NextStop Theatre Company is proud to announce its 2025/26 season—the first fully programmed by Producing Artistic Director, Heather Lanza, who joined the company in the fall of 2024. Titled “Finding New Beginnings,” the season marks an exciting new phase for the company, centering dynamic storytelling, cultural connection, and fearless theatrical experiences. The lineup includes two award-winning musicals, a surreal family dramedy, a haunting historical myth, and a highly anticipated world premiere — the first step in a bold new initiative to develop and produce groundbreaking new works.
“This past year has been filled with many new beginnings for me personally and for NextStop as a company. Jumping in as the new Producing Artistic Director has been energizing and encouraging, as it has helped me reconnect to my deep belief that theater has the power to build community and foster change,” said Lanza. “In many ways, we are all in a moment of transition. We are having to grapple with deep existential questions around what version of America we want to see, and what role we each can play as individuals to help shape that vision. The plays we are producing this season will grapple with this exact question: How can we use moments of upheaval to find a new beginning?”
Subscriptions & Tickets
This season, NextStop is offering a newly expanded variety of subscription packages. With options like the Classic Package, the Ultimate Flex Package, the Thursday-exclusive Industry Night Package, and the Friday Nightlife Package, there’s something for every schedule and budget. Patrons can also take advantage of the Early Bird Discount — saving 15% on tickets to select performances. Subscriptions and tickets are on sale now at nextstoptheatre.org.
2025/26 Season Line-Up
Dream Hou$e
Written by Eliana Pipes
Directed by Dylan Arredondo
September 11 – October 5, 2025
Will death bring a family together or pull them apart? Two Latina sisters are appearing on an HGTV-style reality show to sell their family home, hoping to capitalize on the gentrification in their “changing neighborhood.” As they perform for the camera the show starts to slip into the surreal: one sister grapples with the turmoil of the family’s ancestral past and the other learns how much she’s willing to sacrifice for the family’s future. Dream Hou$e, which earned both the Kendeda Award and Steinberg Playwriting Award in 2021, is a crowd-pleasing comedy with a twist that asks: What is the cultural cost of progress in America? And is cashing in always selling out?
About the Lead Artists:
Eliana Pipes (Playwright): Eliana Pipes is a writer, filmmaker and actor based in her hometown of Los Angeles. Her plays include DREAM HOU$E (world premiere co-production Alliance Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, and Baltimore Center Stage, published by Concord Samuel French); HOOPS (world premiere commission Milwaukee Chamber Theater); and BITE ME. She holds commissions from Two River Theater and South Coast Repertory. Her work has been developed or presented at the New York Theatre Workshop Dartmouth Residency, Playwright’s Realm Scratchpad Series, South Coast Repertory Pacific Playwright’s Festival, NNPN National New Play Showcase, Old Globe Powers New Voices Festival, Fire This Time Festival, and Drama League DirectorFest.
Dylan Arredondo (Director): Dylan Arredondo is a DMV-based, Mexican-Japanese theatremaker concentrating on new work that defies form and prioritizes visual spectacle. As a director, his DC credits include: Flying V: Astro Boy & the God of Comics (Helen Hayes Nomination), Unexpected Stage: Fade; The Kaleidoscapes: TRACE; Rorschach: Klecksography (2020, 2023), 4615 Theatre Co.: Parlor Games. Associate directing: Spooky Action: Frontières Sans Frontières; Prologue: Monsters of the American Cinema; Rep Stage: Falsettos; Round House: Quixote Nuevo; INTAR: The Beacons.
The Last Five Years
Written & Composed by Jason Robert Brown
Directed by Aria Velz
October 30 – November 23, 2025
Is the breakdown of a marriage an ending or beginning? The Last Five Years follows two New Yorkers, rising author Jamie and aspiring actress Cathy, as they fall in and out of love over the course of half a decade. This gut-wrenching, iconic musical, with an acclaimed score by Tony Award-winner Jason Robert Brown, explores how a couple, once united by their dreams, could stray so far from each other as their paths diverge. Told from two opposite timelines, Jamie and Cathy’s perspectives intertwine in a story of love, ambition, and heartbreak.
About the Lead Artists:
Jason Robert Brown (Writer & Composer) is a Tony Award-winning writer and composer. His Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals include Parade, The Bridges of Madison County, The Last Five Years, 13, The Connector, Songs for a New World, Honeymoon in Vegas, and Mr. Saturday Night. The Last Five Years will have its Broadway premiere this spring, and his newest musical, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, will also premiere on Broadway later in 2025. Jason’s recordings as a solo artist include Wearing Someone Else’s Clothes, How We React and How We Recover, Coming from Inside the House and most recently, Jason Robert Brown and Stephen Sondheim: Live in Concert. Jason is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the American Federation of Musicians Local 802.
