Off-B'way Update: Additional LCT Season News

Lincoln Center Theater has announced more productions for its 2025-26 season, the first under the leadership of new artistic director Lear deBonesset. In addition to the previously announced Ragtime at the Vivian Beaumont, the Off-Broadway Mitzi Newhouse will feature Kyoto from London,  Gian-Carlo Mennotti's Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, and The Whoopi Monologues, a revival of Whoopi Goldberg's 1984 solo show with five actresses playing the roles Goldberg originally wrote for herself.

A scene from the London production of
Kyoto.
Credit: Manuel Hardin

Kyoto by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson (The Jungle) is based on the 1997 Kyoto climate change conference with Stephen Kunken repeating his London performance as oil lobbyist Don Pearlman. Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin (Stranger Things: The First Shadow) co-direct. Previews begin Oct. 8 in advance of a Nov. 3 opening.

Amahl and the Night Visitors, commissioned by NBC in 1951 and first presented on TV in 1951 as the debut production of the Hallmark Hall of Fame, will play a holiday engagement Dec. 16-Jan. 4, 2026 (Dec. 18 opening) with Tony winner Kenny Leon directing. Opera star Joyce Di Donato will star in this co-production with the Metropolitan Opera. The plot centers on the visit of the Magi to a poor boy's home on their way to Bethlehem.

The Whoopi Monologues will star Kerry Washington and Tony and Drama Desk winner Kara Young and three additional actresses TBA. Whitney White (Liberation, The Last Five Years) will direct. Previews begin July 6 and the show opens July 16.

(Top) A scene from the 1956
NBC broadcast of Amahl and the 
Night Visitors; (above)
Whoopi Goldberg in Whoopi,
the 2004 revised version of
her one-woman show
Credit: Joan Marcus