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Imagine a space created just for children from birth to five years old to explore, create and play. Imagine art installations and events curated to engage and inspire our youngest Atlanta friends. You are imagining the PNC PlaySpace, a brand-new space now open at the Woodruff Arts Center.

The PNC PlaySpace is an experiential learning space where children can explore, move, and make believe. Open six days a week, the PNC PlaySpace invites children from birth to five years old to enjoy free play, engage in interactive performances, and embrace the chance to move and imagine. Provided at no cost to families, this space offers a consistent, accessible environment that sparks creativity and supports early childhood development through joyful, unstructured activity.

“The first few years of life are essential to human development,” says Dan Reardon Director of Youth and Families Olivia Aston Bosworth, “but there are so few public spaces that tolerate babies and toddlers. At the Alliance Theatre, we celebrate these years and welcome children to be their authentic selves. They need to move, touch, laugh, and connect with their trusted adults. The PNC PlaySpace installation, BOSSA NOVA BABY, is a peaceful retreat where early learners and their grownups can experience joy, connection, and wonder. We hope this space provides a gentle landing place to imagine new worlds, take tiny risks, and form lasting memories with the people they love most.”

The opening of the PNC PlaySpace also celebrates the inaugural immersive exhibition — Bossa Nova Baby. Little ones are invited into a sensory journey through the Brazilian rainforest, starting from the moment they enter through a cascading curtain of soft rope vines and are enveloped by echoing rainforest sounds. Once inside there is so much to discover — snuggle into the hug wall, splash in the projected river and explore the fiberoptic rainbow wall. Bossa Nova Baby is created in partnership with Dash Studio and reflects the living and breathing nature of the space that can be forever reimagined with new experiences.

In addition to open play, free weekly programs will be offered for littles ones and their caregivers. Mark your calendar for engaging events, such as Babies: Off Book!, the Lullaby Project, Baby Rave, Baby Yoga, Baby Wearing Dance, and so much more. Children ages 0-5 are invited to dance, read, stretch, laugh and imagine at the PNC PlaySpace — a place just for our youngest Atlanta community.

The PNC PlaySpace is open Tuesday through Sunday from 9am – 4pm and located within the Memorial Arts Building at the Woodruff Arts Center. Walk-ups are welcome. To guarantee immediate entry at arrival, patrons are encouraged to pre-register online. Park your stroller at The Selig Family Park & Play, remove your shoes and socks and enter a world of wonder.

What if students worldwide had access to the Alliance Theatre’s critically acclaimed Theatre for Youth and Families productions? What if teachers were equipped with resources that empowered them to daily integrate the arts in their lessons? Thanks to an exciting new partnership between the Alliance Theatre and Cox Campus, these “what-ifs” are becoming a reality.

Cox Campus is an innovative learning platform that was created to scale the transformative work of the Rollins Center for Language and Literacy, extending its reach far beyond Atlanta to communities around the world. Alliance Theatre Arts Integration on Cox Campus will extend the stage into every classroom and make arts integration accessible for every teacher. The impact will be felt by students and teachers alike.

When we built the Goizueta Stage for Youth & Families, we dreamed of removing barriers to participation for our entire community,” says Jennings Hertz Artistic Director Christopher Moses. “We define that term [community] broadly and never wanted zip code to be the determining factor in who can access our work. Partnering with the world-renowned Cox Campus allowed us to immediately reach classrooms not only throughout the entire state of Georgia, but across the globe. Educators and students in over 135 countries can now experience the awe & wonder of Alliance Theatre for Youth & Families productions for free through Cox Campus’ online resources. Thank you to the experts at Cox Campus for helping us achieve our dream of making theatre a birthright for all children.

This partnership will provide classrooms worldwide with free educational access to the Alliance Theatre’s critically acclaimed Theatre for Youth and Families productions via the Cox Campus platform. Starting this January, students will experience Doctor De Soto come to life from the page to the stage when they stream the Alliance Theatre’s world-premiere production. And this is just the beginning!

Teachers will have access to training and instructional resources designed to introduce and equip them in effective, evidence-based arts-integrated theater strategies. Accompanying instructional videos model basic arts-integration strategies that teachers can implement as pre- or post-activities to extend learning across various content areas. This training seeks to make arts-integration accessible for teachers of all ages and stages.

