5TH WALL
THEATRE’S
2025-2026 SEASON
IS fiercely
imagined
Announcing 5th Wall Theatre’s
2025/2026 Season
This season, 5th Wall Theatre presents an exploration of the human need to belong, with stories that are fiercely imagined and centered on the radical act of self-actualization. Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, Wolf Play, and Tambo & Bones follow characters navigating fractured realities: familial, cultural, and historical.
They respond not with retreat, but with instinct, invention, and defiant self-definition. These plays are united by a hunger to belong in worlds that were not built with them in mind.
When the systems we inherit fail to hold us, these characters invent new ways of being, transforming ritual, performance, and identity into tools for survival and expression.
The 2025/2026 season is about forging connection, meaning, and selfhood on your own terms. It is about what happens when people imagine something truer, freer, and bolder. Because when the world falls short, they build what is missing.
OUR DEAR DEAD
DRUG LORD
BY ALEXIS SCHEER
Directed by Kaitlin Paige Longoria
October 16 - November 9, 2025
- REGIONAL PREMIERE -
PERFORMANCES AT THE BASEMENT
(300 E. Broad St. Richmond, VA 23219)
High above Miami in a cluttered treehouse, four teenage girls are plotting something wild: a séance to summon Pablo Escobar. What starts as a game of guts and giggles spirals into a sharp, unpredictable clash of friendship, power, and dark imagination. Part occult ritual, part rollercoaster through the thrills and terrors of growing up,
Our Dear Dead Drug Lord is a wickedly funny, unsettling ride you won’t see coming.
About the Playwright
Alexis Scheer
Alexis Scheer’s breakout play was the off-Broadway hit Our Dear Dead Drug Lord (NYT Critics Pick, John Gassner Award; LTC Carnaval of New Latinx Work; Kilroy’s List), and she made her Broadway debut adapting the book for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bad Cinderella. Other plays include ’Til Death (a 2ST commission), Laughs In Spanish (Kennedy Center’s Harold & Mimi Steinberg Award), and Christina (Roe Green Award; O’Neill Finalist). Her plays have been produced at theatres across the country, including Second Stage, WP Theater, Center Theatre Group, Denver Center, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Hartford Stage, Seattle Rep, Stages Houston, GableStage, Zoetic Stage, SpeakEasy Stage, Boston Playwrights Theatre and many more. Alexis is currently under commission by Manhattan Theatre Club and Miami New Drama and is writing the book for the stage adaptation of Jerry Herman’s Mrs. Santa Claus, premiering at Goodspeed Musicals in 2025. Television/Film: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin (HBO Max), and projects developed with HBO Max/Salma Hayek’s Ventanarosa and Sony Pictures Animation/Netflix.
Alexis is a proud alum of New World School of the Arts and holds a BFA in Musical Theatre from The Boston Conservatory and MFA in Playwriting from Boston University. She was born and raised in Miami, FL in a Jewish-Colombian household. Alexis now resides in Boston, MA with her music conductor husband and mini-Aussie, Sagan.
WOLF PLAY
by HANSOL JUNG
APRIL 16 - MAY 9, 2026
- REGIONAL PREMIERE -
PERFORMANCES AT THE BASEMENT
(300 E. Broad St. Richmond, VA 23219)
Somewhere between a boxing gym and a living room, a wolf is looking for a pack. When a young boy is rehomed through an online message board, a queer couple takes him in, unaware that he sees himself not as a boy, but as something wilder. As tensions rise and identities clash, instinct takes center stage.
Wolf Play is a feral, theatrical fable about parenthood, survival, and the strange and sacred ways we fight for to belong.
About the Playwright
HANSOL JUNG
Productions: Wolf Play (Artists Rep, Soho Rep), Wild Goose Dreams (Public Theater, La Jolla Playhouse), Cardboard Piano (Humana Festival), Among the Dead (Ma-Yi) and No More Sad Things (Sideshow, Boise Contemporary). Commissions: Public Theater (NY), Kennedy Center, Playwrights Horizons, La Jolla Playhouse. Residencies/Fellowships: Hodder, Royal Court, NYTW, Berkeley Repertory, MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Sundance Theatre Lab and Page 73. Awards: Steinberg Award, Whiting Award, DGF Award, Helen Merrill Award. TV: Tales of the City (Netflix), Pachinko (Apple+). Hansol is a proud member of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, NYTW’s Usual Suspects, and The Kilroys. MFA: Yale School of Drama.
TAMBO & BONES
BY DAVE HARRIS
JUNE 25 - JULY 25, 2026
- REGIONAL PREMIERE -
CO PRODUCED BY BLK VIRGINIA THEATRE ALLIANCE
PERFORMANCES AT THE BASEMENT
(300 E. Broad St. Richmond, VA 23219)
Tambo and Bones are stuck in a minstrel show or maybe they’re headlining the hottest rap concert of the century. Either way, they’re done playing by the rules. What starts with satirical sketches morphs into a hip hop fueled rebellion that rips through American history and launches into a mind bending Afrofuturist vision of the future.
Tambo & Bones is a riotous, razor sharp thrill ride that crashes comedy into revolution and dares you to keep up.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
DAVE HARRIS
A poet and playwright from West Philly. He is the Tow Playwright-in-Residence at Roundabout Theatre Company. His play TAMBO & BONES will be produced at Playwrights Horizons and Center Theatre Group, and his play EXCEPTION TO THE RULE will be produced at Roundabout whenever theatre allows. His work has been seen at Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival, Roundabout Underground, Manhattan Theater Club, Center Theatre Group, The Goodman, Victory Gardens, The Kennedy Center, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, SPACE on Ryder Farm, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, and Ojai Playwrights Conference amongst others. Honors include: the 2019 Ollie Award, The Lorraine Hansberry Award and Mark Twain Award from The Kennedy Center, The International Commendation for The Bruntwood Prize, the 2018 Venturous Fellowship from The Lark, and a Cave Canem poetry fellowship amongst others. His adapted film Summertime had its premiere at Sundance in 2020 and will be distributed in 2021. His first full-length collection of poetry, Patricide, was published in May 2019 from Button Poetry. Dave received his B.A. from Yale University and his MFA from UC San Diego.