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A Conversation about The Goizueta Stage for Youth and Families with Jennings Hertz Artistic Director Christopher Moses

When asked about the new Goizueta Stage for Youth and Families, Jennings Hertz Artistic Director Christopher Moses is quick to continue to reference something he’s been saying for years – that the new theater space will advance his vision for theater being a “birthright” for every Atlanta resident.

“The promise of the Goizueta Stage for Youth and Families is to become a consistent resource for young people and educators in our community. For far too long, we have asked the busiest people in our community to bend their schedules to fit our production calendar. Now we are upending how we produce. … We are trying to make it as easy as possible for people to experience this work because we now empirically know the benefits. And now that we know that theater can help create more inspired, thoughtful, hopeful, and connected human beings – it’s up to us to scale those benefits as far and wide.”

– Chris Moses, Jennings Hertz Artistic Director

The Goizueta Stage for Youth and Families (GSYF) officially broke ground on August 6, 2024, but the idea was conceptualized long before. The vision for the GSYF was always to be a transformative space for the Alliance’s youngest patrons, featuring thoughtfully curated, year-round programming by the Alliance and Symphony Orchestra. The programming will be supported by the Imagine Endowment, a capital campaign that was launched in tandem with the groundbreaking.

“That’s what allows us to have such low-ticket prices for these shows,” Moses explains about the Imagine Endowment, “which are less than a third of the national average.” Moses also acknowledges that transportation is also a factor that sometimes inhibits school groups from attending shows, which is why the Alliance began offering bus reimbursement for qualified schools. “It’s about relying on us,” Moses continues.

“We know how important this art form can be on a young person’s development and now we’ve got to do all we can to make sure that as many kids as possible are experiencing it.”

– Chris Moses, Jennings Hertz Artistic Director

The project was designed with young people in mind, conceptualized in tandem with the architects on the project, Perkins and Will. In addition to utilizing information the Alliance’s Education Department has gathered over years of research, key stakeholders met with Dr. Walter Gilliam, a leading child psychologist, to ensure that the creativity of youth was respected and kept in mind at every stage of the design. “Even the way you enter the theater rewards curiosity,” Moses continues, “and invites you [to enter] in a way that you might not expect. It’s sophisticated. It’s not a condescending design. … It also communicates to the world that young people are not just welcome here, but that we actually built this place with them in mind. The fact that it’s on the front of our building on Peachtree, our city’s main thoroughfare, is such a fantastic statement to the rest of this city and to the rest of the world. My sincerest hope is that it inspires other large cultural organizations to go and do the same.”

One of the observations Dr. Gilliam made that was integrated into the design of the space is the fact that younger children like to be “close to the action” — closer to the stage than seats are often placed. “That’s what prompted us to have these scissor lift seats,” Moses says. “Each row can depress into the floor, and we can put cushions on top so that the youngest ones can be up close and less hindered by traditional theater seats. That’s also why we went with the bench seating as well; it can accommodate young people who may want to sprawl out or sit up next to their parent or caregiver.”

Another observation that Dr. Gilliam brought to the ideation phase is that young people love to see their older selves to get a feel for what they might expect as they begin to grow up. This led to the construction of the PNC PlaySpace on the front of the building, which offers a unique space for unstructured play that also contains space for rotating art installations. “I love that image of a one- or two-year-old in the Play Space, which is open for free six days a week,” Moses explains. “Through encouraging this unstructured play and rewarding curiosity, creativity, and [those children] can see a five-, six-, or seven-year-old walking into the theater, knowing that’s their trajectory. Really starting to build this culture of growing up here at the Alliance from the moment you were born. You’re there playing in this cool, creative Amazon rainforest installation, and then, a few years down the road, you’re regularly coming into the GSYF. And then, twenty years down the road, who knows? Maybe you’re going to the Hertz or the Coca-Cola Stage. It’s starting to build this ownership over both the art form of theater and this arts center where it really does feel like it belongs to you simply by growing up in Atlanta.”