Aria Velz (Director): Aria Velz is a director, producer, and teaching artist born and raised in the DMV. She was most recently at NextStop as the director for The Cake. Other current and recent directing work includes Kim’s Convenience and The Brothers Paranormal at Olney Theatre Center, and A Bright Room Called Day at Nu Sass Productions. She is currently the National New Play Network Producer in Residence at Theater Alliance and was an Allen Lee Hughes fellow at Arena Stage.
↓ D←R←O←W←N←E←R [Renword] (World Premiere)
Written by Nia Akilah Robinson
Directed by Heather Lanza
January 29 – February 22, 2026
Can classmates with opposite views on moving up in the world, learn to trust one another? In this horror-comedy, two Black college students are employed to spend summer in the upstate New York home of a white 93-year-old retired professor. The most important task of the job: watch her while she swims. Things take a drastic turn as it becomes clear that something is not right with Professor Renword. As the Professor works to complete her life memoir, she becomes increasingly haunted by her troubled past. ↓D←R←O←W←N←E←R [Renword] unfolds into a nightmare. Will the two young women find their circumstances inescapable, or will they release themselves of the inherited burdens they carry?
About the Lead Artists:
Nia Akilah Robinson (Playwright) (she/her) is a playwright and actor who reps Harlem with all her might. She’s had productions at Soho Rep U.S. Off Broadway Premiere (2025 New York Times Critics Pick- Extended Twice!), Theatre503, (London), The Hearth, and Urbanite. Her work has been seen and developed with Steppenwolf Theatre, The Hearth, The New Group, Theatre503 (UK), The Ground Floor: Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Great Plains Theatre Conference, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Waterwell, and Classical Theatre of Harlem. She has been a MacDowell Fellow, Travis Bogard Eugene O’Neill Foundation Fellow, and a writer for PEN America and EST/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (short play). Nia has had residencies at NYSAF and The Pocantico Center through YoungArts. Nia’s work was featured in the 2024 46th Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2024 The Fire This Time Festival, was featured in the 2023 SPACE JAM @ Roundabout Theatre, and the 48th Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Short Play Festival. She participated in the National Black Theatre Soul Series and received the 2023 Film & TV Mentorship by Mitzi Miller. She has been awarded 1st Place for the 2023 A is For Playwriting Contest, the Next Wave Initiative Lorraine Hansberry Writing Scholarship, a Miranda Family Fund Commission, and the NYSCA Grant (CCCADI). She is shortlisted for the 2023 Theatre503’s International Playwriting Award. Nia is proudly represented by Alex Gold at CAA.
Heather Lanza (Director): Heather Lanza is proud to be the Producing Artistic Director at NextStop Theater in Herndon, VA. Directorialy, Heather focuses on new play development and the devising of original new works. Her work has been premiered and workshoped at Juilliard, HERE Arts Center, Epic Theater Ensemble, Keen Company, Waterwell, The Gallery Players, The Davenport, NY International Fringe Festival, Access Theater, The Kraine, Theater for a New City, The Players Theater, Bleecker Street Theater, Magic Future Box, Berkshire Fringe, Virginia Children’s Theater, Redhouse Arts Center, and many others. Heather is currently serving as the Producing Artistic Director of NextStop Theatre in Herndon, VA. Additionally, Heather is also the co-founder of the NYC based Making it Happen Productions, which focuses on emerging artists voices who seek to use theater as a way to engage dialogue and promote change. Heather previously served as the Education Director/Artistic Director of the Waterwell Drama Program for Waterwell. Heather holds a BA in Directing from Fordham University and a MA in Applied Theater from CUNY School of Professional Studies. She is a proud member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Union.
Guards at the Taj
Written by Rajiv Joseph
Directed by Mekala Sridhar
March 26 – April 19, 2026
At what point do you follow morals over orders? This darkly comic play explores how unexamined adherence to leadership can drive you to stifle what makes you most human. Set in a fictionalized 1648 India, two Imperial Guards watch from their post as the sun rises on the newly-completed Taj Mahal for the first time — an event that shakes their respective worlds. When they are ordered to perform an unthinkable task, the aftermath forces them to question their very ideas of beauty, loyalty, and even their own friendship. A wry and haunting examination of blind obedience.
