More St Pete theaters announce 2026-27 play seasons

As bay area theater companies wind down their 2025-26 seasons, getting ready for that sweltering summer (and/or fall) break, information about next season is emerging.

Here’s what in store on mainstages in St. Petersburg.

American Stage made its big announcement early in April, but the first show of 2026-27 hadn’t yet been finalized. Now it can be told: It’s A Night With Janis Joplin, one of those rock ‘n’ roll jukebox biopic musicals, with Joplin’s musical heroes Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Odetta, Nina Simone and Bessie Smith all represented. Starring (well, we don’t know yet), it will run Sept. 16-Oct. 11.

At freeFall Theatre, the current season’s final production, Bash of the Titans, will wind down Aug. 2. It’s a musical parody from the theater’s Eric Davis and Michael Raabe (Oz).

Davis, who is freeFall’s co-founder and artistic director, has “devised” The Nancy Drew Files, named as part of the new season but without specific production dates. FreeFall calls it an “interactive alternate reality game and theatrical experience” based on the childhood Nancy Drew Mysteries books.

It’s not Davis’ first venture into cutting-edge stage territory: In June 2025, the company debuted his The House of Future Memory, which combined AI, audience interaction, improv and Shakespeare.

Jay Berkow’s What a Glorious Feeling! officially starts the 2026-27 rollout Sept. 18. It’s a backstage play about the classic movie musical Singin’ in the Rain, with Gene Kelley navigating studio politics and other annoyances, including the fact that his newly hired co-star Debbie Reynolds doesn’t seem to know how to dance. It features all the iconic music, songs and dance of golden-age Hollywood.

The title of November’s show, a drama, is being held close to the vest for now (and no, it’s not Nancy Drew).

December brings a reprise of the Ferguson/Greer musical A Christmas Carol: in Concert, while the new year introduces a production of Lark Eden, the first play by former bay area writer Natalie Symons (Nightsweat, The People Downstairs). The epistolary play, tracing the lifelong friendships of three southern women, opens Feb. 19.

Opening April 2, is Great Expectations, an adaptation of the classic 19^th century novel by Charles Dickens. A Commercial Jingle for Regina Comet (book, music and lyrics by Alex Wyse and Ben Fankhauser) will debut June 11, 2027; in this Off Broadway hit, a pop star named Regina Comet hires two inept and hitherto unsuccessful songwriters to create an anthem for her new fragrance.

The Off-Central, St. Petersburg’s intimate (43 seats) black box theater, has lined up its next season, after winding the last one down in early April:

Sept. 10 brings Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike, Christopher Durang’s dryly comedic Broadway hit about squabbling siblings.

Nick Payne’s Constellations debuts Oct. 16. The British playwright’s play for two-people is a love story that blurs, stops and repeats time.

Nov. 12:  Destroying David by Jason Odell Williams. An art restorer and tour guide leads a private tour through Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia, where a deepening grief over the death of their son compels them to believe that destroying Michaelangelo’s David may be the only path to healing.

Hate Mail by Bill Corbett & Kira Obolensky (opening Jan. 14) is an epistolary two-person comedy, in which a man attempting to return a defective snow globe gets more than he bargained for.

The show set to open Feb. 18 is To Be Announced.

Pamela Morgan’s Load Bearing Walls begins its run March 25. A legal battle unfolds over the estate distribution of a lesbian woman is challenged by her own mother.

Coming soon: Tampa theaters announce 2026-27 seasons.