Tuesday, June 2, 2026
June is busting out all over—or so Oscar Hammerstein would contend in the picnic scene in “Carousel.” In honor of Oskie’s partner Richard Rodgers’ birthday month, bust out of your own warm weather lethargy and check out one or more of these plays and musicals onstage this month in the D.C. area.
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Atlas Performing Arts Center
Now through June 7
Constellation Theatre presents a musical about Aphra Behn—spy, poet, and the first professional female playwright—as she races to finish a script, navigate secret missions and juggle lusty entanglements, all in one chaotic night full of art, passion and sexual freedom. Tickets at atlasarts.org.
The Motion
Arena Stage
Now through June 14
Four scholars embark upon a kaleidoscopic odyssey through memory, identity and the fragile boundaries of belief. As the world around them transforms, they wrestle with profound and unsettling questions about purpose, morality and what it truly means to be alive. Tickets at arenastage.org.
Once
Next Stop Theatre
Now through June 21
A Dublin busker has just about run out of luck and patience singing for pennies on the street when a young Eastern European woman encourages him to soldier on in both art and love. The Tony Award winning Best Musical based on the Academy Award winning film is a transcendent story about love that goes unrequited—or does it? Tickets at nextstoptheatre.org.
Purlie Victorious
Studio Theatre
Now through June 24
Psalmayene 24 directs this madcap comedy, which calls on survival techniques forged in the Jim Crow South while it calls out satiric targets that feel as urgent as they did when the lacerating comedy premiered in 1961. All that and a love story, too. Tickets at studiotheatre.org.
Othello
Shakespeare Theatre Company
Now through June 28
Actor Wendell Pierce headlines Shakespeare’s tragedy about the power of words to kill. Venice is scandalized when its protector Othello elopes with a nobleman’s daughter, while his most trusted lieutenant, Iago, seethes after being passed over for a promotion. Vengeance raises its ugly head, transforming Othello’s faithful wife Desdemona and turning upright men into beasts. Tickets at shakespearetheatre.org.
Sally and Tom
Round House Theatre
Now through June 28
A scrappy theater group takes on a new play about Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman owned by Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson himself. When the playwright takes the role of Sally and her partner directs and plays Jefferson, art and life collide and truths about race and power are laid bare. Tickets at roundhousetheatre.org.
A Fine Madness
Woolly Mammoth and more
Now through June 28
Kicking off a month full of one man shows (see more below), Justin Weaks invites us on a radical act of remembrance inspired by the time capsules carried into outer space by the Voyager mission. Through retelling and reclaiming his own personal journey as a gay Black man living in D.C. , Weaks creates a new archive that is inclusive of his lived experience and those of the people in the room. In addition to Woolly Mammoth, the piece will play several more local sites this month. Check out all the details at woollymammoth.net.
Cedric Neal (Leading Player) and the cast of Pippin at Signature Theatre. Photo by Daniel Rader.
Pippin
Signature Theatre
Now through July 26
Decades before his big score (no pun intended) with “Wicked,” composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz was an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon University, working on an odd musical theater hero—Pippin, son of King Charlemagne, head of the Holy Roman Empire. Years later—and with much gnashing of teeth and venting of spleen—director and choreographer Bob Fosse took hold of the piece and made it a Broadway legend. Now Matthew Gardiner and company in Shirlington make the musical their own. Tickets at sigtheatre.org.
Precarious
Atlas Performing Arts Center
June 4-28
Mosaic Theatre presents this new comedy about starting out, starting over and the enduring love of family. Though recently retired Violet is ready to chart a new path forward, her daughter Tilly and a summer heatwave stand in her way. This world premiere promises insightful reflections on the climate crisis and generational divides while imagining a brighter future. Tickets at mosaictheater.org.
Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen
Studio Theatre
June 4- July 12
Marcelo Dos Santos stars in this one-man show about a permanently single, professionally neurotic stand-up who finally meets Mr. Right and then proceeds to do everything wrong. His dark journey through self-awareness and self-sabotage leads him—and perhaps some of us as well—to choose between love and that killer punchline, delving into the anxieties of modern life from the fear of intimacy to the terror of vulnerability. Tickets at studiotheatre.org.
The Play That Goes Wrong
Keegan Theatre
June 6- July 12
Those wacky thespians at the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society are presenting another old chestnut when things go rather swiftly from bad to utterly disastrous. Whether it’s the unconscious leading lady, a corpse that can’t play dead, or actors who trip over everything including their lines, the show must go on, despite the hilarious consequences. Tickets at keegantheatre.com.
How Shakespeare Saved My Life
Folger Library Theatre
June 9- July 5
Calling on the Bard and a host of genius rappers, half-crazed preachers and soulful poets, playwright-actor Jacob Ming-Trent takes us on a propulsive ride that reaffirms the power of language and music in this one man show that follows Ming-Trent’s attempt to reclaim his youth and connect to the deeper parts of us all. Tickets at folger.edu.
CrazySexyCool—The TLC Musical
Arena Stage
June 12- August 9
Storming the ’90s music scene and topping the charts, the world-renowned vocal trio TLC created the look, the sound and the soul of a generation with their unforgettable anthems, fly dance moves and head-turning style. Now their journey comes to the stage in this fresh new musical by writer and director Kwame Kwei-Armah, who brings TLC’s (mostly true) story of unshakable sisterhood to the stage with multi-platinum hits from “Waterfalls” and “Creep” to “Unpretty” and “No Scrubs.” Tickets at arenastage.org.
Suffs
June 16-28
National Theatre
Direct from Broadway comes this Tony Award®-winning musical about the passionate American women who fought tirelessly for the right to vote. Shaina Taub won the Tony® Awards for Best Book and Best Score for this bold exploration of the challenges met and conquered on the way to achieving suffrage for women, a basic human right. Here’s hoping we don’t slip backwards. Tickets at broadwayatthenational.com.
What Became Of Us
June 16-July 26
Signature Theatre
A moving new play about two siblings who remain connected over the course of a lifetime, Signature employs two different casts from very different backgrounds to tell this story about immigrant and native-born brothers and sisters. Each pair’s disparate perspectives lead to both fractures and forgiveness as they witness each other’s story in Signature’s intimate Ark space. Tickets at sigtheatre.org.
Sleeping Beauty: The Time Traveler
June 18- August 23
Adventure MTC
Rolly’s ordinary summer takes an extraordinary twist when he’s whisked back to the 12th century where he meets Aurora, a bold 12-year-old princess with dreams of knighthood and adventure, despite a mysterious curse that threatens to plunge her into a century-long sleep. As Rolly and Aurora plot a daring escape to the modern world, past and present merge in an epic journey filled with courage, friendship and a dash of magic. Tickets at adventuretheatre-mtc.org.
Broadway at Wolf Trap
June 20
Filene Center at Wolf Trap
The folks at Signature have a terrific summer show in store for us as some of the area’s top musical theater talent join forces with Tony Award winner Heather Headley and Broadway favorite Titus Burgess, direct from his fall-out-of-your chair hilarious stand as “Oh Mary” in NYC. Who wants to make a Falshi bet that Awa Sal Secka, starring in “Pippin” that night, winds up on the Filene stage before the curtain comes down? Tickets at www.wolftrap.org.
Scena Theatre: No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
June 25 – July 19
Atlas Performing Arts Center
Scena Theatre’s offers up Jean-Paul Satre’s existential drama about three fraught souls seemingly locked in a room together. Force to confront their pasts and each other, they (and we) come to the conclusion that psychological torture can be far worse than physical pain. Tickets at atlasarts.org.
The writer 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 at onstagedmv.org.