Goodbye XV, Hello XVI!

We wrapped our XV Anniversary Season with a completely sold-out run of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, extended twice, were heralded by The New York Times (our first Times review!) and were honored to bring James Baldwin’s groundbreaking novel to Philadelphia audiences in a World Premiere.

This achievement followed a sold-out run of The Return of Benjamin Lay, an epic repertory of Antony & Cleopatra and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the blockbuster musical Kiss Me, Kate and the Philadelphia Premiere of Martin Crimp’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Did you miss any of these productions?

YOU WILL NOT WANT TO MISS A SINGLE THRILLING MOMENT OF NEXT SEASON!!

Subscribers are guaranteed seats; enjoy expanded benefits (a free brownie and everyday concessions discounts, anyone?); fee-free exchanges, friends and family tix at a discount; kids and teen camp deals for your family, and much more!

Subscription packages are going fast, and start at just $72.  

Subscription discounts are as high as 25% OFF!

IT’S TIME TO SUBSCRIBE.

(HURRY! All single tix will open to the general public August 1st)

In 1927,  FIRE!!, a quarterly “Devoted To Younger Negro Artists” was published in Harlem and changed the future of American literature. Including illustrations, poems, essays, short stories and plays, FIRE!! was the first all-Black magazine, by a young group of writers and artists including Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas, John P. Davis, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett, Lewis Grandison Alexander, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. This theatrical happening will weave together the lives of legendary giants as they speak their incendiary stories, make explosive music, dance, debate, collaborate and celebrate their work from FIRE!!

OCT 8 – NOV 2, 2025

Launch your holidays by celebrating a beloved model of a modern major comedic opera! On his 21st birthday, a dashing young pirate apprentice prepares to finally be freed from servitude. Arriving back on land for the first time, he plans to live a dutiful and honorable adulthood. But there’s a snag – check his birth certificate! A bevy of local beauties,  conscientious pirates and their King, a wily and witty old waiting woman, an incompetent madcap Major General, a troop of troglodyte policemen, and a parade of ingenious paradoxes all portend to make Quintessence your delightful winter destination!

NOV 19, 2025 – JAN 4, 2026

“Succession” was not the first time we obsessed over who dad was going to choose to take over. His father killed a king and usurped a kingdom, but the prodigal Prince Harry spends his days consorting with commoners and playing pranks with his philandering old knight, Sir John Falstaff, rather than studying statecraft and preparing to be the next King of England. A civil war is threatened when Hotspur and his father, the Earl of Northumberland, claim their right to the throne, forcing Hal and Falstaff from the tavern to the battlefield. In this struggle for the divine right to wear the crown, Shakespeare’s epic family drama challenges what makes a good son, a good friend, and a good leader.

FEB 11 – MAR 15, 2026

There is more than one way to afford health care. Argan is convinced his undiagnosable illness is fatal and that he must spend his wealth on celebrated doctors to survive. Anxious over medical bills and a profligate second wife, he schemes to marry his beautiful daughter to a doctor to ensure free health care. Can his daughter’s loveless marriage give Argan the insurance he needs against illness, or will he survive sickness without his tridaily enemas and realize that the true ills threatening his life, happiness and survival are not medicinal? Sir Ranjit Bolt (The Venetian Twins) writes a lacerating and witty new translation of Molière’s final comedy.

APR 15 – MAY 10, 2026