Details for the theatre’s 2026 season have been unveiled.
Lisa Spirling has announced details of her first season as Artistic Director and Co-CEO of
Stratford East. Alongside new Executive Director and Co-CEO Hanna Streeter and
Associate Artistic Director Jade Lewis, she will lead the historic 140-year-old East London theatre into its next era.
A co-production between Tectonic Theater Project and Stratford East of of Here There Are Blueberries by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich will have its UK premiere at the venue to open the theatre’s 2026 season. Running from the 31st January until the 28th February, the play tells the story of a mysterious album featuring Nazi-era photographs which arrives at the desk of a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum archivist. It is a 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2025 Lucille Lortel Award winner for Outstanding Play and two-time Helen Hayes Award winner.
Following this will be the London premiere of Nancy Medina’s acclaimed production of Choir Boy by the Academy Award-winning writer of Moonlight, Tarell Alvin McCraney. It heads to Stratford East following a successful run at the Bristol Old Vic. Described as a ‘tender coming of age story which rejoices in all that it means to march to your own drum, threaded throughout with soul-stirring a cappella gospel hymns and spirituals’ the show will run from the 26th March until the 25th April.
Meanwhile, stage and screen writer Ava Pickett (1536, Almeida; upcoming Baz
Lurhmann film about Joan of Arc) focuses onone of history’s most mythologised
figures in Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy as Lisa Spirling makes her directorial
debut as Artistic Director of Stratford East. Dates for this production have yet to be announced.
Talking about the news, Lisa Spirling said: ““For our first season we’ve been led by open hearts and inquisitive minds, and we can’t wait to share with you these stories from near and far.”
To find out more visit: https://www.stratfordeast.com/