When asked about the programming for the GSYF, Moses gets excited, eager to explain the inspiration behind the three shows opening the space. Two have been produced on Alliance stages before — Into the Burrow: A Peter Rabbit™ Tale and Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Experience. The former was produced in the round on the Hertz Stage in 2023 and ran for three months (a sort of case study of what an extended run could look like on the GSYF) and the latter opened in early 2020 and had just four performances before it closed due to the pandemic. The third show, The Great Ant Sleepover, is based on a book that was commissioned as part of the Mayor’s Summer Reading Club and was distributed to over 20,000 kids in Atlanta. When it clicked that all three stories took place underground, the idea of The Underground Rep almost wrote itself.

“We knew we wanted to try something new and different because that’s what this moment called for,” Moses explains. “We had these three stories that all could share similar real estate and then we started dreaming about the whole notion of [how we are] digging up and getting to the foundation of who we are and we thought about how fun it would be to create this conceit that while we were digging and constructing this new theater, we happened across this whole underground world — these three different stories that are sharing the same ecosystem. … To reinforce that notion that families could come back again and again — to come for a weekend and see three different shows in the new theater.”

The idea of creating a repertory of actors — six actors who would all play different roles in each show — came soon after, which responded to the need of the local acting community and to provide Atlanta actors consistent work for seven months. At least two actors are able to join Actors Equity due to the long-term nature of the contract and finally get all of the benefits that come with membership, including health insurance.

At the end of it all, this space is just a beginning — a beginning for the Atlanta community of actors, a beginning for the next generation, and a beginning for what theater for youth and families could look like.

“We will make theater a birthright. That is the promise of this stage.”

– Chris Moses, Jennings Hertz Artistic Director

Director Shana Carroll on Duel Reality’s ability to transport audiences, and her return to the Alliance’s Coca-Cola Stage.

Ask anyone who has experienced Duel Reality before, and you may get one of two descriptions: Romeo and Juliet meets Cirque du Soleil or Shakespeare meets the circus without all the animals. Any of those descriptions have some accuracy to them, according to Shana Carroll, but there is another description most aren’t considering.

“I see it more as a sporting event. Sort of football game,” she said. “I think of it more like the soccer-type World Cup or rugby games where the fans are just so die-hard they want to kill each other.”

That was the energy she and her company, The 7 Fingers, who created and produce Duel Reality, wanted to capture.

“The telling of Romeo and Juliet as a sporting event, and, of course, using circus language. Sometimes we say a circus-infused sporting event, or a circus sporting event because the rounds are circus battles – red versus blue; the modern version of the Capulets and the Montagues.”

In 2002, Carroll, along with six other circus performers, founded The 7 Fingers. Carroll herself performed with Cirque du Soleil. The vision was that they could create a company that blended the many genres of live performance, from theater to circus and everything in between. Before circus, which she started when she was 18, Carroll’s introduction into performance was theater.

“It is where my roots, along with Gypsy Snider, another one of The 7 Fingers founders, are. As a child and a teenager, I did theater,” she said.

“Over the years, [Gypsy and I] have talked about wanting to do adaptations of various works in a circus style.”

As they devised shows, they always thought in terms of writing unique pieces of circus, using their theater and dance vocabulary. In the process, they always wondered, “what would happen if we did Romeo and Juliet.”

Eventually, as they were approached by Virgin Voyages to create a show for their new fleet of ships, they decided to make their dream real. In the summer of 2021, they debuted Duel Reality on Virgin’s Scarlet Lady.

“They had a theater that was modular in an alley configuration – like a tennis court. It just reminded me of a sports arena in a way, like a stadium,” she remembers. “Right away, like this Venn diagram when everything goes ‘ding-ding-ding’ together, everything kind of converged.”

