Long Wharf Toasts A Season Of Partnerships

Lucy Gellman Photos.

Jacob Padrón lifted a glass, beaming as he looked over a crowd at the Ives Main Library. In front of him, a room of theater lovers looked back, two dozen pairs of eyes tracing the curve of his arm, the sparkling cider and water now making the rounds. Together, they toasted a season of new partnerships—on two college campuses, in intimate black box theaters, havens of Black arts and entrepreneurship and with theaters across the country.

It was a peek into Long Wharf Theater's 60th Anniversary Season, which will criss-cross New Haven from downtown to Beaver Hills to the internet and back between October 2024 and May 2025. Two years after announcing its move to itinerancy, the theater is finding its rhythm with several new and existing partnerships, including Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU), Collective Consciousness Theatre, the Yale Schwarzman Center, New Haven Pride Center, International Festival of Arts & Ideas, New Haven Free Public Library and the City of New Haven. 

"What a moment, right? For any regional theater to reach 60 years!" said Padrón, who has served as the theater's artistic director since 2018. "It's a huge thing, and we really hope that it's gonna be a celebration for our entire city and region." 

"It's about telling stories and bringing experiences to different parts of our community, and letting the entire city and region be our stage," he added. "We really feel like this encapsulates the ethos or the spirit of what we're trying to do."

That deep dive into storytelling begins October 25, with the return and expansion of the theater's “Artistic Congress” (the first, held remotely, was in the fall of 2020) at the Yale Schwarzman Center in downtown New Haven. Over two days, speakers and attendees will discuss the role of theater as a way to speak truth to power, particularly in a presidential election year. For Padrón, who grew up immersed in El Teatro Campesino in California, it's an ever-present reminder that theater can be a tool for social justice. 

It will continue in November with the fifth annual Black Trans Women at the Center,  a virtual festival and national collaboration featuring new works by and about Black trans women. Padrón praised producer Joey Reyes, who birthed the series in 2020 and has continued to make it a reality in the years since, for their work on and belief in the festival. In its five years, the event has become an act of joy and resistance, lifting up trans theatermakers at a time when their rights and lives are increasingly endangered. 

As in years past, Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi will curate the event. Long Wharf will also be working with Edidi, a member of the theater's artistic ensemble, on her play Shape Shifter. The collaboration culminates with an observance of Trans Day of Remembrance, held each year on November 20. Other performance dates and playwrights are yet to be announced. 

Meanwhile, stages across the city will come to life with everything from stripped-down musical theater to Boricua superheroes scrambling to save the day. From Nov. 30 to Dec. 15, the theater will present Joe Masteroff, Jerry Bock, and Sheldon Harnick’s 1963 musical She Loves Me, directed by Padrón with new orchestration from Andy Einhorn, at the LAB at ConnCORP. 

An adaptation of Miklós László’s Parfumerie, the work blends feuding coworkers, secret love letters, and that which is hidden in plain sight to tell a story of people falling in love and figuring out how to exist with each other. Padrón said he’s been thinking about the musical since 2010, when he was a producer on the show at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. 

“I remember watching the musical, and thinking, like, I think there’s maybe a different way to tell this story,” Padrón said. “This is actually a story about working-class people who are trying to make connection and find love.” 

That just marks the beginning. In January 2025, the theater returns to the stage with El Coquí Espectacular and the Bottle of Doom, presented in partnership with the John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts at SCSU. Written by Nuyorican playwright Matt Barbot, the play tells the story of a quiet comic book artist named Alex who moonlights as El Coquí Espectacular, a superhero born in his bright and ink-splotched pages. 

Unlike his comic book hero, Alex is actually not very good at superhero-ing. Until, of course, he has to be—because his community’s survival is on the line. While the story is set in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, it will likely resonate in New Haven, home to a sizable Puerto Rican community that has continued to grow.   

It also marks a full-circle moment: it will be directed by Kinan Valdez, whose father Luis founded El Teatro Campesino and instilled Padrón with an early love for theater. At SCSU, Padrón said he hopes it will feel meaningful with audiences  of all ages, including the university’s students.   

Dr. Dwayne Smith, interim president of SCSU, expressed his excitement for the collaboration in a release sent out earlier this week. 

“Southern Connecticut State University is proud to be a long-standing partner of Long Wharf Theatre and we are excited to deepen our partnership during the theatre’s 60th anniversary season,” he said. “Our campus is always seeking opportunities for connection and conversation. Having Long Wharf Theatre productions on our campus next season will bring this connection, and so much more, directly to our scholars and patrons.”

Terrence Riggins and Jenny Nelson.

From May 15 to June 8, the theater will conclude its season downtown with the world premiere of Unbecoming Tragedy: A Ritual Journey Toward Destiny, a one-man show written and performed by New Haven playwright Terrence Riggins. Directed by Cheyenne Barboza and set in Yale’s Off-Broadway Theatre, the work tells Riggins’ life story, from a childhood in California to the stages of New Haven.

It is produced in partnership with Collective Consciousness Theatre, which hosted a workshopped version of the show at Bregamos Community Theater (CCT) last fall.

“It’s surreal,” Riggins said Wednesday night. “I don’t know what to say. It’s just so much. I feel full. I just feel full.” 

Jenny Nelson, associate artistic director at CCT, added that she feels deep gratitude: the collaboration between the two theaters has been years in the making. In March 2020, Padrón had just announced a partnership with CCT when Covid-19 hit New Haven, forcing the theater to rethink its season as the world shuttered overnight. At the time, Long Wharf had planned to stage Kristoffer Diaz’ The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, directed by CCT’s Dexter Singleton. Four years later, the pivot to the work of a New Haven playwright feels right on time. 

As Wednesday's sneak peek drew to a close, Padrón said he is both excited for the season and for Long Wharf's next chapter, which is still very much emerging. When the theater opened with Arthur Miller's The Crucible in 1965, its home was in the unlikeliest of places: a food terminal, where the smell of fish guts and pork sausage was never far from the loading dock and outdoor props storage. 

At the time, artistic leadership didn't know how long or if the regional model would last. They were embarking on an experiment—much like the theater is six decades later. 

And then people came. And they kept coming. As they did, Long Wharf became a hub for cutting-edge theater, hosting productions that ranged from Fires In The Mirror to a Brecht adaptation titled The Good Person of New Haven. The theater took risks, building ties with playwrights, poets, rafter-raising musical artists and more recently, immigrants and refugees and hundreds of young people. 

During Covid-19, it found a way to keep telling stories online and outdoors. When it bid its Sargent Drive space farewell, it did so with Black and Indigenous playwrights and a celebration that honored the physical space, and then found a way to say goodbye as a community.  

"We made magic there, yes, because of the space we were in, but the magic really came because of the people," Padrón said. "Because of the relationships that we built. And making world-class theater is about this. It is about the constellation of humans who come together and the relationship building that we create. And that's the thing that's gonna take us into the future."

Now, he said, the theater has found its footing in itinerancy. This season, Long Wharf brought The Year of Magical Thinking to 20 different locations around the city, including community theater spaces and people’s living rooms. It expanded Black Trans Women at the Center, which has supported 15 trans playwrights since its inception in 2020. It sold out its performances of A View from the Bridge at the Canal Dock Boathouse. 

"We are building on our history of innovation, we are building on our legacy, and we hope that this session is a continuation of what we are building together," Padrón said. 

Remaining performances in the current season include Adil Mansoor's Amm(i)gone at the end of May and a benefit concert for the theater with Darren Criss on May 13. Tickets and more information  are available here.