Show Summary for American Dervish 
Hayat Shah is a young American in love for the first time. His normal life of school, baseball, and video games had previously been distinguished only by his Pakistani heritage and by the frequent chill between his parents, who fight over things he is too young to understand. Then Mina arrives, and everything changes. Based on Ayad Akhtar’s brilliant first novel, American Dervish. 

Show Summary for Evicted
Based on Matthew Desmond’s Pulitzer–winning book, Evicted follows eight Milwaukee families navigating housing insecurity in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.  Evicted is a moving portrait of the human cost of eviction and the systemic forces that perpetuate poverty in America.

Bio
Ayad was born in New York City and raised in Brookfield, Wisconsin. He is a novelist and author of American Dervish, published in over 20 languages worldwide. His play Disgraced won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for the 2015 Tony Award for best play. His plays The Who & The What and The Invisible Hand received Off-Broadway runs and are currently being produced around the world. His latest play, McNeal, premiered at Lincoln Center Theater in 2024 can received is Regional Premiere at Milwaukee Rep in 2026. Akhtar was listed as the most produced playwright for the 2015/16 Season by American Theatre. As a screenwriter, he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay for The War Within. He has received fellowships from MacDowell, Djerassi, the Sundance Institute, Ucross, and Yaddo, where he currently serves as a Board Director. He is also a Board Trustee at PEN/America, NYTW and Milwaukee Repertory Theater.

Show Summary 
Hayat Shah is a young American in love for the first time. His normal life of school, baseball, and video games had previously been distinguished only by his Pakistani heritage and by the frequent chill between his parents, who fight over things he is too young to understand. Then Mina arrives, and everything changes. Based on Ayad Akhtar’s brilliant first novel, American Dervish.

Bio
Mark Clements is an award‑winning international theater director whose work has been seen in more than 100 major theaters across Europe and the United States. His 17 seasons as Artistic Director of Milwaukee Repertory Theater launched a new era for the institution by bringing large‑scale musicals to the mainstage—now a signature highlight of every season since 2010/2011. His acclaimed musical productions include Cabaret, Next to Normal, Assassins, Ragtime, Dreamgirls, The Color Purple, Man of La Mancha, Guys and Dolls, In the Heights, West Side Story, Titanic the Musical, and Come From Away.

During his tenure, Milwaukee Rep completed an $80.1 million transformation that culminated in the opening of the state-of-the-art Associated Bank Theater Center in October 2025. The new facility expanded the organization’s artistic capabilities with flexible performance venues, enhanced community gathering spaces, and a dedicated Education & Engagement Center. It also strengthened Milwaukee Rep’s ability to develop new work, support artists, and create productions that can reach audiences Fin Milwaukee and beyond, including future transfers to Broadway and other theaters across the country. 

In addition to his musical work, Mark has directed more than 40 productions at Milwaukee Rep, including the World Premieres of Run Bambi Run by Eric Simonson and Gordon Gano, Antonio’s Song by Dael Orlandersmith, Things I Know to Be True (American Premiere) by Andrew Bovell, One House Over by Catherine Trieschmann, his own adaptation of A Christmas Carol, Five Presidents by Rick Cleveland, and American Song by Joanna Murray‑Smith. He also conceived and directed several original works for the Stackner Cabaret, including Piano Men, Women of Rock, The Greatest Love for Whitney, and The Craic. Additional notable credits include McNeal, The Coast Starlight, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, Junk, The Glass Menagerie, Of Mice and Men, Othello, Death of a Salesman, The History of Invulnerability, End of the Rainbow, Clybourne Park, and Bombshells.

Mark’s New York and international credits include Speaking in Tongues, The Milliner, and Blunt Speaking, as well as creating and directing the West End and UK National Tour of Soul Train. Before joining Milwaukee Rep, he served as Associate Artistic Director for several UK theater companies and spent a decade as Artistic Director of the award‑winning Derby Playhouse (1992–2002), where he directed more than 40 productions.

His work has earned nominations for the Olivier Award and multiple UK Theatre Awards, along with three Barrymore Awards for productions at Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. Mark is currently collaborating with Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar on the stage adaptation of Akhtar’s critically acclaimed novel American Dervish, which will make its World Premiere at Milwaukee Rep in an upcoming season.

Show Summary

Four ultra-wealthy Tanzanian women gather every month for their book club to read the Bible and gossip.  When one of the women invites someone new into the book club – a young widow who has just moved home after living abroad – tensions rise and cracks begin to form in the women’s perfectly manicured lives and fiercely held beliefs. 

Bio
Gloria Majule is a storyteller born and raised in Dodoma, Tanzania. She seeks to tell stories that bring multiple black voices together from across the world, and are accessible to black audiences no matter where they are. She writes for and about Africans and the African diaspora. Gloria has been awarded a MacDowell Fellowship; commissions from Audible, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Atlantic Theater Company, and Princeton University/The Civilians; and residencies at Yaddo, Art Omi, The New Harmony Project, and New York Stage and Film. A 3x O'Neill Finalist and 5x Susan Smith Blackburn Prize nominee, Gloria's work includes My Father Was Shot in the Back of the Head (Relentless Award Finalist), Culture Shock(Leah Ryan Prize Winner), Uhuru (Alley All New Festival), and Fifteen Hundred (Blue Ink Award Finalist). Gloria graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a BA in Performing & Media Arts and Spanish, and was the first African woman to receive an MFA in Playwriting from Yale School of Drama. 

Show Summary
A contemporary new musical about the American folk legend John Henry. The story of his legendary strength, his insatiable desire to win, and the deadly cost of that desire is brought to life through a chorus of players - and at the center, the man himself.