In that moment, like in the movies or a cartoon when the light bulb lights up over a person’s head, they knew they had to do Romeo and Juliet like a sporting event, merging theater and circus together.

This is not the first time the Alliance Theatre has worked with Carroll. The Alliance’s 2023 production Water for Elephants, based on a novel about a traveling circus, required unique choreography. Carroll was part of the creative team for the show and designed the circus elements.

Coming back to Atlanta for Duel Reality is sentimental for Carroll in many ways.

“[Being in Atlanta for Water for Elephants] was like we were in camp together. You know when you have great memories of your summer camp friends? We had such a great time,” she said. “There are such fond memories from those months. It’s like going back to some beloved place.”

To be clear, Duel Reality isn’t Water for Elephants. There are some vast differences, but the same awe that audiences experienced from that show will be just as awe-inspiring, if not more, in Duel Reality.

“Romeo and Juliet is a classic. Simply put! I hope that audiences who experience DUEL REALITY will be viscerally and emotionally transported. Circus language, at least in the way I try to use it, is always metaphorically linked to the story beat. With DUEL REALITY, like in Romeo and Juliet, there is a sense that the stakes are high stakes. Whether it’s the high stakes of the battle, or the high stakes of the love, in every scene there is essentialized emotion, and the circus aspect is viscerally accompanying that story beat.”

The show, she said, is designed to transport audiences.

“Often, whenever we go to the theater, if you’re anything like me, you sit back and wonder, ‘Where is this going? What is this about? What do I think of this?’”

But when it comes to circus, she believes audiences don’t allow themselves to be transported in the same way. Not usually. Duel Reality, however, is designed to transport. Or, at least, she would love for audiences to be transported.

“When circus is seen and framed in the right way, it has that capacity to be transformative; to be life-affirming, because it shows you something that you thought was, maybe, impossible previously, as possible. That carries over to other corners of your life, and people realize everything they thought was impossible could be possible.”

Duel Reality runs on the Coca-Cola Stage February 5 through March 1, 2026 – learn more.

Life as a trapeze artist is about more than just the intense training, nomadic lifestyle, or death-defying stunts; it’s about the spontaneity of creating something new every time a performer takes to the stage. The discipline is demanding, but it fuels the passion to keep telling stories through movement. It’s what keeps the fire alive.

Cirque tour life mirrors that of any traditional touring show: demanding hours, time away from home, and exposure to different cultures and cities. This, of course, is supplemented by the rehearsal element, which emphasizes collaboration and artistic blending to achieve the best possible performance. Additionally, performers must maintain a peak physical condition to consistently execute their stunts at a high level. The job demands a constant state of physical readiness, with the ability to adapt to new disciplines at a moment’s notice.

Often, performers are introduced to movement styles that fall outside their comfort zones, each requiring a unique skill set. Silvia Dopazo, an aerialist from Spain, is currently touring as an aerial artist. The experience has expanded her artistic repertoire, exposing her to a wide range of disciplines beyond her original training, and preparing her for any future artistic endeavors. “I was a rope and tissue artist, and now I’m skating, I am doing chains, bungees… all disciplines I had never done before,” she shares.

Sophie Brandeborn, a performer with AXEL, a touring figure-skating cirque show, describes performing as a truly magical experience; one that overtakes her completely.

“For me… I can almost have an outside-of-body experience, where I see everything from a perspective outside of myself…as you get more comfortable, that’s when the beauty kicks in…when you start getting a connection with the audience. You get secure in your role.”

Duel Reality runs on the Coca-Cola Stage February 5 through March 1, 2026 – learn more.

The Christmas season at Alliance Theatre brings the magic of A Christmas Carol to life, lighting up the Atlanta theater scene with warmth, joy, and timeless tradition. Every year, the stunning costumes, designed by Mariann Verheyen and Laury Conley, play a crucial role in guiding the audience through the emotional depths of the story through their work.

