Marin theater companies reach back to 1904, 1942 and 2018 for shows to draw audiences into their houses in 2026. A classic drama, a Pulitzer Prize-winning allegory and a modern musical look at the U.S.’s first women soldiers are what’s on tap for the New Year.
Novato Theater Company is first out of the gate with their production of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. Wilder, best known for Our Town, took World War II audiences for a wild ride with his three-act look at an American family from the Ice Age to a post-war world.
The Antrobus family can survive anything, which is a message that Wilder felt audiences needed to hear in 1942, and which modern day audiences might take some comfort in today.
Novato Theater Company’s playhouse stage becomes New Jersey and will be occupied by a wooly mammoth, a dinosaur, a bunch of Atlantic City conventioneers and the survivors of an apocalyptic conflict starting Jan. 23. novatotheatercompany.org
The Marin Theatre stage becomes a declining estate in turn of the century Russia where the Ranevsky family debate the future of the estate and The Cherry Orchard that occupies it. Anton Chekhov’s 1904 four-act play (which he considered a comedy) looks at a family struggling to deal with political, financial and social change.
American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) artistic director Emerita Carey Perloff returns to Marin Theatre after helming last year’s successful production of Waste. Collaborators in this production include several members of the Waste cast, former San Francisco Ballet principal dancer Val Caniparoli as the production’s choreographer and master magician Christian Cagigal as the production’s illusions/FX designer. Orchard begins to bloom in Mill Valley on Jan. 29. marintheatre.org
Ross Valley Players present a musical option for Marinites with their production of The Hello Girls. First produced in 2018 (but still calling itself a “new American musical”), it’s the true but relatively unknown story of the first women to serve in the U.S. Army in the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit. It’s a fascinating bit of history given the musical theater treatment, courtesy a jazz-infused score by Peter Mills.
Maeve Smith, who directed a production of the show in Sonoma in 2024, joins forces with musical director Christopher Hewitt to set up camp in the Barn at the Marin Art and Garden Center starting Jan. 30. rossvalleyplayers.com
Marin audiences will have three opportunities to do a little theatrical time traveling. Consider taking a trip.
