By Coral Gables Gazette staff
Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre has announced its 2026–27 Mainstage Season — five productions opening in October that span a gothic musical thriller, a Tony Award-winning true story of September 11, a Pulitzer Prize-winning drama told in real time, an 80s rock celebration, and the return of an audience favorite that first played on this stage nearly 30 years ago.
The season is the first presented under the newly dedicated name of the Dr. Lawrence and Barbara Stein Center for the Performing Arts, the historic Miracle Mile venue that has been home to Actors’ Playhouse since 1995, when the company partnered with the City of Coral Gables to transform a beloved Art Deco movie palace into one of South Florida’s premier performing arts institutions.
The season and its range
The 2026–27 season opens October 7 with Jekyll & Hyde, the Broadway gothic musical thriller with music by Frank Wildhorn and book and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novella. The show, which ran nearly 1,600 performances on Broadway and produced one of the most recognizable scores in musical theatre, follows Dr. Henry Jekyll’s experiments to separate good from evil — and the monstrous alter ego those experiments unleash. It is a production that rewards a large stage and a company with the vocal power to fill it. The run continues through November 1.
Come From Away follows in January, running January 27 through February 21, 2027. The Tony Award-winning musical by Irene Sankoff and David Hein tells the true story of 7,000 airline passengers stranded in Gander, Newfoundland, in the hours and days after September 11, 2001, when the small town of 9,000 people opened its homes, its schools, and its hearts to strangers from around the world. The show won the Tony for Best Direction and has been called one of the most emotionally generous musicals of its era — a production that enters the darkest day of recent American history and finds, against all expectation, something luminous.
March brings Rock of Ages, running March 17 through April 11, 2027. The five-time Tony Award-nominated musical, with a book by Chris D’Arienzo and arrangements by Ethan Popp, is built from the power ballads and arena anthems of 1980s glam metal — Poison, Whitesnake, Journey, Styx, REO Speedwagon — woven into a story of big dreams and bigger hair on the Sunset Strip. It is the season’s lightest entry by design, positioned between the gravity of the two productions that precede it and the intimacy of what follows.
Donald Margulies’ Lunar Eclipse opens May 12 for a run through June 6, 2027. Margulies, whose Dinner with Friends won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, brings a new play to the Actors’ Playhouse stage — a drama that follows a long-married couple watching a rare lunar eclipse unfold while their conversation reveals the quiet weight of a life built together. The play is told in real time across the 85 minutes of the eclipse itself, each phase of the celestial event mirroring a phase of the conversation. It is an unusual structural conceit and it arrives at a moment when intimate, carefully observed drama about long partnership has particular resonance.
The season closes July 14 with I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, running through August 8, 2027. The musical revue, with book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro and music by Jimmy Roberts, was first produced at the Miracle Theatre in 1998, ran for a full year, and returned the following season by popular demand. This version features new songs and updated material reflecting the absurdities of 21st-century relationships. Its return to the stage where it first played in Coral Gables carries a particular resonance for longtime Actors’ Playhouse audiences — a production that helped define the company’s relationship with its community nearly three decades ago, back for another run.
The institution and its moment
Actors’ Playhouse has won 90 Carbonell Awards for artistic excellence over its nearly four decades at the Miracle Theatre, making it one of the most decorated regional theater companies in South Florida. It is one of Miami-Dade’s leading cultural institutions and the region’s largest employer of Florida-based theatre artists, with a year-round conservatory, children’s theatre program, and educational outreach that reaches more than 60,000 young people annually.
“Our goal each season is to bring South Florida audiences a lineup that is entertaining, meaningful and reflects the incredible diversity of stories that theatre can tell,” said Barbara S. Stein, Executive Producing Director. “From Broadway hits and high-energy musicals to powerful contemporary plays, this season truly offers something for everyone.”
The season is the first presented under the name Dr. Lawrence and Barbara Stein Center for the Performing Arts — a dedication that marks a new chapter for a building that has been telling stories on Miracle Mile for more than 75 years. The Miracle Theatre opened in 1948 as an Art Deco movie palace whose original green-and-white floral patterns had been hidden under fiberglass for decades before a $6.5 million restoration revealed them in the 1990s. The partnership between Actors’ Playhouse and the City of Coral Gables that brought the company to this address has now produced nearly 30 consecutive seasons of professional theatre on Miracle Mile.
Subscription packages start at $225 and are on sale now at ActorsPlayhouse.org. Single tickets go on sale August 1. For information, visit ActorsPlayhouse.org or call 305-444-9293.
ACTORS’ PLAYHOUSE 2026–27 MAINSTAGE SEASON Dr. Lawrence and Barbara Stein Center for the Performing Arts, 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables
Jekyll & Hyde — October 7 – November 1; Come From Away — January 27 – February 21, 2027 Rock of Ages — March 17 – April 11, 2027 Lunar Eclipse — May 12 – June 6, 2027 I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change — July 14 – August 8, 2027
Subscriptions: On sale now from $225 at ActorsPlayhouse.org Single tickets: On sale August 1, 2026 Information: ActorsPlayhouse.org or 305-444-9293