Over the years, Verheyen and Conley have sifted through over 700 fabric swatches and designed more than 200 pieces that have defined the look of the production. Each costume helps convey not only the time period but also the characters’ emotional journeys. From Ebenezer Scrooge’s worn, solitary dressing gown to the vibrant, festive robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present, the costumes elevate the story, enhancing its themes of redemption, love, and family.

The synergy between costume, set, and lighting design is key to the production’s emotional impact. The set, with its cobbled streets, flickering lanterns, and snow-dusted rooftops, provides a rich, textured backdrop that makes the costumes come alive. Lighting design further heightens this effect, using cool blue tones to evoke Scrooge’s lonely chambers and warm golden hues during Fezziwig’s festive party scene. Fabrics like wool, velvet, lace, and cotton add authenticity, helping the audience feel as though they’ve stepped into the world of Dickens’ London.

“Each year, we gather the scale and placement of the new cast members, and what’s on the page is only the beginning—it evolves from there…Some dresses may take up to 30 hours to create, while frock coats can take anywhere from 35 to 60 hours.”

Creating these costumes, Mariann says, is like working with ever-shifting clay. “Each year, we gather the scale and placement of the new cast members, and what’s on the page is only the beginning—it evolves from there.” One challenge they often face is the fluctuating cast, which means that sometimes costumes designed for previous performers need to be altered or redesigned for comfortability and confidence within the role. “Some dresses may take up to 30 hours to create, while frock coats can take anywhere from 35 to 60 hours,” Conley expressed.

Despite the challenges, Verheyen and Conley’s meticulous attention to detail, collaboration, and trust with their team ensures that each costume helps drive the emotional narrative. Their work is a testament to the power of women in theater design, breathing new life into a classic tale. Their costumes don’t just reflect the world of A Christmas Carol—they help shape it, making this beloved story even more unforgettable for every audience that experiences it.

A Christmas Carol runs on the Coca-Cola Stage November 15 through December 24, 2025 – learn more.

Amanda Watkins Marks Main Stage Directorial Debut with A Christmas Carol

If there is anything Amanda Watkins loves the most, it’s Christmas. “I love it so much!”

And it’s not that she loves Christmas because it’s considered the most wonderful time of the year, or because she’s one of those crazed Christmas fanatics itching to put their Christmas tree up as soon as the summer solstice ends. No, even though at least one of those descriptions is true. Her reason for loving Christmas is much deeper, more personal, and more heartfelt.

“It’s because of my dad. He is why I love Christmas so much.”

As she reflects on her dad and what he meant to her, she admits he wasn’t the most demonstrative when it came to his emotions. But when it came to Christmas?

“He was like the Christmas ambassador or something. He just loved Christmas. Especially the shows. We were so into Charlie Brown Christmas. He would do the half-eaten cookie and the half glass of milk and leave it on the hearth like Santa had been there,” she remembers. “So, I really had this belief that this magical thing had happened, you know. He always hung on to the joy of it. And when he died, he died over the holidays – right after Christmas, but before the new year. I thought there was something very poetic about that.”

This year marks the 36^th season the Alliance has produced the beloved holiday classic, A Christmas Carol. For Watkins, who also serves as the Alliance’s Director of New Works, it’s her first time directing on the main stage at Alliance. She’s only directed on the Hertz Stage.

To be directing this show on the same stage where her father witnessed her acting for the first time feels kismet.

“My dad is all over this theater,” she said. “To be on that same stage working on a show that I know he would love. It is. It is…”

Special!

A Christmas Carol is, without a doubt, a staple here at the Alliance. For years, families have made seeing the production part of their annual tradition. For many in and around Atlanta, it’s the official kick-off their holiday season. From her perspective, Watkins believes part of the motivation for Atlanta families is that it’s a bulletproof show.

“Who doesn’t love this story? Especially this adaptation? It gets to the heart of this opportunity for people to change their minds about who they are,” she said. “Who doesn’t want to be uplifted by that?”

