Reimagined 'Fantasticks,' Pulitzer finalist 'Gloria' in Second Stage Theater's 2026-27 season

The award-winning nonprofit company will present five total productions across its Broadway and Off-Broadway spaces in the coming year.

Summary

• Second Stage Theater's 2026-27 season will feature two Broadway premieres: a reimagined version of the long-running musical The Fantasticks and a revival of the Pulitzer-nominated play Gloria
• The company's Off-Broadway season will include the world-premiere plays The Visitors; Work of Devotion; and how to roll a blunt

Second Stage Theater has announced its 2026-27 theatre season, including 2 Broadway productions at the Hayes Theater and 3 Off-Broadway productions at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

First in the Broadway season, starting performances October 22 ahead of a November 16 opening, is the previously announced Broadway premiere of The Fantasticks, the longest-running musical of all time for its 42-year Off-Broadway premiere. The Broadway version reimagines The Fantasticks as a gay love story in which two moms plot to make their children fall in love.

Original bookwriter/lyricist Tom Jones returned to pen the revised version, and music is by Harvey Schmidt. Tony Award winner Christopher Gattelli (Newsies, Death Becomes Her, Schmigadoon!) directs and choreographs.

The spring show at the Hayes will be the Broadway premiere of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Gloria, a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist. Second Stage artistic director Evan Cabnet, who directed the play’s 2015 world premiere at Vineyard Theatre, returns to stage the dark comedy about early-career employees fighting their way up the crumbling corporate ladder at an NYC magazine.

Second Stage previously produced the Tony Award-winning Broadway premieres of Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate (Best Revival of a Play in 2024) and Purpose (Best Play in 2025). Gloria starts performances March 17 ahead of an April 5 opening.

The company's Off-Broadway season, containing three world premieres, will begin with The Visitors, starting October 21 and opening November 9. Writer Bryna Turner and director Jenna Worsham, the team behind the acclaimed 2022 Off-Broadway play At the Wedding, reunite on this show about a tense reunion between four siblings as one of them is trying to get pregnant.

In winter 2027 is Miranda Rose Hall's Work of Devotion, about eighth-century nuns in Italy reevaluating their lives after their leader suddenly dies. Performances begin February 3 ahead of a February 22 opening.

Second Stage's final Off-Broadway production is how to roll a blunt, written by Naomi Lorrain and directed by Colette Robert. The show follows two best friends, Maya and James, debating whether to go to the wedding of their college exes. The show begins April 14 and opens April 28.

Additional information about all the above productions, including exact performance dates, casting, and additional creative team members, have yet to be announced.

Photo credit: Playwrights Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Bryna Turner, Miranda Rose Hall, and Naomi Lorrain. (Jacobs-Jenkins photo by Jai Lennard; Turner photo by Lila Barth; Hall photo by Julian Elijah Martinez; Lorrain photo by Stan Demidoff)