Onstage Georgetown: September 2026
By • August 31, 2026 0 503
The 2026-27 theater season heats up while temperatures outside cool down. Time to get back on your performing arts wheels and pedal over to your favorite DMV venue for some of these great shows.
GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES
Through Sept. 6
Two kindred spirits find their way back to each other across a lifetime of scraped knees, broken bones and a whole host of imperfect moments in this new comedy by award-winning playwright Rajiv Joseph. Beneath the play’s sharp wit and darkly comic edge lies a tender story of love, resilience and the quiet ways we hold on to one another.
MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG
Through Nov. 1
Those keepers of the Sondheim flame out in Shirlington dig into the composer/lyricist’s
masterwork about friendship, ambition and the compromises that shape a life. Matthew Gardiner directs the show 20 years after its last Signature production.
DIRTY DANCING
Sept. 9 to Oct. 4
Get ready to have the time of your life when the stage version of this beloved rom-com bursts onto the National Theatre stage for a month. Live music from the movie takes you back to the Catskills and one more tale of star-crossed lovers — well, almost (that age difference can be a problem). After all these years, and the sad loss of the film’s original star Patrick Swayze, nobody puts Baby in a corner.
COME FROM AWAY
Sept. 10 to Oct. 18
The heart-warming true story of how a small Canadian town cared for 6,579 airline passengers stranded there on 9/11 became a Broadway musical hit. Now it’s back at Ford’s in time for the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the day 38 commercial airplanes were diverted to the town of Gander, Newfoundland. Offering food, shelter and comfort to these strangers, our Canadian neighbors renewed hope and humanity in a time of darkness.
THE FRUITS OF OUR LABOR
Sept. 10 to Nov. 1
Step Afrika! returns to Southwest with a powerful new production exploring rhythm, resilience and the unfinished story of the American experience. Blending stepping, percussion and striking visual imagery, this visceral new piece examines what it means to believe in a nation still in the making with explosive movement and a bold palette of red, white, and blue.
SOMEWHERE OVER THE BORDER
Atlas Performing Arts Center
Sept. 10 to Oct. 4
Mosaic Theater Company brings back Brian Quijada, one-half of the award-winning duo who brought us “Mexodus,” which premiered over on H Street and went on to two successful off-Broadway runs. Inspired by the true story of his mother’s immigration in the 1970s, Quijada takes us on another musical journey, this time from El Salvador to America to the tune of cumbia, Mexican mariachi boleros, rock and hip hop. Like Dorothy in that “over the rainbow” musical, Reina travels north to the Mexican border, gathering friends and facing down dangers as she strives to build a better life for su familia.
VENUS
Sept. 9 to Oct. 4
Newly christened artistic director Reggie White starts things off at Woolly this season with a new take on the odd couple format. Nicole likes things orderly: clean dating profiles, curated apartments, clear exits. Beth is all instinct: showing up uninvited to book club, sending too many flowers, midnight dates under the stars. What begins as an intoxicating collision of opposites turns bizarre as romance descends into obsession in this fever dream by Steve Yockey, creator of HBO’s “The Flight Attendant.”
MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM
Sept. 9 to Oct. 11
The first in what turned out to be August Wilson’s 10-play cycle of African American life spanning the last century. Olney Theatre and Round House join forces to produce and present this important work about the hopes and fears of Black artists trying to scratch out a living against the exploitation that surrounded them. The blues emanating out of Chicago provides the backbeat as conflicts flare over art, power and control.
THE SCORE
Harman Hall
Sept. 11 to Oct. 18
Shakespeare Theatre Company kicks off its 2026-27 season with the kind of high-powered theater we’ve come to admire under artistic director Simon Godwin. This time, Brian Cox, star of HBO’s “Succession,” limns the role of Johann Sebastian Bach, a reluctant visitor to the court of Frederick II, then Europe’s most ambitious and dangerous leader (sound familiar yet?). Challenged by the King, Bach is forced to weigh the tyranny of an autocrat against his own artistic integrity (getting warmer?). Sir Trevor Nunn — the man who gave us “Cats” and “Les Miserables” — helms this production, its first and only stop on this side of the pond.
THE SECOND BEST SCHOOL SHOOTING
Sept. 18 to Nov. 4
As two best friends try to make sense of a school shooting, the confront a question for our times: how do you grieve when the world has mostly moved on? A U.S. premiere about grief, friendship and what happens when one tragedy is eclipsed by another.
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
Sept. 22 to Nov. 1
Psalmayene 24 is back to direct one of the Bard’s more obscure plays, in which human nature collides with the letter of the law with potentially life-threatening consequences. In a morally lax city, can a corrupt official coerce a virginal nun to submit to his desires when her brother’s life may hang in the balance? It’s “Days of Our Lives” in circa 16th-century Elizabethan England.
WISH YOU WERE HERE
Sept. 23 to Nov. 1
Salme’s getting married and her four best friends get her ready in a flurry of tulle and teasing about the wedding night ahead. But it’s 1978 in Karaj, on the eve of the Iranian Revolution, and over the next decade everything changes for these tightknit friends, their country and the futures they find for themselves. In another moment of upheaval in Iran, Sanaz Toossi (“English”) brings her trademark wit, insight and more than a few dirty jokes to this story of diaspora from the people who stay.
DANCE THEATRE OF HARLEM
Sept. 25 and 26
Washington Performing Arts opens its 61st season — this time at the National Theatre — with this groundbreaking company performing several of the most beloved pieces in its repertoire, including Geoffrey Holder’s Caribe- themed reimaging of Igor Stravinsky’s “Firebird.” George Balanchine’s “Donizetti Variations” — long a DTH favorite — joins the program, along with Robert Garland’s “Return,” set to the music of Aretha Franklin and James Brown. See — there is life after the Kennedy Center (at least for the time being).
CHICKA CHICKA BOOM BOOM
Sept. 26 to Oct. 18
Recommended for kids 3 to 9 and their folks, this new musical based on the popular children’s series celebrates letters, words and imagination with infectious rhythms, dazzling puppets and lively dancing. Your kids are part of the action, too.
Mark Edelman is a playwright who loves writing about theater. He is a lifetime member of the Broadway League and a Tony voter. Catch his monthly podcast HERE.