She also points out that, even though some audience members may have seen the show countless times, they aren’t seeing the show in the same way each time.

“Each time they see it, they’re meeting it as a totally different person,” she said. “Because 365 days have gone by. No one is returning as the same person they were the last time they saw it. Something in them, something in their life has changed which has changed them.”

Every Christmas, you are a different person.

What she considers to be the magic about the story in A Christmas Carol is the message that everyone can see themselves within it. Yes, for generations, we have understood it to be a story about Ebenezer Scrooge and how his life is changed on a specific Christmas Eve night. And yes, that part of the story is important. But, as Watkins points out, it’s not just Scrooge we are tracking in this story.

“We’re tracking what’s happening with the Watkins family. We’re tracking what is happening, what’s certainly happening with young Matthew. We’re certainly looking at the Cratchits. We’re looking at Tiny Tim. I mean, some could say that Tiny Tim is like the heartbeat of the piece,” she said. “I think one of the reasons the story is so universal, and evergreen is because you have a lot of opportunities to see yourself, right? You can look at Scrooge and think ‘I have nothing in common with that guy.’ One could, right? But I think we all could look at Cratchit, Bob Cratchit, and think, ‘I have the world in common with that guy. I’m tired. I’m overworked. I’m underpaid. And I’m still going to invite a sense of graciousness for other people into my day to day living,’ right?”

In reality, A Christmas Carol is a story about community, this community, who, as she puts it, gives HIM a second chance.

“Otherwise, it’s this white savior story,” Watkins adds. “And who wants to see that? No one.”

It’s not really the ghosts who give Scrooge a second chance. Yes, they create a pathway for his change, but it’s the community.

“The only thing any of us can control is how we treat people and change how we see people,” she said. “All we can do is address our own heart and mind, and this play does that so well through these characters. It certainly is the way I’m approaching the play, I think.”

It is a production that just works, she said. And she credits Leora Morris, who was instrumental in the development of this current adaptation of the Alliance’s production, and Caitlin Hargraves who directed the 2024-25 season’s production.

“Leora’s original direction is so good. And the design is so good,” she said. “Caitlin made all the right choices, and she’s taken such good care of it. So, I don’t feel the pressure because I know how to get out of the way of something that works. I know how to do that. I’m not a fool. And this works, you know?”

A Christmas Carol runs on the Coca-Cola Stage November 15 through December 24, 2025 – learn more.

Playwright York Walker hopes audiences walk away having seen themselves in Covenant.

As it is written on the page, Covenant, by York Walker, opens in darkness. Then, a little bit of light breaks through — a flicker and crack of a small flame, until it grows to reveal Ruthie; a young, black girl, in a blue dress, with pockets in the front.

“Everybody got a secret,” are the first words from Ruthie’s mouth.

When Walker sat down to write this play, Ruthie, he said, was the first image he had.

“The idea sort of came to me. She was surrounded in darkness, and had on this period-looking dress,” he said. “And so, I was like, ‘Okay, this is a character, clearly, and it’s going to be about her.’”

Prior to Covenant, he’d written another play that, in his own words, was just basic. It wasn’t bad. And he wouldn’t exactly say that it was boring. It was just very basic, straightforward, inspired by the late, great August Wilson, and set in a house in the ‘60s. After writing that play, he became interested in genre and what it looked like to have Black people and Black queer people show up in different genres. That led him to wonder, what does it look like to have a horror play on stage with Black people in it?

“And not have any white folks in it. And to have none of the horror coming from white people. That, I think, is what makes this play different,” he said. “I was terrified because I wasn’t sure that any of this was going to work. But I think by the time I started working on this play, I was at least brave enough to try to see.”

