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Monday 9:30am - 5:30pm Tuesday 9:30am - 5:30pm Wednesday 9:30am - 5:30pm Thursday 9:30am - 5:30pm Friday 9:30am - 5:30pm

Premiere Stages at Kean University

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Premiere Stages at Kean University

Premiere Stages offers affordable prices, air-conditioned facilities, and free parking close to the theatres. Large print programs are available at all times.

Premiere Stages is the professional Equity theatre at Kean University, and home of the Premiere Stages Play Festival, a program specifically created to encourage and nurture emerging dramatists. All Premiere Stages facilities are fully accessible. Please call for a list of sign-interpreted, audio-transcribed, or open-captioned performances. Publications are also available in alternate formats with

advanced notice. Premiere Stages is made possible in part through funding from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Provident Bank Foundation, the New Jersey Theatre Alliance, and through the generous support of individual patrons. Sign up for our e-mail list! http://www.patronmail.com/pmailweb/PatronSetup?oid=590

06/24/2026

Introducing the talented cast of MALA ARIA by Gloria Majule directed by Jamil A.C. Mangan.

Top row
Anita Welch-Smith as Jasmine
Eugene Nesmith as Baba Amazia

Bottom row
Nazira Cisse as Kezia
Shiro Kihagi as Amazia

Performances run July 16 - August 2
Bauer Boucher Theatre Center at

Get your tickets today! 🎟️

06/11/2026

Two weeks ago, Premiere Stages accepted the Excellence in Leadership Award from the New Jersey Theatre Alliance and New Jersey State Council on the Arts at the 2026 Cultural Access Summit for our ongoing dedication to inclusive arts programming, accessibility initiatives, and community engagement through professional theatre and arts education.

Thank you to Heather Williams and Matheny Medical and Educational Center for nominating us for this distinction.

Accessibility is always top of mind in everything we do and it's an honor to be recognized.

06/04/2026

Each day this week we’ll be highlighting the four Finalists of the Premiere Play Festival!

Meet
Next/Life by Matthew Capodicasa
Playwright of NEXT/LIFE
Reading on Sunday, June 7 at 3PM
*
About the Play
In this surprisingly humorous and deeply sensitive play, Elise is facing the end of her life. That is, until an experimental drug trial puts her cancer in remission and reverses the aging process. Newly youthened, she sets out to build a new life for herself in this rapidly changing world, even as the things she knows and the people she loves begin to disappear.
*
About the Playwright
Matthew Capodicasa (he/him). Plays include The Scenarios, Noise in the Line, Next/Life, All the People You’ve Been, The City in the City in the City, You Remind Me of You, Frelmetsch the Maneater, and The City Of. His work has been presented or developed at Studio Theatre, Primary Stages, Theatre Lab, GPTC, Bluebarn Theatre, the Bloomington Playwrights Project, Theater Masters, and the Capitol Fringe, among others. He is a recipient of a Judith Champion Launch Commission from the Atlantic Theater Company, a winner of the Woodward/Newman Drama Award, and a finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and the Heideman Award. Film: projects in development with Anonymous Content, Protozoa Pictures, Wattpad, Morning Moon, Space Bandit, and Video House. TV: Vladimir (Netflix). You can also hear him nerd out on various podcasts from the Glass Cannon Network. BFA, NYU/Tisch. MFA, Fordham. Recent grad: Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at the Juilliard School. He currently teaches at NYU.

06/03/2026

Each day this week we’ll be highlighting the four Finalists of the Premiere Play Festival!

Meet
Deneen Reynolds-Knott
Playwright of BITING THE HAND
Reading on Saturday, June 6 at 3PM
*
About the Play
Chanelle grew up in Ready & Rising and proved the program had the power to change lives. When a public letter throws the organization into crisis, Chanelle finds herself caught between her mentor and maintaining her values. Biting the Hand is an urgent play about the coexistence of gratitude and grievance when trying to be a force for good.
*
About the Playwright
Deneen Reynolds-Knott is a writer and interdisciplinary theatre artist living in Brooklyn. She is a 2026 NYSCA Artist Grantee for RECOLLECTIONS: A Show & Tell of Memories and Mementos, a participatory installation developed in collaboration with Arminda Thomas. Her outdoor project, SHOEBOX PICNIC ROAD SIDE: ROUTE ONE, premiered at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Fall 2021. Other work includes: BATON ((2018 Premiere Play Festival and workshop reading at Premiere Stages, Staged reading at Florida Studio Theatre’s 2022 Summer Reading Theatre, San Diego Rep’s 2021 Black Voices Reading Series) , PARTICULARLY MEDDLESOME ANCESTORS (2026 The Pipeline Festival At WP Theater, 2022 Ingram New Works Festival at Nashville Rep)BABES IN HO-LLAND (2024 World Premiere Production at Shotgun Players, 2020 Bay Area Playwrights Festival), ASSUMING POSITIVE INTENTIONS (2021 Clubbed Thumb Reading), and FLASHES & FLOATERS (2020 Playfest at Orlando Shakespeare Theater). She contributed work to The Fire This Time Festival, 24/6: A Jewish Theater Company’s Telephone Plays, True Colors’ 2022 Next Narrative Monologue Competition and The Billie Holiday Theatre’s 50in50: Shattering the Glass Ceiling. Deneen is a New Georges affiliated artist and 2025 Audrey Resident. She has developed work with WP Theater’s 2024-2026 WP Lab, Bushwick Starr's Reading Series and Clubbed Thumb's Early-Career Writers’ Group.

