A NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 

Dear Friends of The Rep,

It is a great pleasure to welcome you to Nebraska Repertory Theatre’s 2026–2027 season.

At Nebraska Rep, we believe that theatre is at its most powerful when it brings people together - artists and audiences, students and professionals, the familiar and the unexpected. As the professional training program of the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film, Nebraska Rep occupies a unique place where the academic and professional missions of the University meet. Our students work alongside accomplished guest artists and faculty mentors, bringing the skills developed in the classroom into the rehearsal room, the design studio, the shops, and ultimately, onto our stages.

That relationship between training and professional practice has long been central to the mission of Nebraska Rep. It allows our students to assume meaningful artistic and production responsibilities in an environment informed by professional standards, practices, and expectations, while giving our audiences the opportunity to experience ambitious work created by emerging artists in collaboration with established professionals.

Our 2026–2027 season reflects that mission beautifully. These four remarkable works ask us to consider how we understand one another, how we make sense of the world around us, and what happens when our individual desires encounter the needs of a community.

We begin with Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama that takes us inside the exhilarating, funny, and complicated world of a high school girls’ soccer team. Guest director Katherine McGerr brings this extraordinary ensemble play to our Studio Theatre, where its overlapping conversations and fierce physicality place us immediately inside the rhythms of competition, friendship, identity, and adolescence.

Next is Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, one of the most celebrated plays of the modern era, directed by acclaimed guest artist Michael Matthews. Moving fluidly between the early nineteenth century and the present, Arcadia brings together science, mathematics, literature, desire, and human curiosity in an exhilarating exploration of what we can know, what we think we know, and what may always remain just beyond our grasp.

In the spring, Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information, directed by David Long, Head of Performance in the Carson School, turns its attention to the way we live now. In dozens of brief, rapidly shifting encounters, Churchill creates a theatrical mosaic of people trying to connect in a world overflowing with information. It is playful and poignant, fragmented and deeply human, inviting us to discover connections among moments that at first seem entirely unrelated.

We conclude with one of the most beloved musicals of our time, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods. Director and choreographer Robert Pieranunzi returns to Nebraska Rep following last season’s Bright Star for this collaboration with the Glenn Korff School of Music and UNL Opera. Sondheim and Lapine begin with the fairy tales we think we know and lead us somewhere much richer, into a world of wishes and consequences, individual desires and shared responsibility, and the realization that none of us travels through the woods alone.

These four works could hardly be more different in form, yet each asks us to look more closely at the ways human beings search for connection, understanding, and meaning. And each provides our students with an extraordinary opportunity to do that searching alongside professional artists, faculty mentors, and one another.

That is the work at the heart of Nebraska Repertory Theatre. We are a professional training program where the next generation of theatre artists develops its craft through meaningful practice, collaboration, and mentorship, and where our audiences are essential partners in that experience. It is a model that allows learning, artistry, and professional practice to exist not as separate endeavors, but as parts of the same creative process.

Thank you for being part of this community and for making this work possible. Your presence and support allow us to create ambitious theatre, welcome extraordinary artists to Nebraska, and provide transformative opportunities for our students.

We look forward to sharing this season with you.

Warmly,