iama 2025-2026 season ANNNOUNCEMENT

IAMA Theatre Company, committed to cultivating new voices and creating boundary-pushing new work, announces its 2025-2026 season, which includes its 8th annual New Works Festival, a world premiere production, and two original workshop productions, introducing bold new works into the American theatre canon. All performances will be staged at Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave, Los Angeles. The IAMA Insider Pass is currently on sale ($90, fees included), with single tickets available in the coming months.

Said IAMA Theatre Company Artistic Director and Co-Founder Stefanie Black, “As we enter our 18th season, I’ve been asking myself how a ‘little theatre company that does big things’ finds itself on the verge of adulthood. What began as a group of young theatremakers chasing our passion, determined to tell contemporary stories, has evolved and grown into a thriving community of artists who continue to challenge the status quo and touch the lives of our audience members. This season is a coming-of-age valentine – a sweaty, tear-streaked, laughter-filled love letter about desire, vulnerability, and the maddening joy of humans trying to figure each other out.”

“We’ve built a reputation for groundbreaking storytelling and intimate visceral theatre – the kind of work that gets under your skin in the best way. This year, we're leaning all the way in as our little theatre company doing big things grows up,” added IAMA Theatre Company Executive Director Cara Greene Epstein. “For our 2025-2026 season, we’re embracing coming of age by focusing on sex, love, and connection, that intersection of desires where things get messy, meaningful, and very, very human.”

The 2025-2026 IAMA Theatre Company season will kick off with its 8th annual New Works Festival, October 9-13, 2025. IAMA’s New Works Festival offers audiences an exciting first look at future hits while giving playwrights the chance to experience public reception of their work for the first time. Since 2018, the Festival has been the starting point for new plays, which often progress to world premiere productions at IAMA, as well as on other stages nationwide. 

Next up, following the success of last season’s sold-out workshop productions, audiences will experience and be part of the developmental process of Esther Perel Ruined My Life, the first workshop production of the IAMA season, playing December 6-15, 2025. Written by Mathilde Dratwa and directed by Ojai Playwrights Conference Producing Artistic Director Jeremy B. Cohen, Esther Perel Ruined My Life offers a sharp, sexy, and darkly funny exploration of marriage, motherhood, and the messy pursuit of desire. The play follows a couple making the decision to open their relationship and their lives, and finds their identities begin to unravel in unexpected, explosive ways. 

In 2026, IAMA continues its commitment to collaboration with Los Angeles theatres with the world premiere of Foursome, February 13 – March 23, 2026, produced in association with Celebration Theatre, Southern California’s oldest LGBTQIA+ theatre company. An exciting and hilarious new work about queer love and chosen family written by IAMA Ensemble Member Matthew Scott Montgomery and directed by IAMA Director of the Ensemble Tom DeTrinis, Foursome is very modern romantic comedy that finds two couples, all the best of friends, exploring and blurring the lines between sex, love and friendship on a fateful New Year's Eve. 

The season concludes with a workshop production of …but you could’ve held my hand, presented June 4-11, 2026. Written by JuCoby Johnson and directed by H. Adam Harris, …but you could’ve held my hand is a tender, time-hopping portrait of four Black friends growing up, growing apart, and growing into themselves. Through love, queerness, and friends-turned-family, the play captures the beauty and heartbreak of evolving relationships across a lifetime.

October 9 - 13, 2025

8th Annual New Works Festival

IAMA’s New Works Festival gives audiences an early look at future hits and allows playwrights to experience public reaction to their work for the first time. Since 2018, IAMA’s New Works Festival has emerged as IAMA’s leading development and community engagement program,  providing the first step in curating new plays of artistic excellence to be considered for future productions. The Festival invites the local community into the creative process and welcomes social gatherings and discussions following each play presentation. Audiences are invited to spark important dialogue, connection, and creative exchange, both on and off the stage. New works developed during the Festival have gone on to full, world premiere productions not only at IAMA, but at theatres across the country.