The Yale Repertory Theatre has announced its 2025-26 season of five plays.
This is the final season to be planned under the leadership of James Bundy, who has led the Yale Rep as well as the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale (formerly the Yale School of Drama) since 2002. Bundy announced earlier this year that he would be stepping down from both postions, though he will continue to teach.
The season opens Oct. 3-25 with “Spunk,” a 1935 play by Zora Neale Hurston story which the famed Black author adapted from her 1925 short story of the same name. It is different from a well-known stage adaptation of three Hurston stories by playwright/director George C. Wolfe in 1989 also titled “Spunk.” Running Oct. 3-25, “Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Spunk’” will be directed by Tamilla Woodard, who chairs the acting program at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. The project was prematurely announced a few months ago when it was reported that “Spunk”’s funding from the National Endowment for the Arts had been rescinded due to changes in the funding criteria under the Trump administration.
Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” will be staged Nov. 28 through Dec. 20. James Bundy will direct the play, using a translation by Paul Walsh. This will apparently be the last production Bundy directs before stepping down from his dual posts of artistic director of Yale Rep and dean of the Geffen School of Drama at the end of the 2025-26 season.
“ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,” created and performed by Julia Masli, will be at the Rep Jan. 20 through Feb. 7. Masli is a young clown performer originally from Estonia and now based in England. Directed by Kim Noble, “ha ha ha ha ha ha ha” was a hit at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland and will visit New Haven on a U.S. tour arranged by the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington D.C.
“Rhinoceros,” the classic absurdist comedy by Eugene Ionesco, will run March 6-28. The 1959 play is still widely read in drama, literature and French classes but has rarely been produced in Connecticut. Seen as a metaphor for Fascism, authoritarian threats and other abuses of power, the script has experienced a resurgence recently. New London’s Flock Theatre will do their own “Rhinoceros” next month at the Connecticut College Arboretum and Western Connecticut State University has scheduled the play for April. The Yale Rep production will be directed by Liz Diamond, chair of the directing program at the David Geffen School of Drama, using the standard translation by Derek Prouse as adapted in 2018 by Frank Galati for a production at Asolo Rep in Florida. The Galati version of the script has been used by many other theaters in the past five or six years.
The 2025-26 Yale Rep season ends with “Furlough’s Paradise” by a.k. payne, directed by abigail jean-baptiste April 24 through May 16. payne is a New York- based playwright who has a BA from Yale University and an MA from Yale’s Geffen School of Drama and who has also had their work performed in Connecticut at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford. “Furlough’s Paradise” had its world premiere in 2024 at the Alliance Theatre in Georgia and its West Coast premiere this past April at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. The play concerns two cousins who have grown apart and reunite at the funeral of family members.
Subscription deals, including flex-passes, are available. More details of the Yale Repertory Theatre season are at yalerep.org/2025-26-season/.