06/02/2026

Each day this week we’ll be highlighting the four Finalists of the Premiere Play Festival!

Meet
Katherine Swan
Playwright of RED BELL
Reading on Friday, June 5 at 7PM
*
About the Play
When ex-dancer Rina shows up at Hank’s gym wanting to learn how to box, she triggers a past trauma that she has struggled to leave behind. As she hurtles towards her first fight, Rina embarks on a journey that will forever transform who she is and who she will become. Red Bell is a wise, provocative play with a startling spin on the underdog narrative.
*
About the Playwright
Katherine Swan (she/her) is a playwright who lives in Chicago. Her plays have been performed or developed at The Road, A Red Orchid Theatre, The William Inge Festival New Play Lab, The Artistic Home, Renaissance Theaterworks, and others nationally and internationally. Her play Pony was a winner of the Carlow Little Theatre's 2021-22 International One Act Play Competition in Carlow, Ireland. Her work is anthologized by Smith & Kraus in their collections Best Ten-Minute Plays and Best Stage Monologues. Katherine is an ensemble member of the experimental performance collective The Feast. Since 2021, she has studied playwriting at The Barrow Group under Arlene Hutton.

06/01/2026

Each day this week we’ll be highlighting the four Finalists of the Premiere Play Festival!

Meet
Sophie Boyce
Playwright of EVERYTHING’S GOING MY WAY
Reading on Thursday, June 4 at 7PM
*
About the Play
Colin is a psychotherapist assigned to work with the volatile, complicated 17-year-old, Noah. As Noah rebels against the sessions, his mother clings to a belief that he can get better while Colin is drawn into a dangerous paternal protectiveness. Everything’s Going My Way compassionately explores masculine intimacy, the ferocity of motherhood, and connection in its most fragile and complicated forms.
*
About the Playwright
Sophie Boyce is a NY-based Lyricist, Librettist and Playwright, originally from London UK. She has most recently been honoured as a Fred Ebb Award Winner (2025), Dramatist Guild Fellow (2025), Richard Rodgers Award Winner (2025), Eric H Weinberger Librettist Award Winner (2025), Eugene O’Neill NMTC Winner (2023) and a Kleban Prize Finalist (2025). Her work in development includes “The Dark Lady” and “Little Red” (with composer Veronica Mansour), “Unglamorous” (with composer Fred Feeney) and “The Forty Elephants” (with composer Einar Adalsteinsson). Sophie has an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU Tisch and is alum of the BMI Bookwriters Workshop. Sophie was a member of the Writers Room for the UK’s BAFTA-Award-Winning TV series, ‘Skins’ (Season 6). She is Founder and Director of the acclaimed UK Theatre Program, Spirit YPC, which under her direction has attracted over 150 Million viewers to their online performance videos. Sophie likes to write rhythmic, breakneck-paced stories that surprise and thrill, centring livewires, obsessives and antiheroes. www.sophieboyce.net

05/19/2026

Congratulations to the four Finalists of the 2026 Premiere Play Festival!

These four playwrights will have staged readings June 4-7 at the Bauer Boucher Theatre Center at Kean University.

Left to Right:
Next/Life by Matthew Capodicasa
Biting the Hand by Deneen Reynolds-Knott
Red Bell by Katherine Swan
Everything’s Going My Way by Sophie Boyce

For more information about these plays and the readings, visit premierestagesatkean.com

05/14/2026

ANNOUNCING OUR 2026 SEASON

This is our most ambitious season yet, with three mainstage productions and multiple staged readings in various forms of development.

Full Productions

MALA ARIA
By Gloria Majule
Directed by Jamil A.C. Mangan
July 16-August 2, 2026
2025 Premiere Play Festival Winner

FLAWLESS
By John J. Wooten
Directed by Joe Brancato
September 3 – 20, 2026
New Jersey Premiere
*Flawless at its World Premiere at Penguin Rep and is being produced in partnership with Penguin Rep and Shadowland Stages

EFFA LOVES BASEBALL
By Pia Wilson
Directed by marcus d. harvey
October 15 – 25, 2026
Liberty Live Commission

Visit premierestagesatkean.com for information about tickets, opening nights and season packages!

05/07/2026

We are excited to announce the 65 Semi-Finalists of the 2026 Premiere Play Festival!

Chosen from 894 submissions, the Semi-Finalists explore a wide range of topics in a variety of genres and showcase the exciting, urgent, and entertaining voices of the American Theatre.

Congratulations to these writers, and many thanks to all of the playwrights who shared their work with us!

From these 65 new plays, 4 Finalists will be chosen for public readings which will be held from June 4-7 at the Bauer Boucher Theatre Center at Kean University.

Address

1000 Morris Avenue
Union Township, NJ
07083

Opening Hours

Monday	9:30am - 5:30pm
Tuesday	9:30am - 5:30pm
Wednesday	9:30am - 5:30pm
Thursday	9:30am - 5:30pm
Friday	9:30am - 5:30pm

Telephone

(908) 737-4092

Website

http://www.premierestagesatkean.com/

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