As he wrote, he remembered the myth of Robert Johnson. Born in Hazelhurst, Mississippi in 1911, Johnson played several juke joints throughout the south, and allegedly only had one hit record, Tarraplane Blues. His music, which included only 29 recorded songs, spoke to the experiences of bitterness and oppression he and other Black sharecroppers and descendants of enslaved Africans faced in the south.

After his wife and child died during birth, the loss is said to have been what pushed him into stardom. The rumor is, Johnson disappeared for roughly 18 months. When he re-emerged, he had a musical ability that could only be due to something supernatural. As a result, many claimed Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his talents. He later died at the age of 27 from pneumonia caused by poisoning.

The myth, said Walker, lends itself to horror.

“Black folks don’t mess with the devil. We don’t mess with spirits. None of that stuff. All these things work well together in terms of creating a horror play for Black people. I threw them all in the same pot. As I started writing, the characters started to be who they wanted to be without me,” he said. “When I’m writing something, what’s in the back of my mind is who am I and who am I writing this for? I think about Toni Morrison and the conversations she would have about the white gaze and feeling like when she was reading books, she could hear the author talking to white readers. I think it just helps to be specific about that in your writing. Like I said, Black folks, we don’t mess with the devil. But being aware of who I was writing it for, being aware of my art, and trying my best to take care of Black people in the writing of it, that was very intentional.”

Anytime he writes something, Walker said, the experience feels like a collaboration between his intention and something bigger.
“It’s like there’s a world where the play is already written,” he said. “I’m trying to pull from that thing to build it.”

He thinks back to his experiences of being in the movie theater and seeing Jordan Peele’s Get Out or Us. The experience: everyone in the theater collectively talking back to the screen and that whole situation, really opened something for him and made him interested in what that would be like in the theater.

“I wanted to create a story that was interesting and compelling, and character-driven, that also could work on stage and not be corny, because horror, I feel like, could very easily go left on stage,” he said. “Even movies very easily can be terrible and not be scary at all.”

What hopes does he have for audiences in Atlanta who come to see Covenant? He said he tries to shy away from dictating what he wants people to walk away from his work with.

“I think it’s going to be different depending on what you bring to it. If you grew up in a religious household like me, you will bring something specific to the experience. You’ll probably walk away from it very differently from somebody who didn’t grow up with religion at all,” he said. “If you had a very religious mother or grandmother, you’ll see that person in the play. It may or may not trigger. Everybody will, more than likely, have a different experience of it.”

What’s most important to me is that, especially for Black people, they feel seen. That’s the biggest thing for me. When I go to the theater, I just want to walk away feeling like I’m a little less alone in the world, a little less alone in my experience. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I walk away from the play feeling like, ‘Oh, it’s a happy ending. I’m going to be okay.’ Sometimes it doesn’t end that way. But I’m still grateful to have recognized myself on stage. Sometimes that’s enough.”

Performances of Covenant run on the Hertz Stage October 8 through November 9, 2025 – learn more.

Full Creative Team Announced for the World Premiere of Basura

The Inspiring True Story of Finding Music in Unlikely Places

MAY 30 – JULY 5, 2025 ON THE COCA-COLA STAGE

MUSIC & LYRICS BY GLORIA ESTEFAN and EMILY ESTEFAN
BOOK BY KAREN ZACARÍAS
DIRECTED BY MICHAEL GREIF

CHOREOGRAPHY BY PATRICIA DELGADO
MUSIC SUPERVISION, ORCHESTRATIONS and ARRANGEMENTS BY ALEX LACAMOIRE
DRAMATURGY BY KEN CERNIGLIA

FEATURING
SCENIC DESIGN BY DAVID KORINS
COSTUME DESIGN BY DEDE AYITE
LIGHTING DESIGN BY BEN STANTON
SOUND DESIGN BY PETER HYLENSKI

Producers Michael Shulman, Colin Callender, and Daniel Unitas announced today the creative team for the world premiere production of Basura, a new musical with music and lyrics by Gloria Estefan and Emily Estefan, premiering at the Alliance Theatre in Summer 2026. The production will feature scenic design by four-time Tony Award nominee David Korins, costume design by Tony Award winner Dede Ayite, lighting design by five-time Tony Award nominee Ben Stanton, and sound design by Tony Award Winner Peter Hylenski. Victoria Navarro will serve as the Production Stage Manager.

