A churchified mockumentary. A female-forward drama. An Austin-baked comedy.
It’s undeniable that Pure Theatre’s 24th season of new works and new-to-Charleston regional premieres is impressive. And “Undeniable” so happens to be the tagline season gathering a lineup boasting a noteworthy showing set to take the stage at Cannon Street Arts Center in the months to come.
The roster features three plays coming fully alive for the first time at Pure, with one already teased out with the pre-season production of Red Shirts, a new work by Pure Co-founder Rodney Lee Rogers. It will further its stride as the official 2026-27 season gets underway in August with Church Wars and Bat City.
This theatrical trifecta of new work is a rare occurrence in today’s pressurized industry, said Pure Co-founder and Executive Artistic Director Sharon Graci. She attributes the boon to a supportive audience that embraces the company’s identity and mission.
“Their curiosity is voracious. They are interested in the conversations our work demands, and they keep giving us permission to go further: to entertain them, inspire them, challenge them and invite them into places where none of us already knows the answer,” she told Charleston City Paper.
At the same time, Pure is mounting recent works certain to provoke thought among local audiences. These include the Southeast regional premiere of Jordan Harrison’s The Antiquities, which casts an incisive eye on fading cultures and Maggie Kearman’s women-powered Like Flies. The season also includes a detective-story of a play, Here There Are Blueberries by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, which is entered on a Nazi-era photograph album.
For Graci, this convergence of significant, relevant new works in the Charleston area is testament to the company’s quarter century of cultivating what happens on stage as well as what is in the theater seats.
“Everything that has come before has been building toward this rare symbiosis between a company dedicated to nurturing new work and an audience that gives us broad permission to do so,” she said. “It is rarified air, and we do not take it lightly.”
The lineup
Pure Summer Slam: Red Shirts
Now through Aug. 1, 2026
Pure’s annual pre-season Summer Slam production features the world premiere of Red Shirts, a Southern noir anthology of three stories for the theater by Pure’s Rogers with a Lowcountry thrust.
Church Wars
Aug. 27 to Sept. 19, 2026
A world premiere by Fred Thompson and directed by Sharon Graci, Church Wars officially kicks off Season 24 down South again in a mockumentary comedy about a struggling church seeking ways to save itself. The play will coincide with the second annual Playwrights Festival, a weekend of storytelling, workshops, conversations, and celebration featuring playwrights from Season 24. “It’s audacious and funny and completely theatrical,” said Graci.
The Antiquities
Oct. 22 to Nov. 14, 2026
The Antiquities, a Southeast regional premiere by Jordan Harrison directed by Graci, is set in the Museum of Late Human Antiquities, where curators work to reconstruct a vanished civilization from the fragments it left behind.
Here There Are Blueberries
Jan. 28 to Feb. 20, 2027
This play by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich and directed at Pure by Rogers, begins with the arrival of a photo album at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to reveal a remarkable true story.
Like Flies
March 4-27, 2027
A Southeast regional premiere written by Maggie Kearnan and directed for Pure by Graci, Like Flies chronicles a small, tightly bound community where the women have found a way to keep themselves safe, until whispers fracture trust.
Bat City
April 22-May 15, 2027
A world premiere co-production with Warehouse Theatre by Josh Tobiessen and directed by Caroline Jane Davis, the comedy Bat City is set in Austin and tells the story of three locals with grand ambitions.Then one night, a terrible idea starts to sound like a very good one.
The Playwrights Festival, too
Pure will gather several dramatic artists Sept. 11 for its second Pure Playwrights Festival: Maggie Kearnan (Like Flies), Josh Tobiessen (Bat City), Fred Thompson (Church Wars), York Walker (last season’s Covenant), Scott Barrow (Here There Are Blueberries/Tectonic Theatre Company), and Rodney Lee Rogers (Red Shirts).
For information, tickets and season subscriptions, visit puretheatre.org.
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