Today, more than 400,000 members across all fifty states and over 135 countries engage with Cox Campus, a platform offering 100% free, unlimited access to a broad and deep range of courses, resources, webinars, and community discussions—all advancing language and literacy practices. The Alliance Theatre is honored to partner with this inspiring platform to leverage theater-based strategies that elevate student voice and foster deeper, more creative engagement with and response to artistic material.

Alliance Theatre Arts Integration on Cox Campus will provide worldwide access to theater in the classroom and empower teachers to expand their students’ minds through arts-integrated strategies and foundational literacy skills. Here’s to the beginning of a beautiful new partnership.

Alliance Theatre Announces World Premiere Musical, LIKE FATHER

The Coming-of-Age Musical by Jacob Ryan Smith and Caroline Pernick Premieres in October 2026

ATLANTA – (February 3, 2026) — Alliance Theatre today announced that it will produce the world premiere musical LIKE FATHER as part of its 2026/27 season. A bold new musical created by Jacob Ryan Smith, with book, music, and lyrics by Smith and Caroline Pernick, and direction by Alliance’s Jennings Hertz Artistic Director Tinashe Kajese-Bolden (The Preacher’s Wife), LIKE FATHER will run on the Hertz Stage beginning in October.

LIKE FATHER is a coming-of-age musical set against America’s true-crime obsession. After her father’s arrest, seventeen-year-old Chris moves in with her estranged mother, Michelle, and stepfather, Ben. When a hit true-crime podcast exposes their family’s disturbing past to the world, they are forced to face the truth of what brought them together, or risk being undone by its consequences.

Driven by a bold, innovative folk-pop score, LIKE FATHER explores legacy, identity, and the cost of obsession, inspired by the loved ones left in the wake of infamous serial killers—and by the true-crime industry’s meteoric rise to over 250 million listeners worldwide.

The show was a semi-finalist at the Eugene O’Neill New Music Theater Festival and emerged as the winner of the inaugural Open Jar Musical Shark Tank.

Creative Team for the Alliance Theatre Production includes:

• Director: Tinashe Kajese-Bolden (The Preacher’s Wife)
• Book, Music, and Lyrics: Jacob Ryan Smith & Caroline Pernick
• Choreographer: Dell Howlett
• Music Director: Alejandro Senior
• Assistant Director: Rachel Sabo-Hedges
• Associate Music Director: Adam Beskind
• Dramaturg: Amanda Watkins
• Casting: Kevin Metzger-Timson, CSA & Frankie Ramirez, CSA, TRC Company

Casting details and specific performance dates will be announced in the coming months. The musical’s commercial producers are Howard Alter, Zachary Hausman, and Madison Thompson. Co-producers include Caryl & Kendrick Smith, City Cowboy Productions, Fahs Productions, Happy Recap Productions, Jonathan & Rae Corr, Kerri Mandelbaum, and Steven N. Lerner.

“At its core, LIKE FATHER is about learning to live beyond the shadows we inherit—a journey through grief, forgiveness, and the radical act of reclaiming your own name,” said Director Tinashe Kajese-Bolden. “It’s a surprising, darkly funny, deeply human story that speaks to so many of us reckoning with the weight of our histories and the hope of transformation. New work like this needs room to take risks, and regional theaters are where those stories are given oxygen; I’m thrilled to work alongside artists and producing partners with an unflinching belief in bold, emotionally intelligent storytelling, and proud that the Alliance is a national home where artists are trusted to push boundaries, deepen our empathy, and imagine what’s possible.”

Performances of LIKE FATHER run on the Hertz Stage October 8 through November 15, 2026 – learn more.

Beth Hyland learned about the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition almost as soon as she arrived in the Master of Fine Arts program in Playwriting at the University of California San Diego. From the beginning, as she and her classmates were encouraged to apply to the competition, they were also encouraged to see it as an opportunity or better yet a capstone.

“Naomi Iizuka, the head of the program at UCSD, encouraged us to apply,” says Hyland. “She described Kendeda as something to aspire to because it’s this kind of capstone to a graduate program in playwriting.”

For Hyland, that encouragement planted a seed that would grow into a singular goal. So, to be named the year’s winner?

“It’s a dream come true. It’s like a best-case scenario of stepping out of grad school and into the regional theater landscape. New works are risky and expensive. For young playwrights at the beginning of our careers, it’s very easy to get stuck in the workshop pipeline. You get readings, you get development, but the leap from workshop to production can take years—or never happen at all. As a launching pad, Kendeda is the best-case scenario.”