“From the very beginning we set out to surround this uplifting musical with the most passionate and talented creatives in our industry. We are thrilled that these award-winning designers will be working with us to bring this story and the authentic world of BASURA to life on stage. Their collective artistry will perfectly capture the ingenuity and heart that define the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura.”

– Producers Michael Shulman, Colin Callender, and Daniel Unitas

 As previously announced, Basura will be directed by the Broadway stage visionary and five-time Tony Award nominee Michael Greif (Rent, Dear Evan Hansen), written by National Latino Playwriting Award-winner Karen Zacarías (Native Gardens, Destiny of Desire). Grammy Award® and Tony Award® winner Alex Lacamoire (Hamilton, In the Heights) is the musical supervisor, orchestrator, and arranger. Tony Award® winner Patricia Delgado (Buena Vista Social Club) will choreograph, Ken Cerniglia (Hadestown, Newsies) serves as dramaturg, Cynthia Meng (Dead Outlaw) will serve as Music Director, Andy Señor Jr. will serve as Associate Director and Casting is by Kristian Charbonier, CSA for The Telsey Office. Casting Director for Alliance Theatre is Jody Feldman.

Performances of Basura will begin on Friday, May 30, 2026 at the Alliance Theatre’s Coca-Cola Stage (1280 Peachtree Street NE) in Atlanta, GA. Tickets are now on sale for the World-Premiere production, which is set to play through July 12, 2026. A private developmental reading of the musical will be held in New York in December 2025.

Ten-time Grammy Award® winner Gloria Estefan — whose music has sold over 100 million records worldwide — has shaped generations through song.  Now, she joins her daughter and acclaimed singer-songwriter, Grammy Award® nominee Emily Estefan, to co-write the music and lyrics for Basura, a powerful and bold new musical inspired by the true story of Paraguay’s Recycled Orchestra, where young artists turn scrap material into instruments and music into possibilities.  This world premiere musical continues Estefan’s global legacy — proving that music can rise from anywhere and change everything.

What do you do when the world gives you nothing?  You build something beautiful.  In a community against all odds, an inspired music teacher starts an orchestra for the students, but they have no instruments.  Empty paint cans, a fork, and a bent license plate become a violin, an oil drum transforms into a colorful cello, and the newly formed orchestra hits every note to the beat of something bigger.  When the students’ instruments become symbols of possibility, the sound is heard around the world.

Based on the award-winning documentary film “Landfill Harmonic,” the new musical carries the sound of Paraguay’s Recycled Orchestra farther than anyone could have ever imagined.  Basura is an unforgettable journey of rhythm, resilience, and extraordinary music — a radiant, heart-swelling reminder that even in the most unlikely places, you can build something beautiful.

“This is a story that has been close to my heart for several years since I first encountered the determination and ingenuity of the young people of Paraguay’s Recycled Orchestra.  Emily and I are thrilled for our music to be a part of telling their story in this original musical.  We could not be more excited for BASURA to begin its theatrical life in a city as influential and diverse as Atlanta with a theater as consequential as the Alliance.”

– Gloria Estefan

Produced in partnership with Michael Shulman (Sand and Snow Entertainment) and Colin Callender & Daniel Unitas (Playground).  Wendy Orshan and Jeffrey Wilson of 101 Productions, Ltd will serve as Executive Producers and General Managers.

Basura was developed, in part, with support from The Orchard Project, Ari Edelson, Artistic Director.

For more information, please visit BasuraMusical.com

Performances of BASURA run on The Coca-Cola Stage May 30 through July 5, 2025 – 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.