This will be quite the season, y'all.
Credit: Ryan Arnst
A poisoned water supply... a backyard argument that won’t stay polite... an actor handed a script they’ve never seen. Yowsers.
Browardist chatted with New City Players producing artistic director Tim Davis for the scoop on a season built around one question: What holds us together when we’re pushed apart?
Davis calls the company’s 11th season America at 250. “A lot of debate about what America is, is going on,” he said. “But you look at our history and the history of America is a debate about what America is.” Across five productions in its upcoming season, communities face questions about truth, belief and survival.
New City Players began with a group of friends staging two sold-out performances of Godspell in 2014. It incorporated in 2016 and now has an ensemble of over 20 actors, directors and designers. Davis says the company welcomes roughly 2,500 patrons a season. Its three main-stage shows will play the intimate, 70-seat Island City Stage in Wilton Manors; two limited runs will take the company to the Broward Center for the first time.
First up, Nov. 13–29, is Amy Herzog’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. A doctor warns that his town’s water is making people sick, but fixing it could wreck the local economy. Davis asks, “How do we find consensus around the truth as a community when profit is threatened, when physical health is threatened?”
From Feb. 26–28, Short Plays: Lauder Made Vol. III brings locally written, world-premiere plays to the Broward Center’s Abdo New River Room. The work grows out of NCPLab, where South Florida playwrights meet monthly at LauderAle Brewery to develop their scripts. This year, they’ll tackle the season’s central question through local stories
The season turns to a Wyoming backyard April 16–May 2 with Will Arbery’s Heroes of the Fourth Turning. Four young Catholic conservatives gather to celebrate a former professor, then clash over faith, politics and tradition. Davis hopes the production offers “a good faith representation, not making fun of these people, not turning them into cartoons.” His challenge to the audience: “Can we see the humanity beneath that?”
June 11–13 brings the theatrical dare that Davis thinks will make people say, “I have to be there.” At each of four performances of White Rabbit Red Rabbit at the Broward Center, a different actor opens a sealed script for the first time onstage. No rehearsal. Davis is eager to see someone “read it and lay it all out there and make strong choices.”
The finale, Aug. 20–Sept. 5, is Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer-winning Anna in the Tropics. In a 1929 Tampa cigar factory, a lector reads Anna Karenina to Cuban workers whose lives begin to echo the novel.
The plays are only some of what Davis wanted to tell us about. Alongside receptions and artist talks, New City Players plans to offer The Space after each main-stage production, which is a guided, hour-long conversation using questions shaped by the show. Guests can bring someone they know or be paired with a stranger. “We don’t know how to be curious about other people,” Davis said. “How do we take what’s happening on stage in the play and extend the impact of that into our actual lives?”
For dates, tickets and season passes, visit New City Players’ 2026–27 season page.