Bio
Nygel D. Robinson is an actor, writer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. At Milwaukee Rep, audiences have seen him in The All Night Strut!, My Way, and Piano Men. His performance credits also include Berkeley Rep, Baltimore Center Stage, Shakespeare Theatre Company, and Mosaic Theater Company.

As the co-creator, co-writer, co-composer, and co-star of Mexodus, Nygel has earned widespread national acclaim. Following its New York Times Critic's Pick Off-Broadway debut, Mexodus received numerous honors, including Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Musical and Outstanding Lead Performance (Nygel D. Robinson), Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical, Outstanding Lead Performance, and Outstanding Score, and Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Book and Outstanding Music. 

Additional writing and composing credits include Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town at Baltimore Center Stage, R&J: Fire on the Bayou (with Kevin Ramsey), and several new works currently in development—projects Nygel fully intends to continue spamming the American Theatre with.

Show Summary

A new musical about Milwaukee’s beloved basketball team the Bucks, and the fans who live and love it. Beginning with the heartbreak of the 2013 NBA playoffs, the show follows a small group of dedicated Bucks fans whose lives intertwine with the crushing lows and unexpected highs of the Bucks’ journey to the NBA Finals in 2021.

Bio
Matt Zembrowski has been a part of the Milwaukee Theater Community for almost 25 years. As a performer, director and music director, he's worked with most of the major companies in the city. As a writer/composer, his produced works include Doctor! Doctor!, Bing Crosby: Christmas On The Air, Whatever Happened To Karl Janko, Something In The Water (which premiered this past summer at Northern Sky Theater in Door County), and the hit Packer-themed musical Dad's Season Tickets, which played a near sold-out run at Milwaukee Rep in 2022, and has since been produced all over the state. Matt holds a degree in Theater Studies from UW-Milwaukee, and attended Dominican High School in Whitefish Bay.

Summary
A spellbinding solo show, where an attempt to summon legendary magician Harry Houdini collides with a tender examination of all the real-world pressures that drive us to seek escape from the everyday. Part DIY séance, part autobiography, and all heart, this show is a gripping, magical exploration of the human experience.

Bio
Katie Bender (she/her/hers) is a playwright, performer and theater maker.  Her plays include Judith, She Wolf, The Survivors/Los Sobrevivientes, Instructions for a Séance and Howling, Texas. Filled with games, physical exertion and a poetic delight in the mundane, her work often examines the surprising ways humans transform within impossible systems. Katie’s work has been developed and produced all over the country including at Hyde Park Theater, ZACH, The Alley, Shrewds, EST, Kitchen Dog, The Playwrights’ Center, LAUNCH PAD and Fusebox Festival, THT Rep, New Harmony Project, ACT Theatre and All For One Theater. She is the co-creator of Underbelly, with whom she made ecstatic site-specific performances such as Slip River which received the Critics Table Award for Best New Comedy. Her play Judith received the B.Iden Payne award for Best New Script. Katie was a Jerome Fellow and is currently a Core Writer at The Playwrights Center. She received her M.F.A from The University of Texas. 

Summary
Every second Wednesday a group meets in a community hall. They are ordinary people, teachers and nurses, hairdressers and accountants, real estate agents and newsagents. Some are retired now while others are still working. No one’s too rich and no one’s too poor. They are all somewhere in the middle. But they share something else in common. They all love someone who is seriously addicted to something - alcohol, weed, heroin, ice, dexamphetamine, anti-depressants. The list is long. Here, in this hall, every second Wednesday our characters escape the chaos and come together to find strength and some joy in a strange kind of fellowship.

Bio
Works for the stage include Things I Know To Be True, a co-production between State Theatre Company of South Australia and Frantic Assembly in the UK (2016) followed by new productions at Milwaukee Repertory Theatre (2019), Belvoir Street Theatre (2019) and Black Swan Theatre Company (2023); an adaptation of Kate Grenville’s novel The Secret River, directed by Neil Armfield, Sydney Theatre Company / Sydney Festival 2013 , Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane seasons in 2016 and Edinburgh Festival and National Theatre London 2019; When The Rain Stops Falling, Adelaide Festival of the Arts 2008, Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company in 2009, Brisbane, Canberra and Alice Springs in 2010. The play was produced in London at the Almeida Theatre (2009) and in New York at The Lincoln Center (2010) where it won five Lucille Lortel Awards and was named best new play of the year by Time Magazine. Productions of Andrew’s plays continue to be performed throughout Asia, UK, America and Europe. 

Summary
A darkly comic, metatheatrical re-imagining of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. A woman returns to her ancestral home and reunites with her deeply complicated family and friends whom she hasn’t seen in five years. Old memories, old flames, and old wounds collide with a devastating prospective future: selling the beloved estate and land to developers.

Bio
Aaron Posner is a director, playwright, teacher, former Artistic Director, and a Professor at American University. He was the founding Artistic Director of Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre Company, and the Artistic Director of Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey. He has directed nearly 200 productions at major regional theaters across the country, including Arena Stage, American Repertory Theater, American Players Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, The Folger, Ford’s Theatre, Round House Theatre, Seattle Rep, Signature Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Studio Theatre, and many more. As a playwright, his re-imaging of Chekhov’s The Seagull, entitled Stupid F**king Bird, was one of the ten most produced plays in the country in 2015 and has had more than 250 productions worldwide. His other produced and published plays include JQA, Life Sucks, No Sisters, District Merchants, Who Am I This Time? & Other Conundrums of Love, My Name Is Asher Lev, and several others.