That is also why winning Kendeda with this play, Fires, Ohio, is incredibly rewarding.

Fires, Ohio has already lived many lives. Hyland first began writing the play in 2019, long before graduate school, and over time it has evolved through readings, revisions, and near misses. By 2025, she had made peace with the possibility that it might never receive a full production. Then came the call.

She still remembers the day Amanda Watkins, the Alliance Theatre’s Director of New Works called to inform her Fires, Ohio, was selected the winner.

“I was sitting on my couch when the phone rang,” she remembers. “When I saw the area code for Atlanta on my phone, everything in me went still because I wasn’t sure if the call was to tell me I won or to thank me for submitting my work.”

It’s just the perfect outcome; one that the greatest playwright couldn’t write if they tried.

At its core, Fires, Ohio is a contemporary reimagining inspired by Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, but Hyland is careful to resist the label of “adaptation” as something limiting or exclusionary. In fact, her guiding principle has been the opposite.

“It’s really important to me that people who have never heard of Uncle Vanya can enjoy Fires, Ohio fully. This is not an adaptation where you only enjoy it if you know Chekhov. Theater can already be so exclusionary, and the absolute last thing I want to do is shrink the pool of people who can enjoy the play.”

While audiences familiar with Chekhov may notice resonances and echoes, Hyland insists the play stands entirely on its own. The goal is not reverence, but conversation.

“What I love about adaptation is that you get to be in conversation with an artist you love and admire. You get to argue with them. You get to use them as a jumping-off point. You get to experiment with things that maybe disappointed you in the original work—all while holding real humility for the historical context you’re engaging.”

Hyland’s relationship with Chekhov is deeply personal. During an undergraduate class trip to Russia in 2012, she encountered Uncle Vanya in a way that stayed with her. But it wasn’t the play’s title character that stood out to her, no! It was Sonya, a figure often relegated to the margins of the play. Sonya’s quiet endurance, her generosity, and her sense of being overlooked resonated with Hyland at a moment in her own life when she felt similarly small.

When she sat down to write what would be the initial iteration of Fires, Ohio, Sonya became the focus and protagonist.

“That was the challenge and the joy. How do you make someone without ‘main character energy’ into the center of the story? I love her goodness. I love her purity of heart. Those are aspirational qualities for me.”

Hyland wrote much of the play while working as an administrative assistant at a college, pursuing playwriting alongside a day job that often made her feel invisible. That lived experience infuses the play with empathy for characters who occupy the background.

Humor, too, is central to Hyland’s storytelling. While Fires, Ohio grapples with isolation, loneliness, and unfulfilled desire—feelings made even more resonant in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic—it is also deeply funny.

“Humor is a massive coping mechanism for me,” she says. “It’s how I make sense of the most painful things in my life.”

She points to Chekhov’s famous stage direction, often translated as “laughing through tears,” as a guiding influence. The characters in Fires, Ohio use humor to connect, to deflect, to wound, and to survive—often all at once.

“What I hope audiences get is a feeling of intimacy. Like you’re sitting at the table with this family, witnessing some of the most romantic, devastating, and life-changing moments of their lives. You get to be a silent observer in moments we don’t usually get to see.”

Just as importantly, she hopes audiences do not arrive feeling that the play isn’t for them. “I hope people don’t think, ‘If I’m not a theater person, or I don’t know Chekhov, I won’t like this,’” she says. “This isn’t inside baseball. You don’t need special knowledge to enjoy it.”

She is also excited to be reunited with this production’s director, Marissa Wolf. The two first worked together during a reading of Fires, Ohio in Portland in 2024. Hyland recalls being immediately struck by Wolf’s leadership, intelligence, and generosity in the rehearsal room.

The production also draws on Atlanta’s deep bench of theatrical talent—something Hyland says became abundantly clear during auditions.

“The level of talent here is bananas,” she says. “The cast is extraordinary, and I think audiences are going to feel that electricity.”

And for audiences gathering in the dark, waiting for the lights to rise on Fires, Ohio, it’s an invitation—to sit at the table, to laugh through tears, and to see themselves reflected in stories that insist everyone, even those in the shadows, matters.

Performances of FIRES, OHIO run on the Hertz Stage February 25 through March 22, 2026 – learn more.