About the Lead Artists:
Rajiv Joseph (Playwright): Rajiv Joseph is an American playwright and screenwriter known for his thought-provoking and emotionally charged works. His play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Drama and marked his Broadway debut. He has twice won the Obie Award for Best New American Play, first in 2016 for Guards at the Taj (also a 2016 Lortel Winner for Best Play) and then, in 2018, for Describe the Night. Other plays include Dakar 2000, King James, Letters of Suresh, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Animals Out of Paper, The North Pool, The Lake Effect, Archduke, and Mr. Wolf. Rajiv has been a Steppenwolf Theater Ensemble member since 2018. Rajiv is a graduate of Cleveland Heights High School in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He received his Bachelor’s Degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and his MFA from New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts. He served for three years in the Peace Corps in Senegal, West Africa.
Mekala Sridhar (Director) is a DC-based theater director, playwright, and producer. Her directing credits include Nothing You Desire (workshop) at Atlas Arts Lab, A Wake At Singh’s (workshop) at Prologue Theatre, Frederick Douglass Project (reading) Hakawatis (reading) at Solas Nua, Salome and 10708 at Sarah Lawrence College and (re)Move West at Accademia Dell’Arte. Select associate directing credits include Public Obscenities at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Theatre For A New Audience, Metamorphoses and Twelfth Night at Folger Theatre. Mekala’s artmaking is grounded in creating radically inclusive, collaborative work, with a central focus on transforming the institutions she engages with into more equitable, community-centered spaces. Mekala holds a BA in Theatre, Literature, and Psychology from Sarah Lawrence College and received additional training from Moscow Art Theatre School and Accademia dell’Arte.
Once
Book by Enda Walsh
Music & Lyrics by Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová
Directed by Heather Lanza
May 21 – June 21, 2026
Can a chance encounter change your life forever? On the streets of Dublin, an Irish musician and a Czech immigrant are drawn together by their shared love of music. Over the course of one fateful week, an unexpected friendship and collaboration quickly evolves into something more. This captivating piece is the only show to have music with an Academy Award, Grammy Award, Olivier Award, and Tony Award. This achingly beautiful musical, including the Oscar-winning song “Falling Slowly,” illustrates how a lightning-in-a-bottle experience can reignite passion and purpose.
About the Lead Artists:
Enda Walsh (Bookwriter): Enda Walsh is a playwright and screenwriter who shot to fame when he won both the George Devine Award and the Stewart Parker Award in 1997 with his play Disco Pigs. He has won Fringe First Awards at the Edinburgh International Festival for his plays The Walworth Farce and The New Electric Ballroom. Once, his adaptation of the film by John Carney, picked up eight Tony Awards on Broadway, including Best Book. His 2008 biopic, Hunger, told the story of the final days of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands and won a host of awards, including the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He worked on the musical, Lazarus, with David Bowie, which opened at New York Theatre Workshop in December 2015.
Glen Hansard (Music & Lyrics): Glen Hansard is an Irish singer-songwriter. Since 1990, he has been the frontman of the Irish rock band The Frames, with whom he has released six studio albums, four of which have charted in the top ten of the Irish Album Charts. In the 2000s, he was one half of folk rock duo The Swell Season before releasing his debut solo album, Rhythm and Repose, in 2012. His 2015 sophomore album Didn’t He Ramble was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album. Primarily a musician, he has also acted and written music for film; he appeared in the BAFTA-winning film The Commitments (1991) and, notably, starred in the Irish music drama Once (2007) which earned him a number of major awards, including the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Falling Slowly” with co-writer and co-star Markéta Irglová. The film was later adapted into an award-winning musical theater production.
Markéta Irglová (Music & Lyrics): A vocalist and talented multi-instrumentalist, Markéta Irglová’s musical career began with a chance meeting and a garden party. Born in 1988, the Czech musician began playing piano and guitar at a young age, and was only 13 when her parents met Glen Hansard, vocalist and guitarist for the Irish rock band the Frames. Irglová began writing and recording her own songs while also performing with Hansard throughout the Czech Republic. In addition to performing together in the United States and Ireland, Irglová and Hansard recorded an eponymous album together under the name the Swell Season, which was released in 2006. Irglová released her solo debut, Anar, in 2011, followed by Muna in 2014 and most recently Lila in 2022.
About NextStop Theatre
NextStop Theatre Company is a Helen Hayes Award-winning professional theater company in the heart of Herndon, VA. Located minutes away from Reston Town Center, Historic Downtown Herndon, Dulles Airport, and the Herndon Silver Line Metro Station, the company has established a strong regional reputation for producing critically acclaimed productions and educational programs, while showcasing a wide array of local talent and arts relevant to the community.