photo exhibition, several academic research projects, and a podcast. This year's edition promises to be equally innovative, panoramic, and collaborative.
Twelfth Night
conceived by Kwame Kwei-Armah and Shaina Taub
music and lyrics by Shaina Taub
adapted from the play by William Shakespeare
April 23-26, 2026
Named one of the best new theatrical works of 2018 by Time, The Hollywood Reporter and The Washington Post, “Twelfth Night” is a rousing contemporary musical adaptation of Shakespeare's classic romantic comedy about mistaken identity and self-discovery. “Twelfth Night” tells the story of Viola, a young heroine who washes up on the shores of Illyria, disguises herself as a man, is sent to court a countess and falls hard for a duke. As she navigates this strange and wonderful new land, she finds her true self and true love in the process. The show features an original jazz-funk score by Shaina Taub, and will be directed by theatre professor James Peck, with musical direction by Vincent Trovato and choreography by Samuel Antonio Reyes.
Tickets and further information will be available at muhlenberg.edu/seeashow
About the Muhlenberg College Theatre & Dance Department
Muhlenberg offers Bachelor of Arts degrees in theatre and dance. The Princeton Review ranked Muhlenberg’s theatre program in the top twelve in the nation for eight years in a row, and Fiske Guide to Colleges lists both the theatre and dance programs among the top small college programs in the United States. Muhlenberg is one of only eight colleges to be listed in Fiske for both theatre and dance.
